newbie questions

• Apr 25, 2012 - 01:24

musescore seems pretty comprehensive, yet i can't find out how to do some very simple things:
1. delete rests
2. insert a note or rest between two successive notes

Comments

• Apr 25, 2012 - 01:58

Deleting a rest doesn't in itself make sense - a rest means silence, so there is nothing to delete. Presumably, you mean to replace it with something other than silence, so the answer is, you simply replace it. No need to first delete it then insert something else - just type right over it.

As for inserting, you need to keep in mind that what you are really are doing is changing the starting time position of some or all notes that come afterwards. So the way you do that is *directly*, by cutting and pasting the notes ou wish moved from their original location to their new one, rather than *indirectly*, by adding a note and expecting the program to ove other notes for you. It is true that some newcomers to MuseScore find this surprising and thee are any number of existing threads debating the pros and cons of this. Suffice it to say, the current sustem works very well as is, based as it is on that of the most popular notation program on the world (Sibelius), but if some day someone were to extend MuseScore to also provide some sort of automatic mode that shifted notes to the right for you, I doubt anyone would complain.

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• Apr 25, 2012 - 02:53

deleting silence doesn't make sense?! :)

perhaps i am not musical enough, but to me the temporal position of a note isn't cast in stone once i put it there any more than is its pitch. i would like to be able to move a note around in time too, to the right or to the left, ideally by click-move-release - like drag and drop text editing. and/or add notes or rests before or after it.

but yes, i can workaround with cut and paste as you say, and thankfully only have to cut and paste from one bar, and not all the following bars, as bars too seem to be cast in stone. in real life, decisions stand, once time moves on, but in my imaginary world of creation, time is rubber and i can change my mind about when i want things to start or stop as well as what they are.

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• Apr 25, 2012 - 04:00

The only to delete silence is to replace it with non-silence. So as I said, simply do that. Mo need to do things indirectly - if ou want to hear a nite instead of a rest, simply enter that note.

As for time position not being cast in stone, no of course - that's why it is possible for you to move notes to different time positions, just as it is is possible to change the pitch of a note. But you have to do it - MuseScore will not chane the pitch *or* the startng position of a note just because you altered the one that came before it.

As I said, other input models are possible, and Finale - which most people find harder to use overall than Sibelius or MuseScore - does move notes automatically when you change the notes that come before. There are a number of problems with that approach that have been discussed in the previous threads on the topic, so feel free to review those, but it *is* possible. And someday, MuseScore might also implement a mode tlike this, or a mode where you can change time position using arrow keys or the like. It's open source software, so if enough people find a feature valuable. It's pretty much a given it will eventually find its way in, because someone wpwill want it enligh to implement it themselves

But for the foreseeable future, the answer is, if you want notes to be moved to a different time position, simply move them yourself. Once you get used to that way of working, anything else will likely seem unnatural in comparison.

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• Apr 25, 2012 - 04:24

thanks, yes, i'm starting to get used to it. are you one of the authors of musescore? it certainly is marvellous that gnu project puts out so much great stuff - and it's miles better than pencil, paper, rubber and more pencil and paper etc etc. i suppose the way musescore works is largely based on providing an electric pencil and eraser, which certainly makes editing easier than with lead pencil and rubber eraser. but i still feel that composing would be even easier if the software took advantage of an object-oriented model of notes, and allowed the user to move them around. That said, i never use drag and drop in text editing....!

ps i have managed to crash it every time i try to make a triplet cross a bar - perhaps it is teaching me to follow the rules by throwing a fit every time i break them!

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• Apr 25, 2012 - 06:20

No, I am not one of the developers, except in that I have contributed in my own small way by working on templates and other configuration files for jazz charts. BTW, I don't know that there is any real association between MuseScore and GNU, although of course any open source software that uses any version of the "copyleft" will have some GNU fingerprints.

Triplets crossing a bar does not officially work in 1.X as far as I know - that's something being talked abut for 2.0 but I don't know the status. If you do a search of these forums, you should find some previous discussions of workarounds where you can at least get the right look, even perhaps decent playback, if you're willing to work at it. Mostly involving messing with the "actual" time signature of a measure (in measure properties) and then possibly nudging the barline left or right).

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• Apr 25, 2012 - 21:54

It can be done but then you'd get a debate about how musically correct it is. My take is that you split the triplet so that each measure still has the correct number of beats. Attached file shows triplets across the bar:

Line 1] Split the triplet crotchets into two groups of triplet quavers.
Line 2] You could tie each pair of quavers together and it sounds OK but looks ugly
Line 3] Click on the first quaver and press 5 to turn it into a crocthet, tie quavers three and four and click on the fifth and
press 5. Then you are left with two triplet-brackets; make one invisible and stretch the other to get the appearance you desire.

Attachment Size
Temp_triplet_across_bar.mscz 2.58 KB

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• Apr 26, 2012 - 01:44

very impressive, underquark. i wonder if you can dig me out of a hole i keep falling into: i often find i want to shorten, lengthen, or insert or delete a note - and when i do, Musecore jumps in and says: "in the case, you want a rest instead of it" - but i dont! and then i cant get rid of the bloody rest except by painfully copying and pasting each note one by one to the left

there must be an easier way....

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• Apr 26, 2012 - 02:57

You don't have to copy the notes one at a time.

To move notes back in a bar

1. Select the first note
2. Hold down shift and select the last note.
3. Hit Copy
4. Hit Paste

If you want to lengthen a note without retyping the rest of the bar:-
1. If the following bar is not empty select it and hit Insert
2. Do the selection procedure in steps 1 & 2 above for the notes after the one you want to change
3. Hit copy
4. Select the empty bar
5. Hit paste
6. Make your length edit
7. Select the notes you pasted into the empty bar
8. Hit cut
9. Select the note after your edit
10. Hit paste.
11. Any overspill will now be in the empty bar - so select that and then CTRL delete it.

One caveat - there are known problems with pasting multi-voice selections particularly if they contain triplets, which no-one has yet been able to provide a step by step repetitiion for.

HTH
Michael

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• Apr 26, 2012 - 05:34

The key is to not think of it as MuseDore adding rests. Think of it as MuseScore trying to keep all sibsequent notes in their original time positions. It assumes a change to one note shouldn't affect others, and indeed, at least half the time, that will turn out to be true, it is only in the cases where this is not true - where you *do* want the sbsequent notes to change - that you need to take any action at all. And in those cases, as decribed, simlly select the range of notes you want to move, then cut and paste them to the new location.

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