New User Questions...
Hello -
I am a retiree who (a long time ago) graduated with degrees in Music Education. I wished we had tools like this when I was in school - would have made life a lot easier.
I do have a couple of questions about the Musescore that I have encountered along the way. I would appreciate any help anyone can provide me.
1. I am trying to score some etudes to help me in my own playing. These are short things - usually 3 or 4 lines for one instrument. Is there a way to score two or more unrelated items on the same page without having them tied together? I have tried separating them with Vertical and Horizontal frames, and this works to a point, but if the key or time signatures change, there are extra signatures placed at the end of the previous line where I don't want it. Also the measure numbers continue on.
2. Also in the same issue as #1 - If the second etude has a pickup note, I can not see how to score it correctly. I see how with a new tune, but if you can't separate sections on the page....
3. Is there a template for repetitive rhythms? For example, If you want dotted eighth/sixteenth rhythms repeated for many measures, you can go crazy changing back and forth.
4. There seems to be a logic flaw (I hate to call this a bug) when altering a pitch in the middle a measure. For example, if I have two notes, and I want to lower them a half step, I can use the down arrow to lower the first one, but when the second one is entered, a natural sign is automatically generated. This to me is wrong - the default should be to not have an accidental entered, and let the user change it if need be. I hate to spend time removing things that were gratuitously placed for me.
5. While I am on the subject of accidentals, when I use the down arrow to lower a C or an F, Cb and Fb aren't available - you get B natural or E natural instead. I know these are the same notes (Duh!) but when writing a descending passage, it is sometimes better to write C, Cb, Bb than C, B, Bb - for example if the key is Bb to begin with.
That's about it for now. I should mention that I am using release 0.9.6.3
Thanks in advance.
Jerry
Comments
1. In the latest unstable versions, there is a working new feature called a section break, which causes the extra cautionary key change to not appear. In the meantime, you can right-click the extra one and set invisible. This does not, however, get rid of the little bit of used space.
Just searched the forum (try it sometime ;) ) and discovered how to change the number. Right-click on the first measure you want to change, choose measure properties. In "Add to measure no.", put whatever number is appropriate. For example, if it's measure 18 and you want it to be measure 1 again, put -17.
2. In the same measure properties, you can change the actual value to be only as long as the pickup measure is. If you don't want it to be counted in the numbering, check irregular under other.
3. Personally I might select the two notes, copy, and then paste wherever I want them, changing the pitch once they're there.
4. Yeah, makes sense to me...
5. For now, click on the C, click on the flat symbol (up where the note length selections are... to the right of them, to the left of the voice numbers/colors).
In reply to 1. In the latest unstable by ceegers
Select all notes before raising or lowering them and do it all at once (Shift select or Ctrl select).
Regards,
Hi and welcome to MuseScore!
Courtesy signatures: If the individual pieces do not internally change key or time (or if you can do without any courtesy key or time change), you can turn them off for the whole score:
1) Menu "Style | Edit General Style..."
2) Tab "Page"
3) Uncheck "Create courtesy time signatures" and "Create courtesy key signatures".
4) Press OK.
M.
In reply to For 1: Page Style by Miwarre
In the discussion about the entry of accidentals, I missed your short but precise and to the point reply. This was exactly what I was looking for. Thanks!
Jerry
This topic has been argued a lot in the past months.
A) Someone maintained your position: if I lower a B to Bb, the program should not add a natural to the following B
B) Someone else (me included) maintained a different position: if you lower the first B to Bb, how could the program guess you want to lower the second too?
The program is not adding a natural to the second B at all: you are adding it!
When you lower the first B, you end up with a Bb followed by a B, this is normally rendered as a bB - #B (<= read the '#' as a natural: lack of symbol in keyboard). If a natural did not appear on the second B, I would highly protest, because it would mean that the program had took over and changed the second B to Bb too!
If you mean to lower both B, simply do this, but the program has to wait for the user to do it explicitly.
M.
In reply to For 4: not all logics are the same... by Miwarre
FWIW, I agree with the above point of view. If I click one note and lower it, I expect the program to lower that note and no other note. If that means an accidental sign needs to be added to the next note in order to keep it at the same pitch, so be it. You say you don't want to have to undo something the program does gratuitously, but that's exactly what you are proposing - that the program should lower the second note even though you never asked it it to. The current behavior is actually the non-gratuitous one.
Consider, what if you lower it *two* steps, from B to Bb to A. Do you want the second B to be changed to A as well? How about if you lower the B an octave - do you want the second B lowered an octave, too? What if you delete the note, change its length, change it to a rest, etc - do you want the second B similarly affected? I don't think anyone would suggest this. So why should lowering the note you clicked from B to Bb change the second B to Bb as well?
Now, I can of course see why *sometimes* this might be useful - like if you simply forgot to put the accidental on the first B when you entered it, and now you are trying to correct your mistake, which you have by then compounded by adding the second B. In that case, I might suggest MuseScore consider allowing something like pressing "shift" while lowering the note to automatically affect all notes of that pitch in the measure. But even then, you'd have to ask yourself if you want it lower the pitch from B to A, or dropping it an octave, etc.
In reply to FWIW, I agree with the above by Marc Sabatella
The way I took tbd's #4, and what I agreed with, was not about when the two notes are already there, but rather when you're entering the second note after changing the accidental on the first.
"I can use the down arrow to lower the first one, but when the second one is entered..." seems to imply he's talking about lowering one first, then entering the second.
In other words:
1. Go into note entry mode at the beginning of a blank measure.
2. Press B. (making a quarter note... press 5 before this step if you're not on a quarter selection)
3. Press down (makes that B a Bb)
4. Press B again
Result: second note is B natural
Possibly preferable outcome: second note is a B without an accidental, which, in this case, is a B-flat.
So... basically it would be saying that whenever you enter a note, it should not have an accidental. There's the option to make it follow the key signature or not, but perhaps there should be one to make it follow previous (same measure) accidentals or not.
In reply to The way I took tbd's #4, and by ceegers
I didn't realize that I would start such a discussion about with the accidentals question. As I said, I am a Newbie,, but the rules seem pretty clear to me - an accidental is supposed to be good for the measure. The chord base underneath it usually would support repeated notes of the same accidental. The obvious exception would be chromatic passages, but these would seem to me to be the exception, but then chromatics lead me to my question about Cb and Fb.
However, I have been around discussion groups long enough to know that no one really wins these discussions, and if we're unlucky, they descend into flame wars. So I won't push on this - I am the new guy, after all. I think the solution is to have an option available to set this behavior the was the user wants it to be. In other words, I check a box (or uncheck), and then the second note is treated the way I prefer it. So, is there a formal way to submit new features for consideration?
But more importantly, I want to thank all of the responders to my original posts. I have gotten a lot of ideas from those responses, and found some things that I didn't know about the way the program works. And thanks to the developers that have worked to make it available in the first place.
Thanks again.
Jerry
In reply to Accidentals by tbdbitl
"an accidental is supposed to be good for the measure....".
Only if you want it to. You may have to alter another back in the same measure. Say I have 8 notes in a bar alternating between "A" and :Ab". With your concept, how do you do that alteration? All notes will will move together.
Regards,
In reply to an accidental is supposed to be good for the measure by xavierjazz
He's not talking about changing multiple notes at once. This is not after inputting notes, but while inputting notes.
It would be: type A, A, down, A, up, A, down, A, up...
In reply to He's not talking about by ceegers
I think the confusion comes in because in the very first sentence, he said the problem had to do with "altering" ntes, which most of us took to mean, editing an already entered note. You are probably right, though, that this may not have been what was meant. Could the OP perhaps clarify what he means? If he is talking about editing existing notes, I think my initial comments demonstrate extremely convincingly why the requested behavior would be flat out wrong. It would be a weird special case behavior that says: normally, when editing a note, you edit affect only the selected note. but in the special case where your edit consists of a single cursor up or down that happens to result in the adding an accidental, the program will automatically decide to alter other notes you didn't ask it to. As I said, this would occasionally be useful for correcting mistakes, but definitely should be an option you have to enable, and I'd suggest - as I did before - that the option not be one you set globally - because most of the time this makes no sense at all - but rather one that you enable (via use of "shift" or whatever) while making these types of corrections.
If on the other hand he really was talking about the initial entry of the notes, then I'd agree that many would expect that once you've entered an accidental, other notes entered in that measure would inherit it. That is the way most other programs work as far as I know.
As for the comment about the rules saying an accidental applies to the whole measure, well sure - that's the rule for *reading* music. That doesn't mean you necessarily want things to work that way while entering the notes (although it probably does for most people), and it *definitely* doesn't mean edits to one note should apply to any other note.
In reply to I think the confusion comes by Marc Sabatella
Marc Sabatella asked for a clarification, and suggested that my original post was not clearly stated. I can understand his point, especially since there seems to be some questions about my points, so let's see if I can clarify with an example.
I am writing something in the key of Bb Major. After establishing the key, I want to make a temporary move to the relative minor (g minor), but for just a few measures, so I don't go to the trouble of changing the key signature, since I will return shortly to Bb. Now, the melody in this temporary section has a triplet of F#'s in a measure. One use of the sharp required, since I have not changed the key, but the use of a sharp for all 3 notes is not required by rules of notation. And it makes the reading of the music confusing to the player.
As I said in the beginning, I am older, and prefer to write more tonal types of music. Although that type of music is not exactly my cup of tea, I can understand that some of the requirements for the tools used to create modern music must be different. This seems to be that type of case. So if this is program is truly an open product, then efforts to support both points of view need to be made. How do we go about requesting that an option to do both be provided?
Thanks in advance,
Jerry
In reply to Clarification by tbdbitl
Thanks for the reply, but this really doesn't answer my question at all. My question had nothing to do with whether the music was tonal or not, and it had nothing to do with whether you were changing keys or not. I was simply asking if you are talking about :
a)*entering* notes
or
b) *editing* notes that you have already entered
So, which is it?
I had been assuming b), and I've already explained why what you you are suggesting really doesn't make sense for that case. Again, it has *nothing* to do with whether the music tonal or not, and everything to do with consistency. As I have already explained, it would make no sense for the program to automatically change *all* already entered F's to G's just because you changed one F to G. Don't you agree? That is, if you've already entered four quarter notes "Bb F F F" in a measure, and then later decide you want to change the first F to G, would you really want the program automatically changing the other two F's to G's as well? Of course not. So why would you expect that changing that first F to F# should magically change the rest too? It just doesn't make sense.
But if on the other hand you are talking about a) - meaning you haven't already entered the F's - sure, I think having the accidental "stick" makes perfect sense. That is, if you enter a Bb followed by an F#, the next two F's you enter should automatically be made F#. We're not talking about *changing* F's into F#'s, we're talking about what happens when you *enter* a note.
It's conceivable some more highly chromatic music (whether tonal or not) might be more easily written with such an option turned off, but I think most of us would want it left on as you suggest.
In reply to Thanks for the reply, but by Marc Sabatella
Let's try again.
I am talking about the initial entry. It is most annoying to go in an enter a note such as F, raise it to F#, then have to do it again 3 times in the same measure.
And I would agree that going back later to change one note in a passage should not change other notes in the passage, unless you had gone to the trouble to select them all first. At the risk of confusing things more, it would seem to be the difference between Note Entry Mode and what I would call Edit mode - in Note entry mode, the behavior would be as I suggested, when in regular edit mode notes are changed on an individual basis.
Is that clearer?
Jerry
In reply to Confusion resolved - hopefully by tbdbitl
Yes, thanks you, 100% clearer, and I do completely agree with you.
In reply to Yes, thanks you, 100% by Marc Sabatella
Now the question is "How do we make our requirements known to developers?
Jerry
In reply to Thanks. by tbdbitl
As I said this topic has been discussed before. Quite at length in at least two places:
On the Forum: //musescore.org/en/node/7284
On the Issue tracker: //musescore.org/en/node/7314 .
As you may see, if you (patiently) read those rather long threads, we needed some time before focusing on a precise proposal which, by chance, is exactly the same as the one outlined here.
The issue quoted above is still active, but nothing happened to it since three months. So, I have posted a new comment to 'revive' it.
M.
I started using Musescore for the same reason but have found that the playback is sharper than concert pitch. You will need to tune your violin strings 3.4 cents higher than concert pitch otherwise you will be developing bad intonation.
In reply to I started using Musescore for by 700NEvETS
I understand that this issue is important to you, but it is preferable to have each thread focused on only one issue.
You have raised this before in separate threads. It should be confined there.
regards,
On entering notes with accidentals, if you do the same arrow on the second note that you did on the first, you will get the same result. This is necessary until the logic flaw is corrected.
In reply to accidentals by JaimeWJr
Please stop posting comments on very old post. It's often not helpful.