Bug: Two pedal lines are created instead of one
When you select a range of musical notes that belong to both staves of a grand staff (piano staff) and create pedal marks (Line/Pedal), you will end with TWO pedal lines: one positioned below the upper staff and one positioned below the lower staff (attached image). It seems that both staves of a grand staff (piano staff) are annotated separately, which is wrong.
In all cases there should be only one pedal line and it should be positioned below the lower staff.
This means that it should be possible to align the start and end of a pedal line with any musical note from the upper or lower staff of a grand staff (piano staff).
When start or end time of a pedal line coincides with a musical note that appears only in the upper staff then you can not select only notes from the lower staff so that you will get the pedal markings below the lower staff.
It looks to me that MuseScore has a general problem of not being able to view the grand staff as a single entity (instead, it looks it as two staff entities). For instance, you can not view the whole grand staff in a piano roll editor, only upper or lower staff separately.
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Comments
Don't select both staves then, just the bottom one
In reply to Son't select both staves… by Jojo-Schmitz
I explained why this is often not possible :
"When start or end time of a pedal line coincides with a musical note that appears only in the upper staff then
you can not select only notes from the lower staff so that you will get the pedal markings below the lower staff."
That is, if the moment of pressing or releasing the pedal coincides with the musical note in the upper staff and not in the lower staff.
P.S. I edited post a few times when I posted it to correct grammar mistakes and make it more clear so perhaps you read only the initial post when you got it from e-mail or other sort of notification system.
In reply to I explained why this is… by hstanekovic
You can. Just select the rest too
In reply to You can. Just select the… by Jojo-Schmitz
The point is one may have a situation where the pedal needs to coincide with a note in the upper staff that starts while a sustained note is held in the lower staff. What is wanted is something like this:
to indicate that the pedal is pressed on the 6th quaver and released after the minim in the second bar.
It is possible to select the appropriate range in the upper staff and add the pedal line but the line is placed between the staves. The workaround to get it to its correct position is to disable autoplacement and adjust the y offset. It would better if the pedal would be always placed below the lower staff even if it is "attached" to notes in the upper staff.
In reply to The point is one may have a… by SteveBlower
Exactly that. Thank you for a clarification.
Grand staff is a single entity that is union of all the events in the lower and upper staves and the pedal line can coincide with any of them. Grand staff is not collection of two independent staves.
Well, this isn't a bug, it was never intended that this be a way to solve the problem you mention. Implementing this would indeed be one possible solution, although I don't know that it would ever occur to most people to try this, so I'm not sure it's the best solution. Feel free to add your voice to the existing issue for this: #15513: Pedal markings under grand staff can only be attached to notes in staff attached to. There is a pending but, I think, somewhat incomplete proposed solution for this that uses an alternate approach.
In reply to Well, this isn't a bug, it… by Marc Sabatella
Pure logic says that the pedal is pressed during a time range and it is annotated like that.
So you should be able to select a time range in a grand staff and apply pedal to it.
And, as I know, you can easily select any time range in a grand staff if you first click on any musical note in the upper or lower staff and than SHIFT click to other one in upper or lower staff.
For instance, in the image, I selected a time range in the grand staff from a musical note in the UPPER staff to the musical note in the LOWER staff using click and SHIFT click method. Now, only if I could apply the pedal line to this selection so that it appears below the lower staff positioned according to the time range over the selected musical notes.
In reply to Pure logic says that the… by hstanekovic
That's one form of logic, sure, but there are others. One is that for all other lines, it's incredibly useful to be able to select a range across several staves and apply the line to all of them at once. People rely on this all the time, and it saves a ton of time and effort. It would thus feel very unnatural to use this exact same technique for piano and expect to see a different result - so much so that people who are familiar with this method would probably never even think to try it for pedal because they'd expect it would do exactly what it does, which is indeed not what anyone would want. That is, I don't try sticking my hand in a running blender because I'm pretty sure I know what would happen :-), so similarly I don't try selecting both staves of a piano part because I am pretty sure I know what would happen.
To be, the better solution is to extend the usual Shift+Left/Right (or, as of MuseScore 3.5 coming imminently, simple drag) functionality to "snap" to notes on either staff.
In reply to That's one form of logic,… by Marc Sabatella
Well, I'm pretty sure that people do not expect to select the both staves of a grand staff and create two pedal lines :) I would say that people expect the grand staff to be treated as a single staff when the pedal line is applied to it. For instance, if you select two piano grand staves (piano duet) and apply pedal line there should be 2 pedal lines and not 4!
However, the way you described it will also solve the problem so I'm not against it. Only, I think this is not a better solution. It is certainly good when you can achieve that different thinks behave in the same way but only when this makes a sense.
In reply to Well, I'm pretty sure that… by hstanekovic
To clarify:
My point is that anyone who knows that selecting two staves and adding a slur gives them two slurs, selecting two staves and adding a hairpin gives them two hairpins, selecting two staves and adding a trill gives them two trills, selecting two staves and adding an ottava gives them two ottava - anyone who knows all this would expect the pedal line to behave the same way. Most people expect consistency. So, given this expectation, most people would simply never even try selecting two staves and adding a pedal, because they would expect it to work just like all other lines and thus do something they clearly don't want.
That is why my fear would be even if this were implemented, the vast majority of people would never discover it. NOt that it would (hurt* to have that also as an "Easter egg" for people who challenge their own expectations and say, "I wonder what would happen if..."
In reply to To clarify: My point is that… by Marc Sabatella
People that expect to be able to create separate pedal lines in the upper and lower staff of the same grand staff are ... well they do not know anything about music notation for piano.
So you want MuseScore to be software of choice for musically illiterate people? Well, than it is ok :)
But, we could go like this endlessly... the bottom line is you solution will also solve the problem and if someone implements it I will be grateful to her/him.
In reply to People that expect to be… by hstanekovic
I think you are still missing my point, and I always like to be understood, so I will try again :-)
I am not saying anyone wants separate pedal lines on both staves. Quite the opposite - they don't want it, and thus they will be unwilling to try an operation they think might lead to that unwanted result. People who know how other lines work would expect the same result for pedal lines, because they expect consistency. And because they don't want that result for pedal, they will never try, never have the opportunity to be pleasantly surprised when it does something different and good.
Again, I appeal to my blender example. I don't want my hand mangled - I am not a masochist. But, I know what my blender does to ice cubes, I know what it does basil, I know what it does to corn, I know what it does to other solid objects I place in it. Therefore, I expect it will do the same to my hand, and thus I don't try. For all I know, it has some magic hand-detecting circuitry and would actually dispense $100 bills if I put my hand in. But my prior experience leads me to expect the same result for my hand that I get with ice cubes. While it's a good thing for ice cubes, it's a bad thing for hands, so I don't bother trying the experiment.
Similarly, no one wants separate pedal lines - I am not talking about musically illiterate people. Just as with the blender example, prior experience leads people to expect the same results with pedal lines that they get with hairpins. While it's a good thing for hairpins, it's a bad thing for pedal lines, so they probably won't bother trying the experiment.
In reply to I think you are still… by Marc Sabatella
You are a persistent man with strong rhetorical skills and I love your humorous story about blender so much that I have to make up another one. Sorry :) It's a short dialog between the Consistency and Reason in which Consistency is complaining to Reason on how some text processor software works wrong.
Consistency: When I press the right key, it moves me one character right. When I press it again, it moves me right again. But when I do this 80th time, it moves me at the beginning of the next row.
Reason: But you are at the end of the row, it must move you to the next one.
Consistency: This is just not consistent. I do the same action 79 times before and have one result and then I do it again and have a completely different result. This is wrong.
Reason: (sigh) I give up
In reply to You are a persistent man… by hstanekovic
Hmm...Good point... I think... ;-)
Although...
Are you sure you mean the left (arrow) key?
You wrote:
When I press the left key, it moves me one character left.... But when I do this 80th time, it moves me at the beginning of the next row.
To be clear....
The left arrow (after moving left) shifts you to the end of the previous row.
The right arrow (after moving right) shifts you to the beginning of the next row.
In reply to Hmm...Good point... I think… by Jm6stringer
Sorry, thanks. I wanted to write RIGHT but only God knows why I wrote LEFT (because I don't know). So I corrected the post now.
In reply to You are a persistent man… by hstanekovic
As I see it there are two issues here;
Issue 1. If you select a range in both staves of a grand staff and apply a pedal line you end up with two pedal lines positioned below the individual staves.
Issue 2. Applying a pedal line to coincide with notes in the upper staff but not with the lower staff requires a workaround to have the pedal line show in the correct position - below the lower staff.
On issue 1 I think Marc's position is reasonable. If the selected range covers both staves then you get separate pedal lines attached to each stave, just as you do with slurs, 8va lines etc. Similarly, if you select a range in a single stave with two voices and apply a slur you end up with slurs on both voices. In all these cases what you get is what you asked for. What you asked for may not be what you actually wanted, but it is consistent behaviour. And there are ways to make more precise selections to achieve all desired outcomes, e.g. select a range in one stave before adding the line or use the selection filter to select only one voice before adding a slur, or select a single note, add the desired line and extend it with shift+right arrow. I wouldn't call these workarounds, they are just what you need to do to specify precisely what you want to happen.
On issue 2, Musescore does give you something that is not consistent with standard notation and therefore could be considered a bug. The workaround I suggested in my earlier post involved attaching the pedal line to the desired range in the upper stave and then moving it below the lower stave by turning off auto placement and adjusting the y offset. However, this is less than ideal as the offset is relative to the upper stave. If the stave spacing changes for some reason (lots of ledger lines between the staves for example) the pedal line offset will need to be re-adjusted to keep it in the same position relative to the lower stave. Having thought some more, I found a better solution which is to add another voice in the lower stave with rests of the correct length to define the start and endpoints of the pedal and attach the line to those rests. Like this:
Of course, the rests would be made invisible in the final score.
I think the situation where it is necessary to attach a pedal line to the upper stave is quite rare and the workaround (my second attempt) is fairly straight forward. This thread is already linked to #15513: Pedal markings under grand staff can only be attached to notes in staff attached to which deals specifically with issue 2 and some work on a fix is indicated there so there seems no need to add anything further to the issue tracker, unless there is some way of providing a gentle nudge to the originator of the PR.
In reply to As I see it there are two… by SteveBlower
Regarding the issue 2, I also used the workaround of manually moving the pedal line which was created under the upper staff. It is good that workaround do exist but of course it would be better that you do not have to use a workaround.
Regarding the issue 1, it is not always benefit when software lets you to do what you asked it. After all, why do we have validations in software. I admit that validations are more important in business or financial software but they exist in all software. For instance, a trivial validation of input like in a numerical text box that does not allow users to enter text.
In reply to You are a persistent man… by hstanekovic
Indeed, consistency is not always great :-). So again, I am not saying we shouldn't consider changing what happens here. I am simply saying, this shouldn't be the only way to achieve the goal of allowing pedal changes to align with notes on the top staff, because as clever as that inconsistency might be here, it won't be very discoverable. Most people will never realize the feature exists - they will try lots of other things, but likely not that. So better to also address the problem by making something people actually are likely to try (Shift+Left/Right) work as expected.