How to move notes

• Mar 24, 2016 - 16:38

I've been editing a score I am composing for a school assessment and in the playback thought that one section should be shorter, so I changed the length of the note and rests appeared. I then tried to drag the note that directly followed it to replace the rests and then change the lengths so it didn't delete the following notes, but it just changes where the note is on the stave rather than moving it backwards a step. I tried the "shift back arrow" thing shown in the hand book but it doesn't work. It is going to take me hours if I have to go through and rewrite absolutely everything to see how the new note lengths work out. Anyone help?


Comments

Notes are not "movable" in the manner you expect.

It's a bit hard to understand, but, if you mean that you want to change a section to where 1/2 notes are 1/4 notes etc., you will most likely have to rewrite the section, actually very quick if you become comfortable with using the computer keyboard for entry. Although I seem to remember a plug-in which I cannot find now that tried to automate this .....

A look through this may help you if you haven't found the time yet: https://musescore.org/en/handbook

Also keep in mind that in concept, there is no such thing as 'moving a rest'. A rest is the filler thing when no notes should be played.
MuseScore at all times tries to impact what you've written in a minimal way. That's why a rest appears to fill the gap after you've shortened a note rather than you'd see shifts in notation.

If you want to move notes, the correct approach is to cut them where they are now and copy them over at the location you wish them to move to. The paste will overwrite what's there, whether it be notes or rests.

Of course if you indeed want to shorten all notes within a section, then yes, for the moment a rewrite is required (or the use of those plugins if they happen to work in your situation). There is a wish that this feature becomes built-in to MuseScore eventually; perhaps one of the Google-Summer-of-Code students will even implement it this year.

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