Toggle Staccatissimo

• Sep 7, 2021 - 00:49

Any chance that you guys could make an option to have a keyboard shortcut that could toggle Staccatissimo? I use it in place of staccato because it shortens the notes more than the first. I use it by default everywhere now. MuseScore is already a bastard to use because of how Ctrl+Z makes a whole selection disappear...


Comments

I would strongly advise against using staccatissimo notation for ordinary staccato - it doesn't make musical sense and and will just confuse people reading the score. if you subjectively prefer shorter playback than the usual default, simply use the articulations plugin (see Downloads / Plugins menu above) to shorten notes further. it would also be possible to create a simple alternate instruments.xml file that redefined the standard staccato playback.

Not sure what you mean about undo and selection, best to start a new thread and explain the special use case you have where for some reason you go to the trouble of making a selection and then for some reason hit undo. Most likely there is a more direct way to accomplish whatever it is you are trying to do. But FWIW, undo does not normally lose selection. So be sure when you do start that new thread, be sure to attach your specific score and precise steps to reproduce the problem.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

Staccato just shortnes a note by half, the Staccatissimo shortens it two 1/3 of it's original duration, much more obvious and a bit more snappy. As for the selection, it's simple, I select a tone of notes (one by one) and then I accidentally deselect them all. I wish Ctrl+Z would reselect all the notes. It doesn't though so I have to go through the score again and reselect all the notes. This is just a design flaw in the selection mechanics.

In reply to by Piotr Barcz

Can you post a score in which you are trying to do this? Then we can help show you the most efficient way. For instance, obviously if the notes are all contiguous you don't need to Ctrl+select - normal range selection works fine. But if it is, say, just the quarter notes within the selection, there is right-click / Select / More / Same duration, etc. Or if it's just random notes here and there, simply using the "Apply current palette elements" shortcut one by one as you select would be more effective than trying to mass-select first, I would think. Again, a sample score and a description of which notes you wish to make staccatissimo would help.

For MuseScore 4, it seems likely there will be more control over articulations, so you won't need to resort to using staccatissimo when the notated music presumably is not supposed to be showing that. Here again though, actual examples would help clarify.

Ctrl+Z is the undo command, is undoes a command, not s selection. and in fact, the act of undoing the command necessarily changes the selection. I don't think it's technically possible for undo to reestablish a selection, after all, the command being undone may have been one that renders the previous selection non-existent.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

Hmmm, how can i put this differently, have you ever used the midi editing software Midi Editor? It saves every move you make that changes a selection. So if you accidentally unselect a huge number of notes you were cherry picking then you can hit Ctrl+Z and it reverts the selection to what it was (so all the notes you had unselected become reselected). This would just make it quite a bit more efficient to reinstate a selection that had been accidentally cleared. MuseScore also seems to have an annoying thing that locks all the buttons on the main panel at the top of the screen when you double click on something in the staff, this makes it so when i try to unselect that particular thing and unblock the toolbar then the whole selection gets cleared.

It's also very hard for me to supply sample scores... though I have a couple on MuseScore i think, maybe, here's one that I made of Cameron Lee Simpson's piece Stupid Walnut, you can see where i used Staccatissimo and there's also a score i made of Kevin MacLeod's song Batty McFaddin where i also used staccatissimo and you can also hear where i added the Lourę so that there wouldn't be the complete legato.

Attachment Size
Stupid Walnut.mscz 42.57 KB
Batty McFaddin - Kevin MacLeod.mscz 45.26 KB

In reply to by Piotr Barcz

I am not familiar that particular program. But I'm not aware of any program in which undo actually restores a selection only instead of actually undoing the last action. Most people would expect MuseScore to work like most other programs.

In any case, what I'm asking for is an explanation of which notes you are trying to select and why, so we can help you do so more efficiently. Ctrl+clicking individually is cumbersome and definitely something to avoid if possible, which is why we provide a ton of other methods to select multiple notes. Once you explain which notes you want to select, we can assist you in selecting them in the most efficient way.

In the Stupid Walnut example, I can see you've already applied staccatissimo to a bunch of notes, basically all quarter notes and eighths. So, why not simply use Select / More / Same Duration to do all quarter notes in one step, and then again to do all eighths? For the sixteenths looks like you don'e some but not others, there I think it far more effective to apply the symbol as you go - select a note, press your shortcut for "Apply current palette element", then select another note and do the same etc. Or at most limit your Ctrl+click selection to a single measure before executing that keyboard shortcut.

Double-clicking an element puts it into edit mode, which is intended to focus all your editing efforts on that element. So indeed, commands that operate on other elements are disabled by design.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

In Stupid Walnut this isn't as huge of a problem but if I need to simply select single notes from a bass-note-chord march left hand pattern then I have to select all the chords but I can't just select all the notes on the same beat because then i would have to go back again and clean the score of any misplaced articulations that would've happened to end up on notes that aren't supposed to have them but still are on the same beat. I'm just saying that reverting the state of a selection could be a hugely useful feature that I've only encountered in Midi Editor and I have found it outstandingly useful. Midi Editor also contains a list of the actions, a log of sorts that you can just click on and it'll go to that action or selection change.

In reply to by Piotr Barcz

Indeed, a program designed specifically for editing MIDI probably has nice controls for doing that, and is relatively lacking for notation, and conversely for notation programs. Most programs do best when they focus on doing one thing well, and then you can simply choose the right tool for the job at hand. if the goal is tweaking playback, a MIDi editing program will be a better choice than a notation program, just as a notation program is a better choice for producing notation.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

  1. First, thanks for MuseScore such a great project and the great works of the developers This makes a Linux user like me finally can compose without VirtualBox.
  2. Sorry I cannot register the Discord of MuseScore, Discord keeps give me a picture of poo and said invite is expired after inputting my email.

I'm a classical composer, and I clearly know what I'm doing when I decide to use a staccato, or staccatissimo.

I don't sure if you're worried that user may abuse staccatissimo instead of staccato, but I think this is not a reasonable reason to decide not to make a shortcut for staccatissimo. I think this shortcut can be hided (or disabled) by default, but should NOT be totally neglected; it still can become optional in setting.

Staccatissimo is too common, even a beginner of piano in first year would learn this articulation. For me, staccatissimo This is an extremely common used articulation in my personal work, even more frequent than sforzato (shift+v). Some famous composers also use massive staccato and staccatissimo simultaneously in a work, but never misuse. A good example is, Alkan's Op.39 No.8 Concerto for Piano Solo, Mvt. 1 (see the attachments)

I have to say: it's a very very painful torture to add a staccatissimo to lots of separated chords every time during composing. I even can declare, at least for me, the lack of shortcut for staccatissimo --- is the only part, that I have to sorry to the great and hard-working FLOSS developers and contributors -- but I really hate the most, in the whole MuseScore.

I've used MuseScore for 8 years, and I'm always looking forward to a shortcut for staccatissimo in next release, but disappointed again and again... I even plan to write a plugin to do this, but the plugin system in MuseScore 2 & 3 seems not ready yet. And I still think a thing like this should not be done with an external plugin at all...

In reply to by onohiromip

To be clear: no one is saying not to use staccitissimo. Just that using this where staccato was actually intended is the wrong workaround to any perceived problem with the playback effect of staccato.

Regarding MuseScore 4, the long-term plan remains to be able to add shortcuts for individual palette items. There is a Google Summer of Code project this year laying the foundation for that, so perhaps we'll see it relatively soon, like maybe 4.1 or so.

Anyhow, just to be sure you aren't missing what's already possible -

  • If you've been resorting to drag & drop, know that this that never necessary - all palette items can be applied to any selected note or multiple selected notes with a single click. So if you've been dragging, this would speed you up 100-fold.

  • While there is no shortcut for staccatissimo specifically, you can define one for "Apply current palette element". I have that set as "\", for instance. Now, after applying this marking to one or more selected notes via a single click, you can then apply it to as many more as you like by pressing "\" - at least until you add some other palette marking and that becomes the current one. So, just make a point to do all your staccatissimo at once, and it's just as if you had a dedicated shortcut, and this should speed thing up another 10-fold.

So depending on what you've been doing thus far, this night reduce your frustration greatly. If you already knew both of these, then maybe at least it helps someone else!

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