Sugestion - Write music with arrow keys for pitch and numbers for duration

• Jan 2, 2018 - 12:01

It would be perfect if we could write music like speedy entry from finale or custom write in sibelius: use arrow keys for pitch and numbers for duration. Can it be a new feature in musescore 3?
Best Regards
Nuno Silva


Comments

Having no (longer) experience with either of those programs, I find it hard to imagine using arrows for pitch to be an efficient method for note entry, directly typing the pitch seems way easier to me.

However, you might get decently close if you first use rhythm mode to enter all durations (numbers) and then you could use arrows to navigate through them (left/right) and in normal mode (non note-entry) use up/down to change their pitch.
I do encourage you to at least try out typing the note names as an entry method though (A-G) as it is by far the most efficient method once you get the hang of it.

In reply to by jeetee

I respect your thoughts about it, but I disagree. I have tried the note input with the letters but my experience is better with arrow keys. I can make the note input without looking to the score because i have this habit. I switched from Finale to Sibelius because Sibelius gives you the oportunity to work like this. I think there are many people that wishes this feature in Musescore. The notation by letters it's universal but there are thousands of people that work with latin notation: Dó, Ré, Mi, Fá, Sol, Lá and Si. It's better to look to the score and enter the note for us.

In reply to by nunomrsilva

Can you explain how you would see this feature working? I sued Finale for many years and don't remember anything like that, and I haven't seen anything like what you seem to be describing in Sibelius either. maybe I'm misunderstanding. It sounds like you are suggesteing a pretty tedious process of hitting the arrow key multiple times to enter different pitches, like C with one press, C# with 2 press, D with 3, D# with four, etc. Is that what you mean? If you, you can already do that. Just type "C" then start hitting the arrow key. But this seems like it would be unbearable. Maybe you have used some program where there was a button to repeat the previous pitch instead of starting with C? MuseScore can do this too - just type "R". Then use the arrow keys.

Anyhow, if you are not familiar with note names, other ways of entering pitches are to use the mouse, the Piano Keyboard window (press "P" to display), or a MIDI keyboard. There is also the Rhythm input method, where you first enter the rhythms for a piece then go back and specify the pitches, which can be done with the arrow keys. So lots of ways of doing things already if note names doesn't work. Also, you can redefine the keyboard shortcuts in Edit / Preferences / Shortcuts, so that instead of C, D, E, etc you would type D (for "Do"), R (for "Re"), M (for "Mi"), etc.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

I will try to explain... When we hit "N" for notation mode, we have a shadow note that goes up and down (with arrow keys). After the desired note, we press 5, 4, etc...for the desired duration. Please see the prints to try to understand. This option is available in Finale (with speedy entry) and in Sibelius, with these options i showed in the prints.
Best Regards

Attachment Size
note input.jpg 120.44 KB
note input2.jpg 10.98 KB

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