Staff text disappears after pasting notes
I regularly need to do school assignment in which I create blank lead sheet (showing just the chord symbols with roman numeral analysis). In there, I make notes, for instance, this one assignment where I had to write down a scale to play for every single chord. After doing that, I programmed a solo in my DAW and imported the resulting midi file into MuseScore.
The problem I am running in to, is that I cannot in any way seem to simply copy the notes from the midi file into the lead sheet I just made, since the staff text will disappear once I do that. I have found this topic: https://musescore.org/en/node/325539 explaining that this apparently is intended behaviour. If this is intended behaviour, how come chord symbols and roman numeral analysis are NOT overwritten, but text is? It seems only logical that if you can keep the original chord symbols, keeping the original text shouldn't be an issue, right?
Simply, what I expect to happen:
- Copy notes in midi file
- Paste notes in musescore file
- Done, text is left in place.
An incredibly tedious workaround that I found, which I hope I will never have to use again:
- Set all notes in the midi file to voice 2.
- Make sure to fix every tuplet since they can't switch voices unless you explicitly change the rests in the target voice to the right tuplets
- Make voice 1 only contain full bar rests by going through every bar one by one and pressing 7
- Copy the text from the original file
- Paste the text in the imported midi file
- Copy the entire imported midi
- Paste it in the original file
- Check every single bar for randomly displaced text and manually correct.
Honestly, this can't be intentional design. Overwriting text with emptyness but leaving chord symbols be is inconsistent to say the least. Bear in mind I am not talking about lyrics, I am talking about staff/stave text.
Comments
I understand that for this particular use case, it seems logical to want to keep existing staff text. But realize there are lots of other use cases for copy/paste other than pasting MIDI content into an already-prepared framework. And in almost all of the other use cases, it really does make sense to replace the existing content more completely. Deciding which elements to keep and which not to was the result of years of refinement based on input from users, and the way things work currently has been found to be the most satisfactory to the most user the most often.
Your particular use case is a bit unusual, but obviously entirely unheard of either, so hopefully someday a way will be designed to simplify it.
Meanwhile, though, there are much easier workarounds.
I'm not understanding why you are experimenting with voices. Ignore your steps 1-3 and jump straight to the only thing matters - copy the text from your prepared score to the MIDI (eg, using Select / All Similar Elements to copy just the text), then copy everything back. Should take but a few seconds, and manual adjustments are preserved, so there shouldn't be any fixup necessary if you did you original adjustments correctly. I'd normally recommend waiting until the content is finished before making manual adjustments, though, because otherwise it's easy to guess wrong about how much adjustment is actually going to be needed.
Another method that might work more completely if you've got more than just staff text to worry about is to add a second staff temporarily, copy your MIDI file to there, then use Tools / Implode to combine the contents. Then you can remove the temporary staff.
BTW, although using multiple voices should be completely unnecessary to accomplish what you are describing, be aware for future reference that if you are trying to move entire selections between voices, the voice buttons on the toolbar aren't the way - they are meant for a note at a time only or similarly small targeted moves only. The more complete way to move an entire selection are the commands in Tools / Voices. These handle tuplets and rests correctly.
In reply to I understand that for this… by Marc Sabatella
Thanks for the useful tips. Using an extra staff with implode is something I've done in the past for other things, why didn't I think of that! I think that instantly solves every issue I have.
I do see that my use case is a bit unusual too, yes. The problem I experience with copying the text to the MIDI directly, is that the text gets copied to the wrong places. I think I understand what is happening and why but I'm having trouble finding the right words. My apologies. I've attached 2 images that explain the situation better. This is where my solution of using a different voice to temporarily store the notes in came in.
In reply to Thanks for the useful tips… by connorohara96
You're seeing those "wrong" places on copy-paste only because MIDI-imported text is always considered to be Lyrics. If you only had full measure rests, then each measure contained a "syllable", whereas if you paste it onto a melody, now each note takes a syllable as pasting Lyrics does.
There was recently a thread about a feature request to allow selecting as which text type those texts should be imported (staff text instead of lyrics for example) which would solve your issue as well.
In reply to You're seeing those "wrong"… by jeetee
I'm actually copying the text from a musescore file, not a midi file. All I'm copying from the midi file is the melody itself.
In reply to Thanks for the useful tips… by connorohara96
Glad the implode suggestion will help!
The screenshots don't make sense to me, though. If the original score had staff text once per measure, then it should still be once per measure after pasting. Are you sure you are copying just the text using the method I described - first selecting all the text with Select / All Similar Elements, then copy, then paste? Should work. If you continue to have trouble, please attach the actual scores instead of just pictures and give precise steps to reproduce the problem, then we can hopefully see where things are going wrong.
In reply to Glad the implode suggestion… by Marc Sabatella
I wasn't using that method. You're right, I should use that. I copied the text by selecting the first text element and using shift+click on the last text element to select them all. I'll give it a shot once I get back to my computer and let you know if it works! If it doesn't I'll make sure to include the musescore file.
In reply to I wasn't using that method… by connorohara96
Actually, I misspoke, both methods work the same - which is to say, they only produce the results you want if the rhythms in the source and destination match. I forgot that when pasting, chord symbols and dynamics match by beat position, but most other elements match note by note. This was, again, the general consensus as to what made sense in the sort of use cases this was designed for - copying markings between relatively similar but not necessarily identical parts (eg, violins and violas in an orchestra). In cases where one part is completely empty and the other is full of notes, it doesn't work well at all. So, the implode solution is the way to go here.
Probably there are workarounds too, like a variation of the method you described but using Tools / Voice instead of the voice buttons to move your MIDI data to voice 2, then use the selection filter to copy just that voice back to your prepared score.
In reply to Actually, I misspoke, both… by Marc Sabatella
That makes sense. I suspected that it matched note by note and not by beat position, I didn't know how to word that but I'm glad you did. Makes sense for the use case you're describing.
Thanks a lot for taking the time to explain things so clearly and extensively, it is greatly appreciated!
In reply to That makes sense. I… by connorohara96
My pleasure! It's an interesting problem you've posed here, so I both want to help you solve it, and see what we can do to help this case in the future.
Here's another idea that just occurred to me. Won't help in this particular instance because the text is already entered as staff text, and unless someone else has a clever workaround (or plugin), there is no way to change it something else. But, had you used system text instead, it would stay fixed as you pasted the MIDI passages into it. Also anything else that works on a system as opposed to staff basis - rehearsal marks, tempo text, etc. Since your score is a single staff system, that shouldn't have any other side effects. And realistically, even if you were using multiple staves, pretty decent chance you'd only want this text on the top staff anyhow.
So, that's probably your long-term solution.