Manual adjustments to various symbols not propagated to parts
Usual caveat, I searched for similar reports and I may have missed them. This applies to v2.02 and v2.03.
I recently ran into some problems with transposed parts – adjustments to the parts were changing the score. I thought that this was probably by design but on trying to find whether a “wish” had been filed I found https://musescore.org/en/node/46211 with a statement by Marc Sabatella “The spellings in concert and transposed modes are maintained separately, so you can have it spelled however you like in either mode.” (February 4, 2015)
This would be ideal – the spellings should be associated with the transposition and not with part/score. Unfortunately I cannot find how to do this. M.S. says that you can select “a note or notes and pressing "J" to choose a different enharmonic spelling”, (as described in the manual) which works fine except that whether you do it in the part or the score, and whether you do it in concert pitch or transposed, all combinations of part / score, concert pitch and transposed are affected – at least when I try it.
Other little problem is that changing the note stem direction has exactly the same effect – it should be possible to set stem direction in a transposed part while leaving the stem as was in concert pitch parts or score.
The score Test_part_layout1.mscz shows this problem in measures 1 and 2 for a little chromatic sequence in B flat with spelling matching the key signature. File/Parts.../New All, creates the part. It should be displayed transposed and the spelling is not very good. Select the B flat in the second measure and press J. We now have a better spelling for the key of G, but this changed spelling appears in concert pitch as well as in the score which is contrary to the declared behavior.
Is this a “feature” that has appeared since Feb 2015? M.S. seems convinced that it worked before that date.
Furthermore, the note stem direction is changed in the transposed part (following the standard rules) and changing it back to “down”, to make the part more readable, changes the direction in the concert pitch part and score as well, making it very ugly. This might be design, in which case I should file a feature request.
Second problem
I have included this here as it may be related, but maybe not, or it might be a feature request.
In https://musescore.org/en/node/52141, Marc Sabatella stated “had you done all your manual adjustments *before* generating the parts, the manual adjustments *would* have been copied to the parts”. (March 23, 2015).
What may have been true back then is certainly not true now. Currently, all the adjustments to avoid collisions in the score have to be repeated for each part rather than just readjusting beginning and end of line artifacts.
In the attached score there are some examples of notation in both default (colliding hairpin, for example) and adjusted layout.
The position of articulations is inherited in the part. But the layouts of stave text, tempo, dynamics, voltas and crescendos, which are the most likely to collide with other elements, are not inherited. Also the size and position of accidentals are not inherited, which is more serious. Stretch is not inherited which would seem to be normal, but this is currently the only way of making a measure wider (here to emphasize the crescendo) so a “minimum width” in the “bar properties” might be useful.
Of course, I might be wrong - it has been known
Tiny Trouble
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
| Test_part_layout1.mscz | 6.3 KB |
Comments
1) *Most* of the time of course enharmonic spellings should be consistent between concert and transposed pitches, so all default behaviors - including the "J" command - support this. However, since there do exist specific exceptions where you want to change the enharmonic spelling for one mode but not the other, you can use the *Shift+J" command to toggle spelling in the current mode only.
2) "Some" manual adjustments are inherited when you generate parts, but indeed, not all. In the end it normally won't help you much to have the adjustments inherited, because the layout is normally so different between score and part that you will need *different* adjustments in each. But I was under the impression that this did work for text at least, so I'm surprised to see that it currently doesn't, and I'd consider that a bug. Not sure what you meanm about accidentals - it is not normal at all to be changing their size or position, so I'm not sure why you'd consider that "more serious" than the kind of adjustment that are actually common.
BTW, in the future, it is best to open separate reports for separate issues, so we can can close them individually. Luckily, #1 is not actually a bug, so we don't need to do anything about that.
1) I think the right combination is Ctrl+J and not Shift+J but I could not find it documented so I put up a proposal for the manual https://musescore.org/en/node/110646 which received 100% (1 out of 1) so I have now updated the manual (and raised a feature request https://musescore.org/en/node/110651 for a minor extension.)
2) "because the layout is normally so different between score and part that you will need *different* adjustments in each." I would dispute this, apart from the case of different transpositions for the same instrument (trombone, euphonium, tuba) all the adjustments for dynamics, hairpins, and even slurs will be the same in the part and the score - or should be.
"Not sure what you mean about accidentals - it is not normal at all to be changing their size or position" Just testing. But if for some reason a small accidental is specified in the score (I have seen this for courtesy accidentals) then surely the should be small in the parts as well. No?
However, apart from the text, as the issue would seem to be a feature request rather than a bug report, I have raised a feature request https://musescore.org/en/node/110741
BTW "it is best to open separate reports for separate issues"
Mea Culpa (I thought they might be the same - should have raised two and cross referenced them)
Tony Trouble
It totally depends on your reason for doing an adjustment. It's very common for scores and parts to have different numbers of measure per line. If the score has only four measures on a line (because another part has lots of sixteenth notes) but the part has eight (because it has only quarter and half notes), then there might be markings that collide on the part but don't in the score. Vice versa is the score has more measures per line (because it is set in smaller type). It's going to very common for different adjustments to be needed for reasons like this. Not to mention adjustments made to the clarinet staff in the score in order to avoid some marking that is below the oboe staff - this obviously won't be an issue at all in the parts. And so on.
As for accidentals, I can't think of any specific real world reason to want a small accidental (corutesy accidentals are *not* normally notated that way). So it's hard to guess whether any reason that might come up would require the same adjustment to be made elsewhere. In any case, it's far easier to force the same adjustment to be made in both score and parts than to force it *not* to, so when in doubt, it is better to err on the side of *not* linking.