Weird Note placement issues
I don't know if these issues are by design or some glitch/bug.
If I place a chord on a staff and I want to cut ONE note of that chord (the lowest note) to place on a different instrument's staff, paste does not work. It is non-functional. It will let you cut the note, but not paste it. Is that by design?
Related to this is another glitch. Rather than cut/paste, I wanted to just switch the staff of that note. You can Ctrl+Shift+down and it will switch a note to the staff below. This function is mostly used to do cross-staffing but can be used if you just wanna switch the staff of a note. This function does not work if the staff below is a different instrument or if the note is in a chord. This glitch is not a big deal, I kind-of understand why it doesn't work, but it would be a nice convenience if it did.
This second issue is even weirder to describe. Here are the steps I did.
1. I place a whole note in a measure and a half note in the next measure on a 4/4 time signature. Therefore, I still have half the measure to fill in the second measure.
2. I wanna put the same note as the whole note as a half note in the second measure.
3. Being lazy, I highlight the measure that has the whole note, hit the half-note button (on the menu) and, Viola! it switches the whole note to a half note.
4. I copy that half-note (ctrl + c), highlight the half rest in the second measure and paste it (ctrl+v). Viola! it pastes it.
5. I highlight the first measure and hit the whole note button (on the menu).
6. It switches the half-note to a whole note, but oddly, it also deletes the first half-note in the second measure.
7. If I click on the half-note to switch it to a whole note (rather than click on the measure), it switches it without deleting the half-note in the next measure.
Can't really see why this would be by design. You may ask, "who, the hell, does this kind of thing?" I do. LOL
Comments
On the first issues. Selecting a single note from a chord is considered a list selection (even though the list is one note). List selections can but cut but cannot be pasted. Try it on two notes that are not continuous. I know there are people who rely on this as a way to delete notes they've posted questions here in the forums.
For cross staff notation to work, the staves must be on the same instrument, listed as one instrument in the instruments dialog with two or more staves. It won't work if there are two instruments even if they are both identical. This is by design and cross staff notation with dissimilar instruments doesn't happen in normal scores. I never claim that you will never see something printed, but it just isn't normal.
The issue you numbered your steps on is something you need to be aware of and is a side effect of what people begged for for years before it was possible. At one time, if you selected more than one note in any way, changing duration did nothing. Now, if you select several notes and rests and change durations, MuseScore will allow it. If they're consecutive as in the situation you are describing you see the results of your action. In this case it sounds like the 1/2 rest is turned into a whole rest, then the 1/2 note is turned into a whole note. Since MuseScore doesn't insert beats in a case like this, it had to find an order to do them in.
The main use for this feature is that you can now select all the notes on the same beat of a measure in a symphony and change all of their durations with a single key press. I've used it for this purpose because I wrote a measure wrong and pasted it 10 times before I realized my mistake. Select>more... in in the latest release has made this even easier to fix. If you goal is to change a 1/2 note followed by a 1/2 rest into whole notes and rests, there are now (since around version 2.3) the Paste half/double duration in the edit menu.
In reply to On the first issues… by mike320
Thank you for the clarification. I understand now and I would not want this feature to change. I like being able to highlight more than one note/rest and change them at once.