Horizontal line between verses
Is there a way to create a horizontal line (or bar) between verses? I'm thinking in songs or hymns where there are many verses, to aid with following the line; sometimes there is a horizontal line every 3 or 5 verses, etc.
I've tried experimenting with the horizontal line in the "Lines" menu but this offsets lyrics. I could also do a workaround making text assigned to a note just a long line of underscores and moving this to appropriate position, but I'm hoping for a more elegant solution.
Thanks,
Alex
Comments
This isn't really built into MuseScore the way you describe it but you can open Format->Style->Text->Lyrics even (or odd) and make the lyrics underlined then all lyrics of that type verse (even or odd) will be underlined but still not a continuous line.
You wrote:
I've tried experimenting with the horizontal line in the "Lines" menu but this offsets lyrics.
Try this:
Before you move the line (and mess up the lyrics), click on the line and uncheck 'Automatic placement' in the Inspector. Then move the line between the verses you wish to separate.
You could (mis)use a melisma line, starting with a Ctrl+Space and followed by as many _ as it takes
In reply to You could (mis)use a melisma… by Jojo-Schmitz
I agree that this would be the most elegant (mis)use. ;-)
To make it work, one needs (almost) empty verses between existing ones. This works fine for a new score, however usually I have an existing score (hymn) with lyrics and I want to separate the verses with a horizontal line. This requires inserting a blank verse between existing ones and I almost hit the wall here because it seems to me that there isn't an easy way of doing that reliably in general (see Bug? moving verses up and down via inspector). It is still possible but more tedious and time consuming than it should be.
Incidentally, I have recently tried exactly the same thing - adding a horizontal line after every 3rd verse as this makes the verses lot easier to follow when changing the systems.
Both methods below involve quite a lot of manual adjustments, so preferrably apply them as the last step. Even so this may backfire when changing fonts, uploading to musescore.com or using the score with the mobile app etc.
Method 1 - lines
Pros: independently customisable line (style, color, thickness, hooks etc.)
Cons: lines need to be adjusted for each system even if they are continuing across multiple systems
Steps:
Method 2 - melismas
Pros: works across all staves it has been applied to
Cons:
Steps:
(Ideally, you would add almost empty verse 8 and push it upwards to 4 by changing verse number via the inspector but at the moment it does not work that way - see my other post above and Bug? moving verses up and down via inspector.
As a variant of this method, you could leave the original verses as they were and add melismas in two new verses (8,9) and adjust their Y offsets as desired.
Another method?
Not really, I have also tried underlined lyrics and frames around them but no great joy here:
This is so far what I came up with. Maybe someone else has any other smart idea?
In reply to Incidentally, I have… by .m.i.r.o.
Text style for Lyrics Odd -> Roman, Lyrics Even -> Italic helps too
In reply to Incidentally, I have… by .m.i.r.o.
Not ideal either, but just playing a bit with spacing:
Steps:
Same subtype
Add to selection
in the bottom part of the selection dialogSame subtype
but chooseRemove from selection
Same subtype
Pro: survives almost all layout changes
Con: It's no line :)