Note Entry to Chord Symbol to Note Entry

• Aug 22, 2020 - 21:48

Situation:

1) Input some 16th notes
2) Add a chord-text
3) Continue note input, so press escape, and the chord-text is selected
4) Now, either need to Alt-Right or press N for note entry some more

If the user presses Note-Entry, MS goes into a default quarter-note duration. This seems bogus and the duration toggle should reflect the note-duration related to the anchored ChordRest to the chord-text. The user shouldn't have to re-calibrate into 16th notes for example. Any good reason why MS loses the previous duration and selects a quarter-note when clearly the note selected is a 16th?

Ironically,in the above scenario, if the user escaped from note entry and re-entered note-entry, the toggle will go to 16th notes! That's to say, escaping from a non-ChordRest element and then entering into Note-Entry seems to "default" while doing so while selecting a ChordRest ends up on the current ChordRest's duration. I think this should be fixed up to be the same both ways, and it would probably be an easy fix. It sure would help the flow of inserting chord texts and continuing note entry imo.


Comments

Chord symbols don't have duration, and they are not actually attached to notes but are freestanding text. So there really is no general way this could be done. I guess we could special case situations where there does just happen to be a note the same voice / staff and guess you might happen want to enter a note of the same duration, but that seems a guess just as likely to be wrong as right. It only happens to be right if the next note you plan to enter happens to be the same duration as the previous.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

Interesting. I see now that my observation is more generic. Merely escaping so that nothing is selected in score and then entering into Note Entry will perform the same style of behavior: default into quarter-duration rather than to select the duration of the current note/rest. Note selection within Note Entry doesn't change the duration toggle, only note selection outside of it does, and I think that's what I'm experiencing that feels a little off under some circumstances (like with going back to a note from a chord text all with the keyboard).

If a user is inserting a run of some same durationed notes, inserts a chord symbol, and then expects to continue with the same duration afterward via the keyboard, one way is to press escape after typing in the chord, then go into Note Entry + right to continue, but then the duration switches to a quarter-duration. Here, if the user presses Escape again, the duration is updated outside of note-entry to the current ChordRest duration. So in a sense my "work around" is to press 'N' from the chord symbol, then Escape, then 'N' again all quickly and then the duration will reflect the ChordRest duration there (sounds weird but it's the fastest thing so far I've experienced). Of course, just updating the duration manually is probably the most standard thing to do. Even an Alt-Right though will switch to the next note/rest, and that means that if there's no note there, the rest will be selected and it probably won't be the same duration as the 'run' of said same duration notes, which again would require another manual update of the duration toggle.

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