How to remove pauses between notes?

• Nov 4, 2018 - 02:55

Sorry if I use incorrect terms, I am illiterate in music theory and new to MuseScore :( But still I was able to write a song in it. Which sounds fine in piano version, but when I decided to add other instruments (like flute and violin), I saw a problem which I didn't notice initially. While all notes in my song are of same duration (halves), some of them were entered with dots after them and others with a rest symbol (see below, left and right sides).
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This happened automatically, I don't know why, So, the first type notes sound fine, but the second ones have pauses between them when playing. How to get rid of these pauses, to convert second-type to first-type? These rest symbols cannot be deleted :(
I tried to use slur line over the whole score for the specific instrument, but it changed nothing,


Comments

To change the notes in the second part to dotted half notes like the first half select one note at a time and press the . key, this will automatically put a dot on the selected note. The dot means to make the note 1/2 longer than it currently is. Since a 1/2 note is 2 beats and a 1/4 note (half of a 1/2 note) is one beat, a dotted 1/2 note is 3 beats.

I suggest that you read up on music notation a little bit to at least know what the notes and common symbols mean, then watch the videos located here to understand how to use the program.

In reply to by mike320

Thanks, that works, but replacing all notes manually is a hell, Isn't there any batch mode to replace all selected?
And BTW, is there any way to replace the tempo of the whole score? I know it can be done in Play panel, but it resets to default tempo every time I load the file, and Tempo palette is for altering tempo of a single note.
I tried to find answers in Online Handbook, but there is too much articles to find the proper one :(

In reply to by etsenberg

I personally would simply reenter the notes by entering note input mode, press N, enter the duration of the notes (6. don't forget the .) then enter the note names (a-g) and, if needed, press up arrow after the note is entered to make it a sharp and down arrow to make it a flat. When you enter the notes, they will overwrite the existing notes. There is no way to change the duration of several different notes at once, especially not adding a dot to all of them.

The tempo palette changes the tempo starting at a note. All notes after that have the same tempo until the next tempo change. You can adjust the tempo from the default 80 just by typing in a new number like 120 or 45 or (almost) what ever you want.

I strongly encourage you to watch the videos or read the handbook (which I doubt you want to do). They will help a lot.

In reply to by mike320

Thanks. Looks like the software creators thought more like musicians of pre-computer era than like programmers if they did not make batch replace :(
I know what RTFM means, and it's definitely the best way to become an expert yourself, but when you need only a tiny portion of great amount of data you are unfamiliar with, asking an expert is much faster ;) Thank you for your time, I appreciate it.

In reply to by etsenberg

The problem is not that the programmers were thinking like 20th century musicians rather than 21st century computer users, but there is the issue of what to do if you decided to change the duration of all of the notes to whole notes at the same time. What would your expectation be? Is it the same thing I would expect? The notes would overlap.

In reply to by mike320

That's the user's problem, not the creators' one. If I can replace one note to whatever I want, there should be a batch mode which does the same with all notes in the selection. Overlapping can happen only in one case - if the new duration becomes longer than a measure and there is no room (rest) to expand. The simplest way is just to do everything as with a single note, but for every one. The more complex is to have a replace option what to do in this case - truncate or insert new measures.

In reply to by etsenberg

The problem is both the user's and the programmers. You lack of knowledge has led to to make an incorrect statement. If you have a 4/4 measure full of 4 quarter notes and want to make them all dotted quarter notes, what should happen? There are no rests in the measure. Should the measure expand so it no longer follows the time signature? Should it move all of the notes after these notes later in the score? How many notes should it move? All of them? 10 of them? What about rests between existing note? What happens if a tuplet ends up with a bar line in the middle of it? In common music this is not permitted.

I'm not trying to be mean with all of this, just trying to help you understand the complications involved in lengthening several notes at once. If the programmers allow this, then any decision they make will be wrong at least some of the time. With all of those questions I asked above you can see they will statistically be correct a small amount of the time.

MuseScore does have capabilities that will make situations like these easier, but not automatic. As I said, in your specific example, I would just reenter the notes because I'm very familiar with the notes. For you, it may be easier to stay our of note input mode and select the first half note and press the . button then the right arrow then the . until all of the notes are fixed.

In reply to by mike320

As I've said, either truncate if there is no place to expand or move all the rest to the end, just like when inserting words in a text, depending on the selected replace mode. Yes, for some tunes the result can be ugly. Just like in a text. If you want to remove all double-spaces and instead of replacing " " to " " replace " " to "", you get a mess of your text. So what? Undo and enter the correct parameters. As a user, I need a possibility, and how to use it is my problem and my responsibility. BTW, it's the idea of freedom in general. Don't decide for me what I need and what I need not, just give me an option to do what I want and to deal with the results myself.
I've entered all the dots manually yesterday, but it is disgusting, Luckily my song is not too long, and what if it were times longer? You will say a professional composer cannot have a need for such a replacement through the whole score? He can. E.g., like in my situation, he has a piano party, where he needs rests, and he wants to copy it to violin party, where he wants augmented notes.

In reply to by etsenberg

No matter what decision the programmers make, they have imposed a decision on ALL users, even the current one. You ignored the fact that there were a lot more questions than you answered and desire a different result imposed on everyone than currently is. Yes, the programmers already imposed a result on us users and changing the results to what you desire would be imposing a different result on the users. What you want is not a usual expectation or even normal notation.

An experienced composer will have dotted half notes in both the piano and any other instrument that is playing in unison with it. The piano note may decay (depending on the tempo) to the point is really sounds like a half note (or even less), but the dotted half will be written and a piano player will keep the key (or pedal) pressed for its full duration. The situation you describe should never be necessary.

Fixing rhythms is always a mess. Lengthening notes, overwrites whatever comes after them, shortening notes leaves rests. In your example, the rests after the notes are actually a new problem to me. People usually want the entire rhythm rewritten with notes and rests changed by the same ratio. There are a couple of plugins that help with this, but are quite limited. If you have any programming skills, you could always write a plugin that will give you the results you want. As I said previously, there are a lot of tools to make notation easier, they're just mostly not automatic.

FWIW, this does not happen automatically; MuseScore enters notes the way you tell it to. So you must have dotted half selected when entering the first few notes, half selected when entering the others.

As for search/replace, music is very different from text and the data structures are very different. Replacing a shorter phrase in text with a longer one always makes sense, there is no situation where it does not make sense to shift everything later. In music this is not the case, and even if you wanted to, there are numerous problems that would ensue (tuplets crossing barlines, inappropriate ties, etc). Not saying some day some sort of command to attempt this might be added, but the chances that it would do exactly what you are want in all cases are not very good, since again, music is not text and every case ends up being different.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

There are always complex situations which cannot be automated, that's why we still have to work instead of enjoying computers doing everything for us. But that does not mean NO situation of a certain type can or should be automated. Again, my demand to the programmers is "give me the option", and I will decide if I use it or not, and for what case. Existing of an option doesn't hurt anybody; absence does. And it is not too hard to implement. The algorithm is simple:
every operation which is legal for a single element (and thus exists in the code already) should be repeated for all selected elements, left to right;
if at some point the operation becomes illegal, stop and inform the user about the problem.
I've said where it can be useful - e.g,, when one instrument part is copied to another and need regular adjustments for the whole score,

In reply to by etsenberg

you'd better do it well and try to do it perfect, not just acceptable
Which is exactly why we're having this conversation and trying to address all scenarios.

You yourself states that if a note would overflow onto the next one (making the operation illegal), then just stop and inform the user. Which I personally think is an acceptable way of handling it.
However, just as many users will ask/require of this functionality to rather shift out the selection (a load of forum topics attest to this). So, again according to yourself, we should better do this well and include an option for this. (After all "Existing of an option doesn't hurt anybody", right?). But then again the question of crossing barlines vs extending measures comes up as well; no problem, just make it another option. Then what about possible crossing of tuplets over a barline; should this then be considered "illegal" and stop; or should it also become an option as to how to handle them?

I've just barely scratched the 3 most easily discoverable use case options here, there are plenty
Or we can indeed implement the most easy request only, extend the note duration and stop as soon as something falls outside that command (making the operation illegal), possibly roll-back the changes to not affect anything at all.
But then, how is that (in philosophy) any different from what the design does today? The command works on a single note, performing it on a list selection makes that command "illegal".

You keep claiming it is easy to implement, but you also continuously seem to keep not acknowledging the additional impact and the complexity ("just make it an option") that comes with it. For me this doesn't rhyme with "you'd better do it well and try to do it perfect, not just acceptable" and the criticism you have on the current implementation philosophy.

To be very clear: I support your request, have found myself in a similar notational situation and think the current proposal has value. I just think the behavior should be made extremely clear from the start. How to handle a note following the selection; differently if it is selected itself vs if it isn't? Same question for a rest.

In reply to by etsenberg

To be clear - most operations that can be performed on a single element already can be performed on entire selections. Only a very few cannot, like duration change. And the reason it isn't for duration change is because it is not easy to do so in way that would actually be useful. The problem is an "easy" implementation would be useless (it would choke on your example as soon as it tried to process the change for the rests that are also selected), and a useful solution is far from easy. It benefits no one for developers to spend time in things that have little chance of producing anything useful - it is better to spend time in things that would be useful. But by all means, feel free to contribute the effort to make the change yourself if you believe you have come up with an easy solution!

Since Musescore has not—yet!—been implemented with an elegant, user option-based 'insertion mode' as you and many have realized, and if you find yourself often needing to make en masse duration-based changes, you might consider the more difficult but functional text-based notation-type system Lilypond [http://lilypond.org/].

It works with text-based input files, and if you were in need of making bulk edits, you could easily perform find-and-replace executions. Then again, this type of system just isn't in the cards for everyone. Unfortunately there is no MusicXML export in Lilypond from what I understand, so you'd be only capable of exporting to PDF or MIDI from there.

As one who can relate to finding available options agreeable, yet knowing well enough that to demand is not to be granted any request for implementation by any well-to-do programmer with an open source project, maybe you will find this free software helpful?

Farewell.

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