Guitar Capo Setting

• Jan 11, 2020 - 11:25
Reported version
3.3
Type
Graphical (UI)
Frequency
Once
Severity
S5 - Suggestion
Reproducibility
Always
Status
active
Regression
No
Workaround
Yes
Project
MuseScore

The guitar capo feature is located in an unexpected place, i.e. it's a property of a text element. It would feel more natural/intuitive to find this in the guitar strings setup. (This is the case in both Guitar Pro and TablEdit).

I realise that staff text gives more flexibility, in that the capo setting can be changed at any point in a score, but this is not really useful in practise as the capo cannot easily be moved whilst you are playing.

Workaround: read the MS manual to remind yourself where to find the capo setting.

Comments

• Jan 11, 2020 - 11:33

It is a property of Chord Symbols (Style > Chord Symbols), not of the Chord Symbols text style (Style > Text Styles > Chord Symbols)

But it is score wide setting, should indeed better be an Instrument property, like e.g. the lead guitarist might want a different position from the rhythm guitarist.
Having it as a Strings property, like in the String Data dialog, would prevent them to get used for any non-string instrument, so not a good alternative.

I guess for backwards compatibility such an insteruments property should be an override of the old/current score wide setting.

Reply

• Jan 11, 2020 - 11:50

You can have chord symbols on a non-stringed instrument, so yes, you can notate a capo there too.
I have many scores with only vocal staves, maybe with piano staves too, but (guitar) chord symbols

Reply

• Jan 11, 2020 - 12:13

Would your vocal only scores benefit from a capo setting?

If a clarinet staff was marked with capo fret 6 would the player know what to do?

I have been learning from some of the responses to my other posts that, for the sake of intelligibility, it is usually best to stick to the accepted syntax and grammar of notation.

Reply