More keyboard shortcuts

• Nov 3, 2020 - 21:29

Coming from Reaper, I might have higher expectations in this area ;) But here are a few which I really feel MuseScore should have options for:

  • Open Preferences. Better yet, open to a specific preference page, like Keyboard Shortcuts.

  • Toggle between note input modes. Probably a great one for beginners, and possibly efficient for some users.

  • Toggle between different beam properties. Or a simple break/join beam key (in MuseScore would this simply be a toggle between start and middle beam?).

I'm sure I'll think of many more, but in general: more toggles, and more options for shortcuts!

Comments

• Nov 3, 2020 - 21:57

Preferences? This might be able to be improved.

Toggle between input modes already has a shortcut you can assign. Define shortcuts for all of the ones you use.

I have all beam properties in the beam properties palette assigned to a shortcut. Those are also defined by the user.

All of these shortcuts are rather easy to find using the search box at the bottom of the shortcuts tab.

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• Nov 3, 2020 - 22:07

By "toggle" I mean - one key that switches between the modes. Currently, for input modes and beams, we're able to assign a shortcut to EACH mode, but in some cases I think it would be more user-friendly to have one shortcut to cover them all.

One example that MuseScore already uses: Ctrl-Shift-V to toggle between Page View and Continuous View.

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• Nov 3, 2020 - 22:30

That makes no sense to me. There are 6 note input modes and I can't use 2 of them (Real-Time), don't usually use 1 (rhythm) other and occasionally use the other 2 (re-pitch & insert) mode so I don't see why someone would want to cycle through all of the note input modes to get to the one they want. I suspect not too many people use all of them a lot. I expect most of the time people use one input method and N to toggle it on and off is very logical.

There are 8 beam options and cycling through 6 of them to get to the 7th doesn't make sense to me either. I just select the one I want. To simplify note beaming, I use the fact that you can use 2 (up to 4) inputs to apply a shortcut. I happen to use shift+j for all of my beaming shortcuts (j means join beams to me) followed by m for middle, n for none, s for start, 1 for beam 16th sub, 3 for 32nd sub and a for auto. I use them enough that they are automatic to me and I always press 2 key combinations never more or less. This also only eliminates a single short cut (shift+j) from the list of available shortcuts but I still have a large number of key combinations I can press after shift+j if I need to assign them later.

Toggle between 2 options like continuous and page view is very logical.

Adding the option of cycling through such things wouldn't hurt me so if enough people were in favor of it and someone wanted to put in the work that would be fine.

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• Nov 3, 2020 - 22:30

Just thought of another one: shortcut to show courtesy accidental.

Currently, it seems we have to exit Note-Input mode, and click on the accidental icon.

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• Nov 3, 2020 - 22:38

You can click on the palette to apply the accidental while still in note input mode, this is what I do. Before 3.3 the shortcuts applied the accidental to the previous note rather than the next note like happens now. It was so often requested that only one note be sounded (like an F# rather than F then F#) that the toolbar and their shortcuts were changed. It would be nice if it were easy to assign shortcuts to palette items then I could go back to my old workflow. I only use the toolbar while not in note input mode now.

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• Nov 4, 2020 - 05:32

ohhh ok...I see why this is quite obvious and well-designed for the user who's using the mouse and computer keyboard to enter notes.

On the MIDI keyboard it's less intuitive. See attached gif - it just plain doesn't work.

Furthermore, with a MIDI keyboard workflow, it's very fast to have one hand on the MIDI keyboard, one hand on the computer keyboard. The more keyboard shortcuts the better! Seems currently, the only way to add a courtesy accidental is with the mouse.

I do have that plugin, I'll get more familiar with it! But sometimes it's nice to think linearly, and with keyboard shortcuts, rather than "Should I move slowly, clicking through measure by measure with this plugin, or should I let the plugin run on the whole piece, and have to proofread for unwanted accidentals later?"

Attachment Size
accidental.gif 176.11 KB

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• Nov 5, 2020 - 14:24

Good point! An "add courtesy accidental" command that figured out what accidental was needed and just added it would make the most sense, I think.

Meanwhile It's sort of possible to do this now. You can define a shortcut for "Apply current palette element" - it will just apply whatever you used last. So if the courtesy accidentals are all the same - all naturals in C, for instance, or all sharps in F# - you're good. But of course, often there will be a mix. So now you can instead use Shift+Tab to return focus to the palette, then arrow keys to select the other accidental, then Enter. Not sure if that's better, but it's something.

Hmm, speaking of plugins, you can assign shortcuts to those. So probably it would be possible to adapt the existing courtesy accidental shortcut to do what is wanted here...

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• Nov 5, 2020 - 17:23

The keyboard shortcut list is arranged in alphabetical order. But each item is listed in a way which makes searching more dificult than it should be. For instance there are a lot of completely different items that are are described with a phrase starting with 'add'. Another one is 'enable'. These items are all grouped together because they start with the verb. The item subject should come first then what you'll do with it. For instance 'Add bar numbers' should read, Bar numbers Add. Or if its a toggle 'Bar numbers- toggle on/off' You get the idea.
This isn't a deal breaker, not the highest priority, but maybe something to consider.

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• Nov 5, 2020 - 17:52

I understood that your issue is that the subject item didn't come first, implying that you know the subject you are looking for but that having the descriptions in alphabetical order made that subject difficult to find. Using the search box the position of the subject item does not matter.

But yes, a more logical grouping of actions would be helpful.

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• Nov 5, 2020 - 19:33

You may not know the exact word for what your looking for or what category it might be in so searching won't help. But reading a list of items might help you find something that would be suitable. If you have to read a list then it could be better organised.

To be fair, Musescore isn't the only one that does this, Microsoft also does it. Like I said it isn't high priority, (and I think better of the Musescore programmers than the Microsoft programmers who really should know better, spelling mistakes in dialog boxes???)

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• Nov 6, 2020 - 07:51

How about shortcuts for dynamics? I'd use some combination of shift, ctrl, p, f, m, n for everything from pp to FF.

(As someone who uses a midi keyboard for note entry, I wouldn't mind losing the "note entry" bindings for those letters)

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