Editing lyrics (space/hyphen etc.)

• Jul 11, 2021 - 08:38

The ability to use space/hyphen/arrow keys etc to move between notes while editing lyrics isn't yet working in MuseScore 4, so I figured I'd have a look at it.
But first I needed to understand how it worked in 3.6, and frankly the behaviour seems a bit odd. Initially I realised it was relying on the shortcut mapping mechanism so that "space" was assigned to the "next-lyric" command, which is an active command while editing lyrics. Originally I thought it didn't allow you to customize the shortcut key for "next lyric" at all - actually it does but strangely it's called "Next syllable" in the UI, which I would think was a different command that hyphen (-) would be the shortcut key for. But you can't customize the keystroke for that operation (start a new syllable for the current word), it's hard-coded (strangely the function internally is called "lyricsMinus"!). Further even if you do change the shortcut key for "next syllable", {space} still triggers the next-lyric operation, even though I'd've thought it might be useful to be able to enter a lyrics where multiple words (separated by regular spaces) are needed for each note (certainly in contemporary vocal music this isn't so uncommon, usually it indicates that the rhythm of the words is up to the performer - and I believe in Russian "В мо" (e.g. as part of в москве) is typical sung as a single syllable despite containing a space). In fact I can't even figure out how to enter spaces into lyrics - tried ctrl+space, shift+space and various other combinations but none work.
Because of some key changes made in MuseScore 4 trying to duplicate 3.6's exact behaviour would be a bit painful, but it seems like it's not ideal anyway, so have there been any discussions about what could/should be improved here?

Comments

• Jul 11, 2021 - 22:00

One thing though - it seems in MU3 that CTRL+space for editing other text elements adds a non-breaking space while for lyrics it adds a regular space. I could see a case for this if you were adding so many words to a single note it needs to break onto the next line - but in fact I can't figure out how to get MU3 to do that anyway (obviously you can force it by using a second verse etc.). On that basis, "non-breaking space" seems exactly the right thing for CTRL+space to always add, I'm not sure why it has special case logic for lyrics.

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• Jul 11, 2021 - 09:02

BTW as far as I can tell the default mapping currently is as follows, but only the shortcut for "Next lyric" can be customised, confusing called "Next syllable" in the Preferences dialog.

space       "Next lyric" - moves to next note and selects the whole lyric there (creating if necessary), with no intervening mark
hyphen      "Next syllable" - moves to next note and selects the whole lyric there, with a hyphen separator
underscore  "Melisma"   - either
    1) if text already entered, just adds what looks like an underscore to the end of it (why?)
    2) if current lyric empty, adds a melisma line to the previous syllable extending to the current note, moves 1 note ahead and selects whole lyric, creating if necessary (existing behaviour)

up      "Previous verse" - moves to the lyric on the current note for the previous verse (unless on v1).
down        "Next verse" - moves to the lyric on the current note for the next verse (expected: automatically create this if needed, but current 3.6 behaviour is to ignore if there's no verse to move to)

left        "move left across lyrics" - either moves cursor left within current lyric, or if at start, moves to the end of the lyric on the previous note (if any)
right       "move right across lyrics" - either moves cursor right within current lyric, or if at end, moves to the start of the lyric on the next note (creating if needed)

shift+space "previous lyric" - moves to the previous note and selects the entire lyric there

    control+space   add a space to the current lyric

    control+hyphen  add a hyphen to the current lyric

    control+shift+hypen - adds an underscore to the current lyric

(personally I'd expect underscore to always add a melisma line - skipping 2 notes ahead if text already entered, but maybe there's a good case for the current behaviour?)

Also I noticed that if there's a lyric attached to a rest you can't reach it by using space/left/right etc.

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• Jul 11, 2021 - 09:15

Yeah I can see you can't edit it like a regular underscore but it sure looks like one, it doesn't extend to next note at any rate.
I'm trying to think if there are cases where it's useful/necessary to have a melisma extend between two notes that both have lyrics?
oohaah.png
(I did that using ctrl+shift+- to add actual underline characters BTW, not sure how else you'd do it?)

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• Jul 11, 2021 - 09:25

Yes, like for notes in other voices or even staves like in closed score SATB

Try a Ctrl+Underscore (add Shift if your keyboard requires that, like mine does too), then a melisma underscore: they are looking different, the former depends on the font, the latter is just a line. Same/similar for - and Ctrl+-'

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• Jul 11, 2021 - 22:04

Yes, I had to move them. But that wasn't my question - I'd like to understand in what cases the existing behaviour when typing underscore at the end of the word is actually needed? (Also how do you delete the melisma added in that case?)

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• Jul 12, 2021 - 07:41

" I'd like to understand in what cases the existing behaviour when typing underscore at the end of the word is actually needed? "

The use case is: situations where one syllable covers more than one note.
Some dictionary definitions of melisma:
- in vocal music, where one syllable is set over more than one note, in practice, six or more notes
- the singing of a single syllable of text while moving between several different notes in succession
- a group of notes or tones sung on one syllable in plainsong
- an expressive vocal phrase or passage consisting of several notes sung to one syllable
- as opposed to syllabic song where each syllable is set to a different note, melismatic song allows a single syllable to be set to more than one note

" what's the use case for the current behaviour where it only shows a super short (em width) melisma at the end of the word? "
Your example showed a melisma which covers only a single note. Based on the dictionary definitions above, I don't think that melisma should ever be used on a single note/syllable pair.

But there is an odd use case with a melisma over two notes printed close together. As a transcriber I often see a melisma used in an old edition. But using current standard paper size of A4 (smaller than the original edition), such very short melismas can reduce almost to vanishing point because the syllable takes up almost all the available space. In such cases I usually remove the melisma altogether when transcribing.

"Also how do you delete the melisma added in that case?"
In all melisma cases: edit the syllable to end with an ordinary space instead of an underscore.

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• Jul 12, 2021 - 08:13

Have you tried what I said? If you have 3 notes in a row, add a lyric to the first one and type "one_two", instead of getting the melisma extending to the start of the second note, and "two" on the third note, you get this:
melisma.png

I'm just not sure why that would be useful? (vs having typing _ automatically advance to the next note before adding the melisma)

Attachment Size
melisma.png 5.32 KB

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• Jul 12, 2021 - 08:19

Yes, it could look better. But at least there is a melisma and the alignment looks OK too.
The alternative though, attaching it to voice 2 doesn't look too good either:
sample.png
It starts too late. So we're between a rock and a hard place here.
Workaround in the latter case it to manually (via Inspector) move the syllable left by 1 sp. So it needs 2 workarounds to look good.
sample2.png

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• Jul 11, 2021 - 09:38

One key behaviour I didn't capture is using '-' (hyphen) multiple times, which just extends the range over which the hyphen applies. Haven't quite worked out what the exact rule is for where the hyphens are placed - but I just loaded a score with such a lyric (hyphens over 2 measures worth of notes) created in 3.6 into v4.0 and while the number of hyphens and horizontal spacing looks OK, the vertical positioning is off (too high).

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