Articulation Markings Not Merging Together

• Aug 1, 2023 - 20:47

Previously you could both combine/un-combine articulation markings and they would merge into one entity, however this currently is no longer the case.

Attachment Size
Articulation Marking Bug.mscz 15.77 KB

Comments

This is not a bug but a new feature - MuseScore now manages the layout for these articulations independently, to better handle the case where they can be displayed together vs not.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

Thank you for your reply. Is it possible for in a future update to have the ability to enable/disable this? I mainly found the previous way they worked very useful from a speed perspective as it was a lot easier to add/subtract markings(On a side note, the already combined markings in the palette can still subtract one of the markings, but then become separate entities if you add them back). I'm attaching an instance below of why I feel this is a bit of a problem. On the top staff the accented-tenuto spacing isn't an issue, but on the bottom staff they are separated in a way that doesn't look right. This means that in order to now change this, I now have to delete both markings and add the new one. Again, I can see the need for not always wanting them joined together, but an option for disabling/enabling this I feel could be helpful.

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Screenshot 2023-08-01 at 4.02.45 PM.png 26.54 KB

In reply to by George Buccino

Can you explain your special use case in more detail? Seems that two keystrokes to add is the same whether they get combined or not. and it's much simpler to remove them individually now that they aren't combined.

As for the spacing, better to attach your actual score instead of a picture. But overall, it's exactly to be able to do correct things like what is shown in the second picture that this improvement was made. The former method would have forced the aritculations together inappropriately/unnecessarily in cases like this, thus also forcing bad tie & slur layout etc.

If for whatever reason you decide you want to force the articualtions together anyhow, just add the combined version directly from the palette. but in general, that's the wrong answer.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

In the attached file below shows two examples, the first one having the non-combined articulation markings(mm1), and the second having combined ones(mm2). From the perspective of a player trying to read this, I strongly feel that the second one(mm2) is a lot easier to sight-read as the articulation markings are directly together; in the first one(mm1) they are in separate places which takes more time to look at and understand.

Aside from this, as we could go back and forth as to which one is more legible, the ability to create shortcuts for other articulation markings in the palette would be nice as it would save time when using the software. Say if in the attached file in measure 3 I wanted to add a tenuto marking to the accent but wanted them to be joined together rather than separated, I can use a shortcut to get rid of the accent, but now have to use the mouse to select this marking in the palette. While this may not take up a lot of time in one instance, if you have to do this for an entire score(which I'm now currently doing for all of my unfinished scores) the time it takes can start to add up very quickly.

In addition, would be very nice as an option for the software to use the previous articulation system as a preference that you could select within the application.

Attachment Size
Articulation Marking Comparison.mscz 17.23 KB

In reply to by George Buccino

Ability to create shortcuts for individual palette items has long been on the list of wants, so hopefully that happens someday.

But anyhow, the person who designed this new feature is a professional engraver who worked for a very well-known publisher, and Elaine Gould also shows examples of this in Behind Bars (eg, p. 119-120) that specifically show when and why to separate the markings, just as MuseScore does. So it's not just me saying it's usually the better result :-). But feel free to open an issue on GitHub if you believe there are specific cases where the defaults something different from how other professional engravers would do things.

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