For the Tie button (and shortcut) to not only tie, but also un-tie.
Basically that. Currently the only way to remove a tie is to select it with the mouse (which is rather cumbersome because it's a thin line) and press delete.
If there are already a button and a keyboard shortcut that tie the selected note when it's not tied already, wouldn't it make sense for both this button and shortcut to also un-tie the selected note if it happens to be tied?
EDIT: The button and shortcut for dotting and double-dotting notes work the way I describe, so it's also a matter of consistency.
Comments
That's an interesting idea, worth further discussion for sure. But FWIW, simply entering the note with the duration (which might be longer or shorter than the old) also does the job, if you are looking for a way to do it without mouse right now.
I can agree it's difficult to select a small tie at times, I zoom in REALLY close to select and delete them at times. I don't want the shortcut to become a toggle though. I use it to tie several notes together at time, some of which are already tied. I select a group of measures, press + and all of the notes that can be tied are. Making it a toggle, would eliminate this possibility.
In reply to I can agree it's difficult… by mike320
Maybe, all these things will be easy if there is a list of all used elements in some place of MuseScore.
I'm talking about a complete list with all the notes, ties, articulations, text, etc etc etc. One list for each staff.
I thinks this list exists in some place of the MuseScore internal RAM Memory but... I don't see some panel which shows us (and let to change it).
In reply to I can agree it's difficult… by mike320
If you select a note near to a tie, you can navigate between the notes and ties with the Alt + Right-arrow-key and the Alt + Left-arrow keys.
Thus, it is possible to delete the highlighted element only with the delete key.
Edit: Not just notes and ties; besides: barlines, chord symbols, slurs, and you can also navigate dynamics and crescendo / decrescendo hairpins...
But not in accents and grace-notes :)
In reply to If you select a note near… by Ziya Mete Demircan
Wow, I've been looking for (and not finding) this for a while. Just tried it...if you use it to select and delete a tie, you are then left with no selection at all, which means that if you want to do it again you can't just keep arrow-keying your way through; rather, you first have to take an extra step (e.g. mousing or ctl-f) to regain your selection. I would love it if deleting a tie resulted in the selection of the formerly tied note. no matter how the deletion was achieved.
In reply to Wow, I've been looking for … by kacattac
It'll be fixed in version 3.1. I don't know about everything, but many of the selections will be better when 3.1 is released. I suggest you try out the beta and then start a new thread concerning selections. See https://musescore.org/en/3.1beta
In reply to It'll be fixed in version 3… by mike320
Yes; This is corrected in the 3.1-beta2.
In reply to I can agree it's difficult… by mike320
How about this then: having one keyboard shortcut to "tie note if un-tied" and a separate one to "un-tie note if tied", and the user gets to decide if (s)he wants the same keystroke for both or a different one for each, and that way everyone is happy :)
For consistency with the buttons, the current one should keep working the way it does, and there would only need to be added a new one to un-tie (working analogous to the current one: un-tie if selected note is tied, do nothing if selected note is already un-tied).
I'm always for keeping the GUI as un-cluttered as possible, but this addition would serve a justifiable purpose; the way things are right now, removing ties is way too cumbersome, to the point were you yourself admit you need to be zooming in and out at times. It would also allow a new functionality: remove all ties in a given selection.
In reply to How about this then? Having… by Boente
I'm not totally opposed, but I'm struggling to imagine the real world situations where this comes up often enough to be worth the effort to implement. Especially since, as I mentioned, it's already to trivial to add a new note that removes the tie. And it seems to me the vast majority of times someone might want to remove a tie it would be in conjunction with entering a new duration anyhow. Can you attach a sample score and show what is you are trying to do to help me understand?
In reply to I'm not totally opposed, but… by Marc Sabatella
> I'm struggling to imagine the real world situations where this comes up often enough to be worth the effort to implement.
I've never needed to add ties to several notes at once, some of which were already tied. I'll just add and remove one at a time and that's that. It just seems too impractical to have to always bare in mind that the procedures to add and remove them are so drastically different, I believe a smart design is one that deviates your attention from the music the least and allows you to best focus on what you are doing rather that how to input it. It's all those little things one has to remember ("the shortcuts for dot and double dot perform like you'd expect, they add it if there's none, they remove it if it's there; the shortcut for ties only adds them, for removing them you either select them with the mouse, which is always sort of a pain, or there's this hack...")
To me the simplest solution is still the original one I proposed. My second proposal was an attempt at finding a common ground with Mike because he claims a functionality useful to him would be lost. I'd be pleased with any one of them.
In reply to > I'm struggling to imagine… by Boente
I'm still hoping to see a real-world example to help me understand the value of such an apparently esoteric feature. I can'T say that I've deleted more than a handful of ties in the last year, and I doubt any of those times were not actually just a precusor to re-enter the note with a new duration, in which case deleting the tie first is unnecessary. But everyone's workflow is different, which is why understanding yours by way of an actual example would help.
In reply to I'm still hoping to see a… by Marc Sabatella
More than anything I think it has to do with the specific type of music you are composing. Consider a piece that heavily relies on syncopations, and a user keen on experimenting with adding and removing the right ones. It shouldn't be a rare scenario at all one in which you are systematically adding ties (by which I mean, first change the pitch of the "second note" to make it match that of the "first note", then press left arrow to select the previous note and then tie them together) and removing them (namely, removing the tie alone, and then finding a suiting new pitch for the second of the two notes previously tied). Granted, to add these syncopations you could just change the duration of the "first note", but imagine that your aim is to try lots and lots of different possibilities as in "add one syncopation here, add one here, remove this other one, listen; nonono, wait, taaaa ta ta taaaa, I know, remove this one, add one over there, listen..." Adding and removing ties would be the sensible way to go about this. And it doesn't make a lot of sense for the procedure to add them and the procedure to remove them to be so drastically different when either of the solutions I proposed would have zero cost to the overall practicality of the software.
Workflow, as you say, also has a lot to do with this issue. For what I gather you tend to do most of your composing on the instrument and then go to MS with a quite settled idea, making at most minor changes once on the computer (I'm just guessing though). I do the exact opposite, I'll open MS with nothing but a main idea at best, and most of my composing consists of experimenting on the computer, "how would this sound? how about this? and this?" I know this could also be done on a piano, but the computer is in my room, the computer is available 24/7, the computer, I can take it with me anywhere, the computer is automatically keeping a record as I try new things... I doubt I'm alone on this.
In reply to More than anything I think… by Boente
OK, thanks for the explanation. Indeed, that workflow doesn't really match my experience. Feel free to make a formal suggestion via the issue tracker if you have not already, but do be sure to consider the effect on the existing behavior of how the tie command works on chords, because that is a workflow I and many others definitely do depend on.
Re: the toggle issue, I share mike320's concern, but it seems to me that a toggle between "everything tied" and "nothing tied" within a selection could be the best of both worlds. (Or is that not technically a "toggle" if the selection starts out mixed?) i.e. You make a range selection; type the tie command and everything is now tied regardless of how it started out; type it again and nothing is tied. i.e. By "toggle" mike320 meant that tied notes would become untied and untied notes would become tied; you could therefore reverse but not unify them. But if you think about it as toggling a selection as a whole rather than individual notes within a selection, perhaps it is more tenable?
Re: using note duration to eliminate ties, this is by no means onerous, but it does require TWO steps: (1) change the duration to eliminate the tie; (2) change the duration BACK to what it was before. For me, a single command (even one that is a handful of keys) is always preferable.
Re: workflow, it is indeed a question of entering a finished product into the program vs. using the program as a creative vehicle. I do both and I do find the "creative mode" delivering more hangups, of which the present topic is a representative example. On one hand this is unavoidable: even in the best-designed software, the easiest way to input something is to do it right the first time. On the other, there are no perfectly "settled thoughts," nor are there any human computer users who are immune to mistakes, nor are there any music patrons/employers who don't constantly change their minds about what they want; hence there will always be a need and justification for elegant after-the-fact functionality.
In reply to Re: the toggle issue, I… by kacattac
You expressed my concerns about having a tie toggle well.
When I'm in write music mode, my first concern is to get notes on the 'paper.' If I forget something minor like a tie or get a duration wrong, I can enter a rest to hold the space for the missing beats and find a way to fix it later. Unless you are working in an unusual time signature or doing a lot of syncopation, ties are a minor concern in my opinion. My concern about the toggle is that I often mess up tying several notes together properly in the contrabass (as well as other) parts and it's easiest to just select all of the measures I want tied and press + once and be done. Maybe it's just me, but that is far more common that wishing I had never ties notes together to begin with.
So you know, I'm not opposed to any particular feature that won't affect my workflow and this request for a separate toggle would not affect my workflow. I don't remember anyone else asking for this feature so I think a programmer's time would be better spent working on more commonly requested features or fixing bugs. If I ever did decide I wanted to untie a bunch of notes, I would select the notes, right click a tie, click select>all similar items in range selection and press delete to get rid of them. I might have even done that once or twice.
In reply to You expressed my concerns… by mike320
Hadn't thought of using "all similar items." From a pure functionality perspective that does exactly what I want. I just hate that it involves extra mousing (requiring some fine touch if zoom is <150%).
"Unusual" time signatures are "usual" for me, and this is undoubtedly a big part of why this bothers me so much. It's like having Undo without Redo, equal parts tool and booby trap. Undo is SO critical that it simply demands to be a two-directional feature, even though we Redo much less often than we Undo. The mere frequency with which we use one side of the feature is powerful rhetorically, but it can be misleading.
There are a few boutique systems out there for notating "whole" notes in odd meters, but none have caught on widely. This would also ease the problem but is unlikely to happen.
In reply to Hadn't thought of using "all… by kacattac
Feel free to open a suggestion in https://musescore.org/en/node/add/project_issue?pid=1236. Note that I didn't say it won't happen but I wouldn't count on it. The tip I gave you about Select all similar items is only one thing you can do to make using MuseScore more efficient. If there are other things that seem too tedious, feel free to open new threads in the forums and I or someone will recommend the easiest way we know. There are a lot of really smart people here in the forums who know a lot of the tricks to make MuseScore do what you want.
https://musescore.org/en/node/289275
In reply to https://musescore.org/en… by kacattac
Or better #289275: need two-step tie-untie functionality for Shift+=