Drawing / graphical tweaks

• Sep 9, 2015 - 03:44

I've found a few times that certain minor adjustments in MuseScore are overly difficult or impossible. My suggestion is to add a few drawing features that would enable easier workarounds for deviant notation.

A few examples:

Sometimes I want to use 'semidots' (augmentation dots with holes in the middle) and a few variants. They're obscure enough to not warrant inclusion in the program, but simple enough in concept that they should be possible to create. Ideally, there would be a way to make a white circle and place it over the augmentation dot, then copy it to other augmentation dots as needed.

If there were an option to input time signatures (and other similar things) as if they were non-notational images, then it would be possible to use a time-signature-above-staff style for music without constant time signatures: create a new staff over each existing staff, then place time signature images (that don't affect the note-spacing) in the new staff.

I've been trying to use uncommon chord symbols and encountered a few problems. These could be resolved by changing the chord-input functionality to interpret any possibly valid input. For the chord "C ♯4" (which could not be inputted normally due to the space), I tried creating 6 "C" chords, filling them in different colours, then overlapping them to determine the back-to-front order. The next step was to convert the furthest behind to a black "C♯4", the next 4 "C"s would be set to white and occupy the same position, slightly off-set to completely cover up the "C" in the "C♯4", and then place the remaining "C" to the left of the now-lone "♯4". This didn't work because the back-to-front order changes. The option to permanently define an object's back-to-front (Z?) position would solve this.

For creating bizarre scores like George Crumb's Black Angels, MuseScore could be very useful. In this case, I would isolate detached parts of the score and create separate MuseScore files for each of them. For example, in cases where the staves merge together, I would use various tweaks and workarounds that are already possible, then some simple drawing tools to draw lines with the same width as staff lines from one bar line's top to another bar line's top in a different staff. The results could be combined in various other specialist drawing programs - I use KolourPaint for this kind of thing frequently.

I'm generally good at inventing workarounds for things like this, but sometimes it seems like a clean workaround within MuseScore is unnecessarily out of reach.

Thanks,
Tom


Comments

Have you tried the Symbols palette (press Z to display)? If it's even remotely common, it's probably there - so you might hope to at least find the dot symbol you mention.

For C#4, that should be understood directly in 2.0 or later - are you still trying to use 1.3? 8f so, step one is to update - you'll also need 2.0 or later for the full symbols palette.

But indeed, for more complex non-traditional graphics, you are best off creating them in a graphics program and importing them from there as images. You can add those to custom palette if you expect to use them often.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

The symbols in the symbols palette don't seem to be re-sizable, and they won't snap to specific objects (such as augmentation dots) other than the tops of bar lines. I generally convert the entire score to .png to make the manual adjustments - apart from increased .PDF size at the end, a graphics program will always be a more convenient editor unless graphics imported into MuseScore could be snapped to more objects. The import could be useful for sharing files that will open in MuseScore.

I'm on v2.0.2. 'C#4' is understood fine, but 'C #4' doesn't - is there a character that would be understood as a space?

In reply to by to7m

Symbols are indeed not resizable They are supposed to be already the correct size for their intended purpose - are you finding some that are not? I guess if you are trying to repurpose a symbol meant for one purpose but use it for another. You can add these symbols as text also *using the F2 palette while editing text) but they are much harder to access. This is something that fortunately is already much improved for the a future version, whenever it happens.

But graphics can be snapped to lots more objects - notes, rests, etc. Just click the note, double click the symbol.

It is true there is no way force C#4 to parse as C #4 rather than the standard C# 4 - I wasn't understanding that this is what you were asking. Human musicians would likely have a hard time differentiating too, and that's why people would generally use parentheses if they needed to express this type of chord - "C(#4)" works, so does "C,#4". Feel free to submit an official feature request (using the Issue tracker, link in menu at right of this page) to request that hard space (Ctrl+space) be recognized as a separator here.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

The symbols are fine for their intended purposes, just a bit lacking for others. Inputting them as text is a workaround, but then they don't seem to snap to a note's staff position. For the semidots I'll try the imported graphics path next.

I'd never give anyone a C #4 chord, but I'm effectively trying to define all the jazz chords I've seen, and I've definitely seen that one. I've never seen C(#4) or commas in chord symbols though.

I'll make the relevant feature request :)

In reply to by to7m

I'd be curious to see *where* you've seen it - seems it would pretty universally be rejected as to easy to confuse with C# 4. Pointers to published charts would help make the case for the feature request, but anyhow, it's not a bad idea for other reasons.

Reopening this old post, because I have the same limitations today, with both MS3.6 and MS4.0.
The current palette of symbols is huge. But some times some characters must be resized, to gain a more semantics value.

@Marc, you asked for cases where the symbols size would not match the need.
I can give you some:
* circles, dots, squares, rectangles ,
* arrows:
expected Contemprary Musical notation.png
* some lines:
expected line Contemprary Musical notation.png

In black, Musescore components' size. In blue, the expected look.

In reply to by parkingb

This is somethng different through, resizable shapes in general. Definitely a good thing to hope for. But not really the same thing. Consider, a larger font size for the rectanlge would make it wider as well as taller, etc. I think the expectation in the SMuFL standard is that you'd build taller rectangles as necessary out of shorter ones.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

> I think the expectation in the SMuFL standard is that you'd build taller rectangles as necessary out of shorter ones.
Do you mean, "composing" a new symbol in MuseScore by stacking up different base symbols ? This is indeed already possible. And could be a workaround. But definitely eased if one could resize the Symbols as one could do it with regular texts.

And other option would be to define ones own symbols, and adding these into the Leland font, as suggested here. However not a solution for people without Font making experience.

I also tried by, instead of using Symbols, using staff texts and putting these symbols in the texts. But it is not the most user-friendly way to work.

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