To move or adjust notes horizontally

• Oct 5, 2018 - 17:51

Can't I move notes to the left or right?


Comments

To be perfectly clear, what Shoichi mentions moves the notes/chord only visually.
To change the actual beat-position of notes, the general way is to use cut-and-paste. There are some shortcuts that only work if two adjacent notes/rests have the exact same duration, but no generic shift-contents command.

To perhaps clarify a little further:

In general, it should not normally be necessary to move a note left or right - the default spacing produced by MuseScore should be correct the vast majority of the time. The Inspector can indeed be used for those unusual specific situations where it is necessary to override this (e.g., cases involving three or more simultaneous voices on the same staff). But it's probably best to attach here your score here before resorting to this, to make sure there isn't some other misunderstanding about how this all works.

And as mentioned, if you actually mean you want to move a note not just horizontally in space on the page but actually move it to a different beat in time, then cut & paste is the quick and simple way to do this. This works beautifully not just for a single note, but for multiple notes at once or indeed passages of any length across any number of staves.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

Wow! I can confirm that this works a dream! (However, I think there used to be problems in earlier versions with large numbers of notes).

I have a set of MIDI files for hymn tunes which occasionally I need to edit. I discovered one of them had some silent beats followed by an introduction, which commenced correctly on the upbeat. Unfortunately, the rests between introduction and first verse left the tune commencing on the bar. This is not a problem when using the file in a service, but causes some confusion when trying to edit the piece! I've imported the file into MS and corrected the error by cutting and pasting the multiple verses. I can now edit to my heart's content.

Do you still have an unanswered question? Please log in first to post your question.