Wondering about unknown (and possible) hotkeys?

• Sep 7, 2021 - 10:30

Good morning!

I'm new to MuseScore. I Have some experience with Sibelius and a lot of experience with Cakewalk Sonar Platinum (the DAW) and my wondering about possible hotkeys, (keyboard shorts cuts) comes a bit from both.

Sib. has an option to begin playback from a selected / highlighted element in the score by pressing P.
MS has the option to start playback from anywhere the cursor is sitting.
Both of these require the user to select something to start playback, or playback will start from where ever the cursor is located.

However ...

Cakewalk has 4 options, 2 for playback, and 2 for moving cursor position, that I have yet to find in either notation program.

Playback - The first:
Hitting O (as it Oh my) on the keyboard toggles playback to return to last position started from as soon as space bar is hit to stop playback. The result is the ability to very quickly replay from a specific position on the timeline after entering notes or controllers or editing notes or controllers (in Piano Roll View) after that starting position.
CTRL+Space Bar temporarily over rides this "rewind" behavior, and pressing "O" again turns it off.

Playback - The second:
The ability to set beginning and ending loop points for playback by entering start and end times and then Hitting L on the keyboard.
Example;
My custom hotkeys for Start and End of selection are SHFT+F9 and AHFT+F10.
Then after setting those start and end points Hitting L turns on a Looped selection of that defined area of time. To exit the Loop once again hitting L.
However these depend on quick cursor position manipulation.

For moving cursor position:
I have 2 sets of custom hotkeys defined.
Go to previous measure (bar line) = F11
Go to next measure (bar line) = F12

Markers *****
Go to previous Marker = F7
Go to next marker = F8

So with a few quick key hits
I can select move the cursor to the start of a selection, make that selection, move the cursor to the end of a selection, make that selection, and then set a looped selection -
and NEVER have to touch the mouse!

Which now brings up the question of ***** Markers
that can very quickly be dropped anywhere on the timeline.
Hitting M immediately opens a small dialog box asking for a Name (or number)
I can drop a marker in less that 1 second anywhere the cursor happens to be sitting.
The speed depends on the name of the marker.I very often use the letter "p" (without the " " ) to designate a punch-in point for recording. (No mouse use involved = very fast)

NOW, thinking about how markers could be used in MuseScore - - -
1) VERY Quickly defining the beginning or ending of phrases
2 VERY Quickly dropping user oriented reminders (mental notes) like for instance
"This harmony needs work" "flesh out the WWinds in this next 12 bars"
"needs more brass" ... what ever you can think of.

AND - If markers could be exported with midi (plenty of other programs do it)
"mental notes" could be passed on to the serious mock-up stage of the project when importing midi to the DAW.

Let's talk about it?

Thank you!

Steve


Comments

Existing things akin to stuff you're looking for:

Loop playback. Shortcuts can be set for setting in and out points of the loop as well as toggling loop activation.

Moving the cursor per measure is part of the navigation commands which again can be assigned to your liking.

There is no generic "track label marker" thing; but there are Rehearsal Marks to which you can Find

Have a look at the available shortcuts list in Edit > Preferences

In reply to by jeetee

Thank you!
I'll explore your suggestions soon.
Much appreciated!

Update: (I'm using 3.6.2)
Ctrl+ Arrow Right (go to next measure) doesn't work
Ctrl+ Arrow Left (go to previous measure) doesn't work

CTRL+ + (Zoom in) Doesn't work
CTRL+ - (Zoom Out) Doesn't work

If I had a clone I'd tell them to learn Qt and fix this app.
It has a lot of potential but there's plenty unfinished work that needs done.

I might eventually get around to trying to define my own hotkeys, but too busy right now.

In reply to by Steve_Karl

As noted elsewhere, different keyboard layouts can confused things, as "+" can generate at least three different key codes on some systems. So if your particular system happens to be one that uses a layout MuseScore doesn't recognize by default, simply customize it - takes only seconds.

But there should exist no keyboard in the world where Ctrl+Left/Right don't work as expected right out of the box. Well, other than on Mac, of course,e where it's Cmd instead of Ctrl as per usual.

If you are having trouble with those commands, please attach your score and give precise steps to reproduce the problem.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

Standard USA IBM qwerty Keyboard here. And it is score relative.
I was working on a score converted from Sibelius 5 using Dolet 6.
Tried a new score and:
Ctrl+ Arrow Right (go to next measure) works
Ctrl+ Arrow Left (go to previous measure) works
CTR+ +(Zoom In) Doesn't work
but CTRL+ - (Zoom Out) Does.

Can't attach the score.
As long as I know it's relative to scores that have been converted from Sibelius 5 using Dolet 6 then no more worries.

Do you still have an unanswered question? Please log in first to post your question.