Add pedal shortcut?

• Feb 27, 2021 - 21:06

I think a lot of musescore users do piano scores, and pedaling is a very important part of scoring - while it is true that most classical compositions do not have pedal marks, because a lot of musescore is shared via playback, adding pedaling is almost a must. The lack of shortcut would save so much time. I know some composer who wrote over 100 piano pieces, and they have to click the measure, then the pedal icon from the palette, for all of these pieces...

In Sibelius one can assign a keyboard shortcut to the add pedaling option - which just saves so much time.

Thanks for your consideration!


Comments

Are you aware that there is a keyboard shortcut to "Apply current pallet item". The default is ALT+P which is rather unfortunate as ALT+P on my system opens the Plugin menu. But you can redefine it to be something unused elsewhere. I have it as ALT+#. This means I can add one pedal line by clicking on the pallet. This makes the line the "current pallet item" and then can select a range, ALT+#, select, ALT+#, etc. as many times as I like.

The same technique can be used for any other pallet item of course. This is a bit more flexible than having a dedicated shortcut for each pallet item. Just pedal markings would use up 6 shortcuts to cover all the different varieties.

In reply to by SteveBlower

Thank you SteveBlower! That command apply-current-palette-element and the shortcut is super useful for my plugin!

Do you happen to know, if there is a way to apply a certain, named palette element? My plugin can't be sure that the user has applied the correct element before ;)
According to this post, there is no plugin API for adding spanners programmatically.

In reply to by spojaw

I would update to version 3.6 if I was you ;)

But there is no menu item "Apply current pallet item". You should find this action under preferences in the shortcuts tab. AFAIK you can only assign a shortcut (or use that action from a plugin).

In reply to by nurfz

As stated above the default keyboard shortcut for apply current pallet item is ALT+P. However for me this clashes with the shortcut to open the plugin menu. It can be reassigned to a key combination of your choice via [Edit]>[Preferences]>[Shortcuts].

[Edit] Seeing Marc's reply, perhaps ALT+P was my first attempt to assign it rather than the default.

In reply to by spojaw

See my reply. As explained, a) this isn't in extremely old versions of MuseScore, b) you need to define the shortcut yourself, and c) it's not an AI algorithm to detect good places to add the pedal markings, it's just a way to add a single pedal marking by pressing a key rather than clicking the palette icon (I think MuseScore 2 might have actually required you to drag & drop?)

In reply to by spojaw

Indeed, this is but one of the hundreds of improvements made in the past several years.

But, this is not some sort of AI algorithm that knows how to detect proper places to change pedal and then automatically adds the pedal at those places. That could be an interesting research project for someone someday. But meanwhile, you still need to figure out for yourself where a pedal marking should go, then select a relevant range - usually the point at which the harmony changes, or after long melodic runs within a single harmony. The point of the "Apply current palette element" command is to let you then apply the pedal to the selection with a single keystroke instead of requiring you to use the mouse to click the palette icon. The idea is, you still use the mouse to apply the first one, but then that becomes the "current palette element" and can subsequently be added with the keystroke,

The keystroke itself is not pre-defined, you can go to Edit / Preferences / Shortcuts to define it for yourself. I use backslash - "\".

In reply to by spojaw

As I mentioned above, to define a shortcut, go to Edit / Preferences / Shortcuts. More specifically, use the search box to find the "apply current palette element" command, select it, then click Define to choose a shortcut. Shortcuts apply to the program itself, not to just individual scores. This basic process hasn't changed since MsueScore 2, or even 1, except I think at some point there was no search box.

There is no such setting in muescore 4 to assign a hotkey to pedaling
there just isn't. Edit > Settings > Key combinations -- and there is nothing further there that could be related to pedaling

In reply to by RaptorTV

Right, this is as explained above. There was a shortcut to "apply current palette element" as explained above which allowed a single symbol to be easily repeated, and that should be returning in 4.2. But meanwhile., MuseScore 4 has a killer feature that previous versions lacked - you can actually copy and paste the pedal marking and in preserves the duration and shape. So, select one pedal marking you'd like to repeat (such as the line with angled hooks at both ends added over a full measure plus one note) and press Ctrl_C to copy. Now select the first note of the next bar and press Ctrl+V and you've got another just like it. Then select the first note of the next bar and Ctrl+V again, and so on.

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