With my setup this only happens if you select a single note. If you select a whole bar, everything copies OK. If you select a bar and [Shift][LeftArrow] until just one note (AND its articulation) are selected then it copies fine.
In general though copying (including cutting) a single note to the clipboard seems to effectively only copy the "pitch" of the note - when you paste it just transfers that pitch to whatever you've got selected (and if you have a measure selected, for instance, paste doesn't work at all). You need to use shift+click to select it as a range for everything about the note to be copied.
I'm not sure if this is by design but I confirmed it's the same as MU4, which is the only place we'd be changing anything like that.
It is by design that selecting a notehead only copies and pastes information related to the notehead itself. One has to select the entire chord (even if it only consists out of a single note) to be able to copy the entire chord (and it's attached elements).
I'd ask then what's the more common use case - selecting the note along with its stem and attached articulations etc., or just selecting the notehead. I'd think the former, therefore logically the action of clicking on a notehead should trigger that - with a separate action (maybe just clicking again) to select just the notehead. It's reasonable to say the current behaviour is surprising at any rate (and I suspect different to most other notation packages, at least the few I'm familiar with).
Hmm... You wrote: ...what's the more common use case - selecting the note along with its stem and attached articulations etc., or just selecting the notehead. I'd think the former...
I'm not so sure about that.
Many people (especially new users) click on a notehead to change only the pitch of a note by dragging up/down. The note's stem direction and leger lines change as needed. They are not part of the selection, and so not firmly fixed.
(Also, attached articulations like staccato and accent will automatically shift above/below the staff as needed.)
But if it really were just the notehead you were moving, the stem should logically stay where it was, so that's more of an argument for the default selection action being to select notehead+stem! What happens now if you do explicitly select notehead+stem and try to move both up and down?
Yes and no.
If you actually move the notehead, then the stem will not follow at all (being, if you change the Y-offset of a notehead).
If you change the pitch of a notehead, then the stem will adjust.
In an app designed solely for graphics manipulation, I would expect exactly that -- notehead, stem, flag, leger line, etc. -- all discrete elements, to be handled individually.
So someone wants note A4 (pitch) to be A5? Drag it above the staff, flip the stem downwards and add your own leger line.
Some also want playback? Whaaaat? ... and playback which honors dynamics, to boot?
At that point folk will then wish for a software that "understands" musical notation.
And so, because music notation elements work in combination (e.g., when one 'builds' a chord of multiple notes, the stem is lengthened as notes are added, shortened as notes are subtracted), MuseScore follows rules which were decided upon during development.
As a result of such decisions, people often wonder why "such and such" is the case, especially as it relates to something that they would have done otherwise.
P.S.
That is not to say that change never happens.
I just checked - the behaviour is exactly the same when dragging a notehead up and down regardless of whether the stem is also selected, so I still don't see there's that strong of an argument for the default action when clicking on a notehead to be "just select the notehead, and nothing attached to it".
But more weirdly, if I do select the notehead AND stem then use cut or copy - it doesn't seem you can paste it anywhere!
So the only way of getting what to me is the intuitive behaviour is to use shift+click to select the note as a 'range' (of 1 note), which then pastes fine as expected.
The use cases this was designed for include things like moving a single note from one chord to another between voices or between staves where the durations don't necessarily match. I can't say I personally find much use for this, but others apparently do.
But if the durations don't match the note heads probably won't either! If transferring just the pitch of a note to another note or rest was that useful I'd do it by using the inspector (assuming there was an editable text field that specified the pitch).
The noteheads isn't preserved from the source; it is inherited from the destination. I don't think there is any other way currently to copy pitches. So it you have an "E" as part of a two-note chord on one staff and wish to instead have that note as part of a four-note chord on another staff, copy/paste is a simple way to do that. Not that I think of this as particularly important to simplify, but I guess it comes up when cleaning up import of MIDI piano performances?
Sure, that's a useful operation, but that could work even if copy/paste did by default select the whole+stem, would just need some smarter paste logic. In fact it's not clear how you'd do it using the current logic (where the selected pitches are replaced with whatever's on the clipboard - i.e. how do you add a pitch on the clipboard to a selected chord?)
Having the ability to edit the pitch as a number/text field you could copy & paste from would definitely be useful though, but probably not a high priority feature.
I'd still say it's a bug that paste doesn't work if you explicit copy the notehead and stem to the clipboard though, it's clearly a useful/meaningful thing to be able to do.
Comments
With my setup this only happens if you select a single note. If you select a whole bar, everything copies OK. If you select a bar and [Shift][LeftArrow] until just one note (AND its articulation) are selected then it copies fine.
OS: Ubuntu 21.04, Arch.: x86_64, MuseScore version (64-bit): 3.6.2.548021370, revision: 3224f34
In reply to With my setup this only… by underquark
In general though copying (including cutting) a single note to the clipboard seems to effectively only copy the "pitch" of the note - when you paste it just transfers that pitch to whatever you've got selected (and if you have a measure selected, for instance, paste doesn't work at all). You need to use shift+click to select it as a range for everything about the note to be copied.
I'm not sure if this is by design but I confirmed it's the same as MU4, which is the only place we'd be changing anything like that.
In reply to In general though copying … by Dylan Nicholson1
It is by design that selecting a notehead only copies and pastes information related to the notehead itself. One has to select the entire chord (even if it only consists out of a single note) to be able to copy the entire chord (and it's attached elements).
In reply to It is by design that… by jeetee
I'd ask then what's the more common use case - selecting the note along with its stem and attached articulations etc., or just selecting the notehead. I'd think the former, therefore logically the action of clicking on a notehead should trigger that - with a separate action (maybe just clicking again) to select just the notehead. It's reasonable to say the current behaviour is surprising at any rate (and I suspect different to most other notation packages, at least the few I'm familiar with).
In reply to I'd ask then what's the more… by Dylan Nicholson1
Hmm... You wrote:
...what's the more common use case - selecting the note along with its stem and attached articulations etc., or just selecting the notehead. I'd think the former...
I'm not so sure about that.
Many people (especially new users) click on a notehead to change only the pitch of a note by dragging up/down. The note's stem direction and leger lines change as needed. They are not part of the selection, and so not firmly fixed.
(Also, attached articulations like staccato and accent will automatically shift above/below the staff as needed.)
In reply to You wrote: ...what's the… by Jm6stringer
But if it really were just the notehead you were moving, the stem should logically stay where it was, so that's more of an argument for the default selection action being to select notehead+stem! What happens now if you do explicitly select notehead+stem and try to move both up and down?
In reply to But if it really were just… by Dylan Nicholson1
Yes and no.
If you actually move the notehead, then the stem will not follow at all (being, if you change the Y-offset of a notehead).
If you change the pitch of a notehead, then the stem will adjust.
In reply to But if it really were just… by Dylan Nicholson1
...the stem should logically stay where it was...
In an app designed solely for graphics manipulation, I would expect exactly that -- notehead, stem, flag, leger line, etc. -- all discrete elements, to be handled individually.
So someone wants note A4 (pitch) to be A5? Drag it above the staff, flip the stem downwards and add your own leger line.
Some also want playback? Whaaaat? ... and playback which honors dynamics, to boot?
At that point folk will then wish for a software that "understands" musical notation.
And so, because music notation elements work in combination (e.g., when one 'builds' a chord of multiple notes, the stem is lengthened as notes are added, shortened as notes are subtracted), MuseScore follows rules which were decided upon during development.
As a result of such decisions, people often wonder why "such and such" is the case, especially as it relates to something that they would have done otherwise.
P.S.
That is not to say that change never happens.
In reply to ...the stem should logically… by Jm6stringer
I just checked - the behaviour is exactly the same when dragging a notehead up and down regardless of whether the stem is also selected, so I still don't see there's that strong of an argument for the default action when clicking on a notehead to be "just select the notehead, and nothing attached to it".
But more weirdly, if I do select the notehead AND stem then use cut or copy - it doesn't seem you can paste it anywhere!
So the only way of getting what to me is the intuitive behaviour is to use shift+click to select the note as a 'range' (of 1 note), which then pastes fine as expected.
In reply to I'd ask then what's the more… by Dylan Nicholson1
The use cases this was designed for include things like moving a single note from one chord to another between voices or between staves where the durations don't necessarily match. I can't say I personally find much use for this, but others apparently do.
In reply to The use cases this was… by Marc Sabatella
But if the durations don't match the note heads probably won't either! If transferring just the pitch of a note to another note or rest was that useful I'd do it by using the inspector (assuming there was an editable text field that specified the pitch).
In reply to But if the durations don't… by Dylan Nicholson1
The noteheads isn't preserved from the source; it is inherited from the destination. I don't think there is any other way currently to copy pitches. So it you have an "E" as part of a two-note chord on one staff and wish to instead have that note as part of a four-note chord on another staff, copy/paste is a simple way to do that. Not that I think of this as particularly important to simplify, but I guess it comes up when cleaning up import of MIDI piano performances?
In reply to The noteheads isn't… by Marc Sabatella
Sure, that's a useful operation, but that could work even if copy/paste did by default select the whole+stem, would just need some smarter paste logic. In fact it's not clear how you'd do it using the current logic (where the selected pitches are replaced with whatever's on the clipboard - i.e. how do you add a pitch on the clipboard to a selected chord?)
Having the ability to edit the pitch as a number/text field you could copy & paste from would definitely be useful though, but probably not a high priority feature.
I'd still say it's a bug that paste doesn't work if you explicit copy the notehead and stem to the clipboard though, it's clearly a useful/meaningful thing to be able to do.