more keyboard questions -- entering double bar line and using menus, entering natural note, staff text to staff navigation,+more
arg, it's so frustrating to have to use the mouse all the time! i look forward to when i learn how to do everything via keyboard only!
question one:
when i try to change a normal bar line to a double bar line, the only way i know how to do it is:
- go to Create > Barlines..
- double click the double bar line
but when i try to use the keyboard to do this, i can access the Create menu by pressing Alt-C, but there is no way for me to quickly press one key (such as 'B') to enter the Barlines menu. i have to manually press the down key until i highlight the Barlines option, then hit enter.
and then, once i open up the Barlines window, i cannot find a way to use the keyboard to select the double bar line. i have to use the mouse by double clicking the double bar line.
so, how do i navigate to the Barlines menu quickly using the keyboard, and how do i select the double barline using they keyboard?
question two:
i can select note duration using the keyboard, but how do i select the natural sign using the keyboard? (this is important for when i want to do chords where one of the notes is natural.)
question three:
what i'm doing with musescore is to notate a whole bunch of motifs one after the other, and variations of those motifs, to help me compose my music. i separate each motif with a double bar line, and use staff text at the beginning of each motif to give each one of them a name.
i want a quick way of entering staff text using the keyboard, essentially.
i'm currently doing this by:
- hitting Ctrl-T to enter staff text
- typing in my text
- highlighting the text
- using the mouse to increase the font size and make the text bold
already, i wish that i didn't have to use the mouse to increase the font size and make the text bold ; is there any way to use the keyboard to do this instead?
question five:
once i have one staff text, i then
- select it using the mouse, then press Ctrl-C to copy it
- navigate to a new place on the staff, press Ctrl-V
- use the mouse to double click the staff text, so i can edit the text
- highlight the text (ie if i don't i lose my big font size formatting and bold formatting)
- type in my new text
- then use the mouse to click on the staff to be able to navigate the staff again.
how do i select already-existing staff text and enter into a mode where i can edit it, using only the keyboard?
and after typing in my new staff text, how do i use the keyboard to get back to being able to navigate the staff?
Comments
ad 2: natural by default does not have a shortcut assigned, but you can do that.
See http://musescore.org/en/handbook/keyboard-shortcuts
In reply to ad 2: natural by default does by Jojo-Schmitz
actually, seeing that i can assign shortcuts to a variety of options is helpful. not all the options i would have wanted, but it's a start.
As I mentioned elsewhere, you're going to have to get used to using a mouse (or touchpad or whatever). While I expect to see more keyboard comtrol added over time, there is pret much no way around needing to use a mouse in all notation programs I am familiar with.
You've already the best way to create double bars - click bar, double click palette icon. Most people don't figure out they can double click and try to drag, so you're at least a step ahead of that.
You don't normally enter natural signs (or sharps, or flats) directly. Youenter the note then use the arrow keys to raise or lower the pitch, and the accidentals take care of themselves. The only time you should need to enter accidentals directly is for courtesy accidenttals or for the "special" cases of Cb, B#, Fb, and E#. And yes, you can assign keyboard shortcuts to those manual accidentals as well as most other MuseScore commands - see Edit / Preferences / Shortcuts.
As for text, is there a reason you are trying to change the font after the fact so often? Why not just change the text style (style / edit text style)? Then, If it's just one or two text items that you want to look different from the default, then you're on the right track. No way to change font size by mouse, but spthe standard shortcut for bold - ctrl-b - works. But there are enough different text styles for specific purposes (staff ext, tempo text, dynamics, etc) that you really shouldn't beneeding to override the defaults for a given style all that often - just create the appropriate type of text in the first place.
I don't understand the last question. What do you mean by "navigate the staff"? You exit text edit mode with Esc and that puts you back in the normal default mode. If you are asking how to enter Note Entry mode, that's "N".
In reply to As I mentioned elsewhere, by Marc Sabatella
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While I expect to see more keyboard comtrol added over time, there is pret much no way around needing to use a mouse in all notation programs I am familiar with.
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actually, this isn't true for Noteworthy Composer! one thing i loved about it was that in Noteworthy, /everything/ can be done with a keyboard. MuseScore's "overwrite vs insert" method of note entry ends up being faster... if it weren't for how much it forces me to use my touchpad for everything else!
in Noteworthy, for example, every element can be navigated to and selected, using the left and right arrow keys; this includes bar lines, text, dynamics, etc.
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Youenter the note then use the arrow keys to raise or lower the pitch, and the accidentals take care of themselves. The only time you should need to enter accidentals directly is for courtesy accidenttals or for the "special" cases of Cb, B#, Fb, and E#.
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there is another time when using the up/down keys don't work: when i'm writing a chord. if i (say) have added the second note to a chord, i can't individually then change that second note up or down a semitone.
but the solution of assigning keyboard shortcuts to the accidental signs works fine for me.
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As for text, is there a reason you are trying to change the font after the fact so often? Why not just change the text style (style / edit text style)?
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i'll have to play around with this. i /do/ need at least two text sizes [one huge one to mark motif names, and one very tiny one to just add my own comments about the motifs].
` thanks for letting me know that Ctrl-B works well, though.
i really, really miss Noteworthy's super-fast keyboard friendliness. how can i best convince the developer's to do the same? (and are my chances good for getting MuseScore to be more keyboard friendly?)
In reply to === While I expect to see by silph
I don't understand what entering a chord has to do with your ability to change individual notes. What prevents you from it? You can alter that note immediately after entering it, or, if for some reason you are entering all notes first and then trying to do back and add accdentals, you simply select that note (by mouse or keyboard) and hit the arrow. Here is where that alt-up/down shortcut actusally *does* come in handy - to cycle through the notes of a chord. But if you enter the accidental immediately after entering the note, you save yourself those extra few keystrokes.
In any case, if you can get to the note in order to add an accidental, you can surely hit the arrow key just as easily as hitting the shortcut for the accidental. That is, if you can hit a key to enter an accidental, surely you can hit the cursor key to raise or lower pitch just as easily? So somehow I think we must be completely misunderstanding each other. Can you give a specific example of what you mean?
Something I've done is co-opt existing styles I don't otherwise use. For instance, in my lead sheets, I want some text to appear above the staff, other text to appear below. Since the ordinary distinction between staff text and system text doesn't apply to lead sheets, I juist use system text to create above-staff text. Without knowing more about your project and what "motif names" might consist of, it seems like thje sort of thing that you might co-opt "rehearsal letters" for, if you aren't also using those. Rehearsal leytters are entered via ctrl-m, so that's keyboard friendly. Just set the style to be large and bold. For 2.0, you will be able to dfefine custom text styles, but as of last I checked, there was no shortcut to assign a custom text style (that's something I've requested too).
MuseScore is open source, so your best bet for making more things keybaord friendly would be to program them yourself, or convince some other former Noteworthy Composer user to give it a shot. Based on what I know about MuseScore internals (which isn't that much), and without ever having used Noteworthy Composer, it seems there would need to be a new mode in which the cursor moves through symbols other than notes, because surely the vast majoprity of people would prefer the way it works currently, where the cursor moves between notes only. I can't imagine how frustrating it would be if every time I wanted to move the cursor, it stopped on every barline, accidental, dynamic, articulation, and other symbol - that's got to be a special mode that doesn't interfere with normal operation? So I could envision hitting some special key that would cause a new cursor to display that trakced each and every symbol. One that's done, it seems the rest would be relatively straightforward - hit Enter to go to Edit mode mode on a selected item, use cursor keys to drag handles, etc. A good chunk of that works already - it's really just the select and double click that always requires the mouse now.
In reply to I don't understand what by Marc Sabatella
marc, thanks for your reply! it's nice to get this feedback!
[would you be willing to respond to my other comment below; i accidentally wrote it not as a "reply" comment to you, though i meant to].
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Here is where that
alt-up/down shortcut actusally *does* come in handy
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AH, i see :-) knowing this trick, now, does make it easy for me to add an accidental to a note in a chord (without even having to make a keyboard shortcut for the accidentals).
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it seems like thje sort of thing that you might co-opt "rehearsal letters" for, if you aren't also using those.
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this might work for me. i can't get Ctrl-M to work [i can't seem to enter any text; i just get an empty, thin "box", but maybe i have to fiddle around with it more to understand how to use Rehearsal Letter text]. thanks for the suggestion.
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it seems there would need to be a new mode in which the cursor moves through symbols other than notes, because surely the vast majoprity of people would prefer the way it works currently,
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you're absolutely right, and this is exactly what i had in mind if i were to program a "keyboard friendly" mode into MuseScore :-)
too bad that learning C++ and Javascript and GUI / Windows programming is probably WAY out of my league :-P
In reply to marc, thanks for your reply! by silph
The default text style for rehearsal letters has a box around it. When you first hit Ctrl-M, there is of course no text, so you see an empty box. Now all you have to do is start typing and you'll have text; the box will expand, And if you don't want it boxed (as you probably don't) just change the text style before creating your text.
In reply to The default text style for by Marc Sabatella
ah, good. it works.
but after i type my text, and then press Esc when i'm done, how do i go back to navigating the staff at the bar that i was just at (ie where i inserted my Rehearsal Text)?
In reply to ah, good. it works. but after by silph
I guess form your other response that when you talk about "navigating" a staff, you mean you don't want to be in note entry mode, but you want an active cursor? Normally, you'd click the note where you want the cursor to appear. I guess you could press N to go to note entry mode then esc to exit again, but I'm not sure it's entirely deterministic which measure you'll be in if you do that. Certainly doesn't seem to always be the measure where I just added the text.
Is the idea that you want to quickly reach another note to add text to? I'm a pretty heavy keyboard user myself, but somehow I don't see cursoring to be faster than clicking for that particular purpose. Especially for things like dynamics where ctrl-click allows you to select several notes at once to apply markings to simultaneously. But sure, if MuseScore eventually gets a full keyboard navigation for symbols as we discussed previously, it would make sense to shore up how and where to get an active cursor each time you changed modes, including changing from edit mode to "normal" mode (which is what you are doing when you press Esc after entering text).
In reply to I guess form your other by Marc Sabatella
actually, what i typically want to do is after i add Rehearsal Text is to continue entering in notes, but after i press esc i don't know how to get the cursor back on the staff in order to do that (other than by using the mouse to click on the bar i was already at when entering the rehearsal text; or by pressing 'N' which brings the cursor to the very beginning of the piece).
In reply to As I mentioned elsewhere, by Marc Sabatella
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I don't understand the last question. What do you mean by "navigate the staff"? You exit text edit mode with Esc and that puts you back in the normal default mode. If you are asking how to enter Note Entry mode, that's "N".
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so suppose i double click on a piece of text, edit it, and then press esc when i'm done.
to then work back on the staff (to select notes using left/right), i have to either
- click the staff, which will highlight the bar i clicked, then proceed to use left/right keys to navigate the staff, or
- press N, which will bring me back to navigating the staff, but *only at the very very start of the piece*, instead of at the bar where the text i just finished editting is.
i want to finish editting the text, and then press something on the keyboard which will take me right at the bar where that text i editted is, and let me navigate that staff using the left/right keys.