Allow copy/paste partial tuplets

• Oct 27, 2020 - 07:52
Reported version
3.5
Type
Ergonomical (UX)
Frequency
Once
Severity
S5 - Suggestion
Reproducibility
Always
Status
active
Regression
No
Workaround
Yes
Project

Selecting the first triplet quarter note in the attached, very simple .mscz file and pressing CTRL-c, with the intention of copying it to the two other quarters, results in the message "Please select the complete tuplet/tremolo and retry the command" (see also the screenshot) - which is not what I want to do.

MuseScore 3.5.1 on Xubuntu 20.04 LTS.

Attachment Size
Triplet_Bug.mscz 4.26 KB
Screenshot_2020-10-27_08-15-54.png 70.77 KB

Comments

Frequency Many Once
Status active by design

Not a bug but by design (as the error message makes pretty clear too), and been that way ever since.

Not a bug, but a very counter-intuitive issue (this is an issue tracker, right)?

Why should I not be able to copy parts of a triplet, as I can copy any other notes? It seems to be a perfectly legal editing operation from a music point of view. I could understand if finally pasting might not be possible under certain circumstances (crossing bar lines, maybe), but copying?

Pressing R with that chord selected gives the same error/information message, while pressing R in note entry mode simply moves the cursor to the next rest, without repeating/duplicating.

Title Cannot copy from triplet Allow copy/paste partial tuplets
Severity S3 - Major S5 - Suggestion
Status by design active

OK, so let's turn it into a feature request, AKA Suggestion

In reply to by Jojo-Schmitz

"...pressing R in note entry mode simply moves the cursor to the next rest, without repeating/duplicating."

It works if you press R immediately after entering the first chord. It also works (sort of) if you start not in note entry mode then click on one of the notes of the chord, press N (to enter note entry mode) and then press R twice. The first press of R seems to replicate the chord on top of itself and move the entry point to the next position. Pressing R then replicates the chord at that position.

So it works in a clunky sort of way but it would be nicer if it was declunked.

Thanks, the second workaround does it (for this particular use case). It would be indeed very welcome if parts of tuplets could be copied around freely, as with any other notes.

I understand now why some MuseScore video tutorials where made by a Dr. Hess - higher education is a prerequisite to operate the program (and yes, despite these comments, I do like MuseScore).

What I think you are missing is that while it it might be possible to copy a single note of a tuplet to another time position that is itself already within a tuplet, you can do that in general and have it make musical sense. For example, a single triplet eighth copied to a different beat in a different measure that has no other triplets - how is this even possible, musically / mathematically?

What is possible in theory, though, is to copy within a single triplet. So that much at least could potentially be special-cased and allowed in the way "R" already is.

As I stated already above, i can indeed imagine that pasting might be not feasible in a certain situation, but why is copying forbidden? The program cannot know at that stage what I want to do.

It would be must better if an impossible paste operation is resulting in a clear error message, instead of this error at copy time.

In reply to by sirius-c

MuseScore does permit copying of a single-note chord from a tuplet to any other tuplet (even to a tuplet of a different ratio - it simply sets the duration of the pasted note to fit the paste destination). But it won't permit this same process for a multiple-note chord within a tuplet. I can't think why this would be the case?

There really isn't anything you can do after copying except paste, so that's why disallow it there rather than get your hopes up :-) But as mentioned, yes, we could conceivably someday allow the copy then complain on the paste but allow it for paste within the same tuplet.

The special thing MuseScore does for copying single notes by simply transferring the pitch info to another chord works pretty differently, and is limited to single notes only because in general, there is no guarantee a selection of multiple notes are even from the same chord, and we would have no way of recording that info the way selections are represented internally. Ranges and lists are totally different in that way.

So, again, it's not impossible to improve this someday, but I just want people to realize these are weird arbitrary limitations we impose just to be mean :-). There really are reasons why it isn't so simple.

I can fully appreciate from a programmer point of view that handling might be difficult - but from a user's perspective, I would expect that Copy & Paste simply 'just works' for all cases that are musically allowed (and that is not only pasting to the same tuplet, it surely can also be another, compatible tuplet).

It is really hard to understand why I can freely copy notes and chords all over the place, but not from tuplets - hopefully the user interface will be improved, maybe along the lines of the great work by Tantacrul (making things work intuitively).

A function to paste just the pitches of copied notes, while keeping the existing duration of the target, would also be great - an extension of the existing 'Paste half duration'/'Paste double duration'.

In reply to by sirius-c

While I fully understand and support your user point of view, I'm also curious to understand in which circumstances that copy facility would be useful. Entering the single note in the target tuplet by keyboard is at least as quick if not more than copying an existing one isn't it? Or that's because the note to copy comes with all its articulations that you then don't need to redo?

I had some chord sequences written out in a straight rhythm, and wanted to experiment how it sounds in triplets. Now I had to type in all again after creating the triplets.

I believe if one is not a composer accomplished enough to work it all out in the head, experimenting this way is a natural approach, much hampered currently by the limited copy/pasting.

The simple example file was only to illustrate the probkem.

Pasting a single triplet value could have a perfectly well defined meaning in an arbitrary location. If the destination isn't a triplet, Just paste a triplet with the first of the three values followed by two triplet value rests. (An additional related feature request would be to allow copying just the notes and not the duration, which would make copying a chordal accompaniment much easier.)

Workaround Yes No

I don't suppose there's been any progress made/workarounds found here? I'm setting a piece that's very repetitive and almost entirely composed of tuplets and it would save me hours if I could just copy and paste

I just want to put in a plug for my recommended solution above. I think it is straightforward and easy to understand. It would be my preferred behavior.

Reported version 3.5 4.x-dev
Workaround Yes No

I'm confused; what is the workaround for this issue (being unable to copy & paste within a tuplet) in Musescore 4?

Reported version 4.x-dev 3.5

There is none for Mu4, but there is for Mu3.

And this issue tracker has been discontinued, so re-report in on GitHub