MuseScore 3.2.4 crashing on start up, Windows 7 Professional, 64 bit, guitar tab use only

• Mar 4, 2020 - 11:42

Hi,

I've very new to MuseScore, had it a week, in which time it's been very stable, however, yesterday afternoon it crashed. Immediately I tried to log in again and got the the 'previous session quit unexpectedly' message and clicking either option (restore etc) it opened for a split second and crashed again.

Double clicking a score in my MS3 documents folder had the same effect, previous session message, either option, crashed again.

I followed the info found here https://musescore.org/en/node/292084 but the -w and -s options run from the cmd line made no difference, so I tried the -R option and this seems to have solved the problem and allows me back into the software.

I've disabled the 'start centre' as a precaution.

Unsurprisingly I've lost my custom palette which has taken me days to get how I want, with symbols that work for me :(

I don't know if this is a completely pointless post as I'm back up and working and I'm aware there's already quite a long thread about issues getting into MS3 but as I guess everyone's set up maybe slightly different, I didn't want to jump in on that.

At the time of the initial crash, I was moving a line symbol I had resized and angled in a certain way, from my score into my custom palette with the shift and ctrl keys.

Google Chrome, MS Word and MS Outlook were open at the same time.

I'd also been trying to get some custom characters into my custom palette for use with natural and pinched harmonics as some of the suggested work arounds on the forum with various brackets etc didn't look right to me. I'd Googled a list of the alt+keypad special characters available in Windows but I couldn't get several of the codes to work when keying them directly into a stave text box, so I keyed them into a Word document first and then cut and pasted them across and, once in the score, copied them into my custom palette.

Just to give a little background about what I'm trying to achieve with MS3 - I'm not a classically trained musician and cannot read music nor understand music theory etc, but I'm a guitarist of 40yrs standing, so I'm using MS3 purely as a guitar tabulature editor. I do teach occasionally and it would help massively to be able to have my tabs properly written out and easily reprintable.

I basically want to write tab completely freeform without any constraints of time signatures, adding bar lines ad hoc etc. I have no use for the playback capabilities of MS3 either and to that end, I have it set up in what I'm sure is an usual manner, namely I've got the time signature set at 35/4 (with all bar lines hidden) to allow me to write fret numbers at will, aiming roughly for 35 characters per complete 'stave' of tab. I experimented with a time signature of 60/4 at first, adding fret numbers etc until the tab line was full but individual fret numbers were so bunched up it was hard to read when printed.

I have experimented with other editors in that past, even forking out for Guitar Pro 5 but the problem is, all of them are still linked, understandably, with stave / notation - yes in GP you can hide the stave but then strange things happen with the remaining tab line. Anyway, after a weeks use, MS3 seems to fit (or can be made to fit) what I want, it's not perfect (for me) but I guess I'm trying to make it do something that, perhaps, it was never designed to do so I'll have to live with that.

As I mentioned above, this maybe a completely pointless post so Mods please feel free to delete but I thought it might be of use to describe what I was doing at the time of the crash.

Actually, one question, going forward, is there a way I can backup my custom palette so I don't have to rebuild it if I have another crash ?

Many thanks for an excellent piece of software which I have enjoyed using this past week.

Nick

Comments

• Mar 4, 2020 - 14:28

...is there a way I can backup my custom palette so I don't have to rebuild it if I have another crash ?

In Windows OS...
The unedited 'Basic' and 'Advanced' workspaces, reside in the MuseScore installation folder.
If you have edited either of those or created your own - for example, 'Kustom' workspace - look in AppData, which you may have to "unhide". Then Local -> MuseScore -> MuseScore3

workspaces.png

Custom palettes reside in AppData -> Local -> MuseScore -> MuseScore3 as .mpal files.
mpal.png

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• Mar 4, 2020 - 14:50

Hi Jm6stringer,

Many thanks for the detailed info.

I've literally just started to rebuild my custom palette with a view to backing it up and would you believe MS has crashed again at exactly the same point as yesterday.

My last two actions were :-

...in Word, I created a diamond symbol using alt + 9826 and then copied and pasted the symbol into a stave text box, clicked out of the text box, clicked back on the symbol and successfully copied (dragged) the symbol into my custom palette whilst holding down ctrl + shift

...I then inserted a straight line from the Lines palette, shortened the length and amended the angle so it could be used as a 'slide up from nothing' symbol, clicked on it, held down ctrl + shift and just as I reached my custom palette box, the software crashed. I should mention that I used this exact same process for the reverse symbol (a slide off) and the software never crashed once.

Have I broken something or am I unlucky ? :|

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• Mar 4, 2020 - 15:02

Can you attach a score containing this line, so we can try?

Meanwhile, I suspect there are easier ways to do what you want. For example, there are already a variety of slide symbols in the arpeggios & glissandos palette. And any symbol you can pasting in from Word should be directly accessible from the Special Characters palette (press F2 to display while editing text), or perhaps easier, from the Symbols palette (press "Z") which doesn't require use of text but does limit you to the preset sizes.

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• Mar 4, 2020 - 16:36

Hi Marc,

Apologises, I missed this reply, I'm used to forum posts appearing chronologically, I hadn't realised you could reply to individual posts as it were.

I have tried the slide symbols in the glissandos palette but maybe it's me being a bit OCD about it, they're not the right kinda angle or length imo, maybe ok for slides between to notes but not when you're sliding up from nothing to a single note or sliding off to nothing from a single note. I also checked the special characters but couldn't find a usable diamond or triangle symbol, moving over via Word allows me to resize them.

As I mention at the bottom of this thread, things have got weirder, inasmuch as running -R or -w allows me back in but now all palettes are minimised against the left hand edge and trying to drag them out constantly crashes the software.

I attach what I've been working on - in the second tab line, the 11 on the 3rd string should have a slide symbol in front of it similar to the first note of the piece, only the other way around of course.

If I can clarify anything else, please shout.

Many thanks.

Nick

Attachment Size
Comfortably Numb.mscz 7.07 KB

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• Mar 4, 2020 - 16:54

...actually, having just tried your tip of pressing F2 whilst editing, it seems to bring up more options of special characters and I can find a diamond and triangle that I can probably use. Previously, before trying the Word route, I'd looked at the special symbols via the master palette and couldn't find what I wanted.

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• Mar 4, 2020 - 17:04

The symbol you have after the first note is one of the ones I mentioned. It's not a "line" (those are on the "lines palette), it's a "fall", or a "slide out". To add the slide in, just choose either the "Slide in above" or "Slide in below".

Maybe post another score that also shows the diamond or whatever other special symbols you are having trouble finding, and we can show you the supported way to do all of these things. I guarantee there are diamonds in the palettes I mentioned. If it's in in the Unicode standard - which it pretty much has to be if you are able to paste it into MuseScore - then it's in the palette as well, because it shows literally every Unicode character. And adding via Special Characters is exactly as resizable as any other text.

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• Mar 4, 2020 - 22:28

I don't doubt it's possible to add a line, I'm saying, that is not waht you actually did in the file you oploaded. Do as I suggested, click it and look at the status bar. Then compare with what happens when you add from the Lines palette.

While adding a line from the palette is *possible, it won't actually do what you want. The customization you do to the position and size will not be preserved properly upon any change to the formatting of the score, because again, that's just not how these lines were designed to be used. The slide out element you used in the score you attached is absolutely the right choice for this, anything else will lead to problems, guaranteed.

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• Mar 4, 2020 - 23:59

Seems we're at something of an impasse then, I can categorically tell you that I did not use a slide symbol from the glissando palette in the score I uploaded this afternoon, both the symbols after the first note and last note of that first line of tab were created by modifying a straight line from the line palette.

When I was writing the tab I did initially try a slide symbol from the glissando palette but the angle was wrong, which lead me to investigate another way of creating a sloped line.

I now realise, having spent the evening experimenting, that had I persevered with the proper slide symbol, once on the score, I can amend the length and angle anyway, so going forward, yes, I will use them.

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• Mar 5, 2020 - 00:13

Another thought...having got my modified line to my liking, I dragged it into my custom palette for future use.

The next time I used that symbol, I just clicked on it in my custom palette, so are the differences you are seeing because one symbol was created by modifying a line 'in the score' and dragged to position 'in the the score' and another was created by clicking the custom length line stored in my custom palette ?

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• Mar 5, 2020 - 00:16

No. Please try what I suggested: click the different versions of the symbol in your score to see how differently the status bar reports them. To me, it is obvious what happened is during your experimentation with the slides, you hit save at some point, intentionally or not, and that’s the version you attached. If you repeat the whole process starting from creating a new custom palette symbol from an actual line rather than a slide, you’ll see it remains a line.

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• Mar 5, 2020 - 11:02

Marc, I compared them in the status bar the first time you mentioned it.

This morning I've tried to recreate everything I did and I cannot get the software to crash at the same point it did yesterday morning, although I guess it's not exactly a level playing field as I'm working with a fresh custom palette and custom workspace.

As I said last night, now knowing that I can modify a slide symbol from the glissandi palette to a length and angle I prefer, I will use that going forward.

If I may, I'd also like to ask you a question regarding your suggestion about writing meterless tab in 4/4. I've been experimenting with that and the first thing I've noticed is that with 'display barlines' switched off, the software is putting a gap between two fret numbers at the point it would expect a bar line to show. I know that makes perfect sense because ordinarily, of course, you're gonna have barlines showing but is there a setting or preference I can tweak somewhere so the fret numbers are evenly spaced ?

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• Mar 5, 2020 - 15:21

To be clear: a true line will report itself as "Text Line" (or other more specific type, like "Pedal") on the status bar and will list both a start and end position (bar and beat); a slide will report as "Chord Line" and report a single position only.

Regarding the gaps around the barlines, you could probably eliminate them by setting appropriately small values for the note left margin or note to barline distance in Format / Style / Measure, but actually, what I had in mind was entering notes this way at first, then when you decide how many notes you actually on a line, using join and/or split as needed to make it so. After all, it won't always be exactly 35 notes you want, it may depend on the phrasing of the song (why break the line in a middle of a single riff?) but also depends on such things as the presence of slides, lyrics, chord symbols, even fret marks with double digits, etc.

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• Mar 4, 2020 - 14:49

The full workspace is saved automatically as shown above, but you can also save individual palettes manually by right-clicking them and using Save Palette.

My understanding is that using -R should not have actually deleted your workspace but merely reset your preferences. At least, if you had created a custom workspace. If on the other hand you were working within one of the standard workspaces but had customized (so it read "Basic edited" or "Advanced edited" then I guess that would have been reverted. Still, could be useful to scour those folders to see if any remnants remain.

BTW, regarding writing meterless tab - the meter shouldn't actually hurt anything even if you plan to ignore it, and having the music broken up into discrete chunks will allow MuseScore to "word wrap" it better. So you might consider just keeping 4/4 or whatever. You can disable barlines in staff properties. You can also use the commands in Tools / Measure to split and join measures as desired, so you don't need to guess ahead of time how many notes you might want per line.

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• Mar 4, 2020 - 14:57

Hi Marc,

Many thanks for your reply also, I think we must've posted at almost the same time.

I think (not 100% sure) I had created a custom workspace but being as I'm so new with this, it's entirely possible I had edited either the basic or advanced standard workspace.

Thanks also for the info re meterless tab I will definitely experiment with this.

As you may see above, in trying to rebuild my custom palette, the software has crashed again, any thoughts on this ?

Nick

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• Mar 4, 2020 - 16:06

Hmmm, something is now a bit weird.

After the second crash this afternoon, running either the -R or -w options at the cmd line will allow me back in, I can then open up a score, however, all the palettes are minimised and pushed back against the left hand side of the window, as soon as I grab the line to expand them, MS crashes, everytime.

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