Synchronized Note Input

• May 5, 2011 - 08:41

Hey everyone,

I'm currently writing a lot of sheet music for choirs. I have a midi keyboard to do this, but the part that really takes the most time is manually switching the note durations on the computer keyboard. For choir scores this is often redundant as well as I have already been entering (sometimes exactly) the rhythm in another voice.
synchronotes
So I was thinking about a note entry mode where you can just play the notes and it derives the durations from another voice. I think that could really save me hours of time, actually.

Now, how to do it? I need your help as musescore developers to get started. I can

* write C++
* program and design with Qt

but I'am

* not very comfortable with javascript
* not very much interested in spending lots of time to get a picture how this great but complex software works.

So Javascript seemed to be the lesser evil and I thought about writing a plug in. I imagine it like this: You select the plug in, and a window pops up showing the following controls:

- button: set current note as starting point
- checkbox: synchronize on/off

So the idea is to maintain a second "sync" cursor object in another "source" voice that mimics all the actual cursor movements during note input. That means if the cursor moves right for the duration of a semi-quaver the sync cursors moves that much as well.
Then, whenever a midi event is coming in and the note input mode is active and the synchronize checkbox is checked (need to read all these somehow) I just grab the duration of the note under the sync cursor and alter the duration of the note that was send by the midi keyboard.
As well I'd like to have the cursor moving along if the synchronize mode is off. So I may enter two quavers of differing rhythm for example but when I finish the differing passage I can stick to the rhythm of the source voice again.
Having the offset would be great if you have some sort of canon to write.
It would be quite handy to render the sync cursor in a different color as well!

It sounds like a reasonable task to me but I really don't want to spend hours of reading manuals and writing code just do discover that you can't react to midi events or something like that. So thanks a lot for your reply,

greets,
carl

Attachment Size
synchro.jpg 35.39 KB

Comments

That's a cool idea, but you should be aware 2.0 looks like it already has something very much like this: "repitch mode". I think you would first copy one of the other parts to your current part, then click th first note you want to change and just start entering new pitches.

As for doing this as a plug-in, there's just no way to hook into note entry mode that I know of, but if Qt allows you to access MIDI input, I suppose there is a chance of this working. Generally, though, creating new notes is pretty iffy in plug-ins, I find.

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