How to move notes right or left
Is there is a feature that allows the user to shift all notes to the right?
For example, let's say that you wish to adjust a note to the right, on bar 20 of a 200 bar composition. You have decided the note comes in a quarter beat too early, so you wish to move the note to the right. Is there anyway to do this that doesn't require you to manually edit every subsequent bar after bar 20 (assuming the music is continuous and without any rest bars)? Anyway to just shift the entire composition a quarter beat to the right?
Thanks.
Comments
cut & paste
In this sense: Select the notes you want move to the right (see selection modes inside the handbook), cut it, insert a quarter note or rest, paste the selection on the beat after this inserted note/rest.
In reply to In this sense: Select the… by kuwitt
See:
In reply to In this sense: Select the… by kuwitt
This works perfectly to insert a rest in front of an entire score. Very useful when importing MIDI files as the files do not carry any initial rests but rather the score starts at the beat 1. Thank you!
After suffering with the same problem and trawling through the forum I came across the answer. In note input mode, use Shift+Left or Right and the note moves musically to the next position. Unlike cut and paste, for a single note it moves the lyric with it, which cut and paste does not.
In reply to After suffering with the… by JamesGlover
This is fine for a single note as long as you don't want to move it past a rest but in general if you realize a note followed by 200 measures has been placed a beat too late, then cut and pates is the better option. You method is great if you get a little dyslexic and put some notes out of order.
In reply to After suffering with the… by JamesGlover
Cut and paste does move the lyric, if you do a range selection that incldues the note rather than cutting and pasting the individual note only.
In reply to After suffering with the… by JamesGlover
This isn't working for me! I used to be able to do it, and now I can't. Is there a different command to switch 2 notes that are next to each other? I definitely don't want to use cut and paste for this small a change, and I'm sure there must be a more intuitive quick-key to make the small change. Shift Left, and Shift Right don't work for me anymore. I just updated to musescore 3
In reply to This isn't working for me! I… by iheartyouthwork
Shift+left/right haven't changed, but they have always been quite limited: they only work while in note input mode, and they only work if the two notes have the same duration. In general, cut and paste is the way to go. Not sure why you'd want to avoid it just because the change is small, it's just as easy for small changes as large. Select the first note, Ctrl+X to cut, select the second, Ctrl+Shift+X to exchange, select the rest left behind by the first cut, Ctrl+Shift+X to exchange again. It takes about 2 seconds, but presumably this isn't something you need to do dozens of times, more just to fix a rare error.
1) Insert the duration (to shift notes to the right) <1CTRL-SHIFT-C, Duration Pick, Del to turn to rest), or the rest (to shift notes left). All that gives you a (+) or (-) unnormal measure
2) for inserting a blank measure before (that' for the 3 step to work)
3) Put (drag from the palette) a New Time Signature in the blank metter, that's for rebaring the music
4) the New Time Signature, that's for for rebaring the music in the old time signature.
A problem is that tuplets cannot be separated by a barline (perhaps in a future version the program will return 1 double bar instead of (2) in staves with tuplets
In reply to 1) Insert the duration (to… by armbas
4) DEL ...
i too think this is needed, all i want is for the default behavior to switch places of 2 notes and each keeps the duration it had before
I frequently have the same problem. But, in addition to the keyboard option, I would be most happy if the notes (or selection of notes) could be moved left or right with the mouse. Cut and paste is fine, but gets quite tedious if you have to do a lot of smaller changes here and there. Is it possible to do that?
As far as I can see, the solutions here don't work. I have three bars full of semiquavers, and there's a semiquaver rest at the end of the sequence when it should be at the start. In effect, the sequence starts one semiquaver rest too soon. Musescore doesn't seem to provide any way of moving this.
In reply to As far as I can see, the… by wanstronian
Copy/Cut and Paste (the notes)
In reply to Cut and paste by Jojo-Schmitz
You need to move the notes, not the rest.
In reply to You need to move the notes,… by mike320
True, added
In reply to Cut and paste by Jojo-Schmitz
Sorry, but I don't know what that means (well, I do, but I don't see how to do it).
If I select the notes I want to move, then Ctrl-C/X, then click/highlight somewhere else and press Ctrl-V, nothing happens.
If I highlight a series of notes and press Ctrl-X, they're not cut. They stay right where they were, and are no longer highlighted.
In reply to Sorry, but I don't know what… by wanstronian
Right, got it now. Jeez that seems clunky!
Thanks for helping a newbie out.
In reply to As far as I can see, the… by wanstronian
So if I decide instead to just insert a couple of bars and re-create this the way it should be, then when I delete the bars that are no longer required, it changes the timing of the following bars.
![Before.png]( "Before.png")
![After.png]( "After.png")
Is it really the case that to move a rest in Musescore means re-creating every subsequent bar? Surely not!
In reply to So if I decide instead to… by wanstronian
You don't need to recreate anything.
Just try to conceptually see the rests as "nothing" and the notes as "objects at specific place".
So all you need to do is move these objects (by cut and paste).
I wish there were an insert mode in MuseScore like in Dorico, then moving a long string of notes like in your example would just be a question of deleting or adding a rest before them. Well it isn't possible so you have to cut and paste the notes. It isn't the end of the world though.
In reply to So if I decide instead to… by wanstronian
This looks like you have manually changed the beaming on every note, nothing has moves (except to a different measure). The only real difference in the two is the beaming. You would need to attach the score these pictures are taken from and tell us how you did that. MuseScore doesn't do that easily.
In reply to This looks like you have… by mike320
Hi, I literally did nothing apart from remove the previous bar. I did this a few times to verify the behaviour of Musescore. It consistently changed from the before to the after picture when I hit Ctrl-Del on the previous bar (which was empty apart from the semibreve rest).
In reply to Hi, I literally did nothing… by wanstronian
As I said, the timing is totally unchanged, only the beaming is different. I'd like to see the score that does that because, as I said, MuseScore doesn't do that easily. Simply deleting a measure will not normally do that.
In reply to As I said, the timing is… by mike320
MusicXML import will force the beaming to be what it was on import. Same with stem directions. So normally after import, first step is to reset all that back to auto.
100% Agre, there should be an option to work with as if it was a piano roll, you shall be able to move notes around independently, otherwise it's too stiff.
In reply to 100% Agre, there should be… by seixasrui
The thing is, the rules of music notation are nothing like piano rolls. You can’t just place notes on any “tick” you want, and you can’t have overlapping notes in music notation like you can with plain MIDI data. So it’s not like MuseScore is imposing some arbitrary limitation here; it’s really very much inherent in how music notation works.