Large Time Signatures, Score Condensing/Single Orchestral Percussion Instruments on the Individual Stave lines in a 5-line Staff, and Large Measure Numbers at Bottom of Score

• Sep 10, 2023 - 00:46

As full orchestra scores often have condensed melodic/percussion instruments, measures at the bottom, and large time signatures, I feel that adding features to create these would be extremely helpful.

  1. Condensing similar instruments on a score allows for less clutter on the pages (such as Oboe 1 & 2 being on the same staff, with the numbers being sub/super-text, see attached image (1) below for reference). Although this can kind of be done using voices, It's not very good when it comes to instances where they might split apart again(or at the beginning of a score) nor displaying the numbers of both instruments.

  2. For measure numbers at the bottom, Musescore doesn't have a current setting to be able to do this. There is a current workaround to this by putting them on the top stave, disabling auto place, and dragging them to the bottom, but it takes a fair amount of time depending on the length/number of pages of the score.

  3. Large time signatures are really helpful for conductors as well as ease of read due to the size of a score(see attached image (2)). Thankfully, there currently is a plugin for large time signatures, however it doesn't show/resize any courtesy ones; if the first measure of the next page has a TS change, it should appear at the end of the last measure on the previous(see attached score file (3)). and it also puts them onto the top instrument part which is a nightmare to clean up(best work around is creating two copies of the score, however that means edits to one have to be applied to the other, which is easily susceptible to human error).

  4. In addition to condensing melodic instruments, being able to combine up to five percussion instruments into one staff would be incredibly useful, with also being able to have the names of each instrument all displayed on the left side of the staff(See attached image (4), not an exact example of what I'm trying to describe but it was the closest I could find in MOLA).

As an avid Musescore user since 2.0, I feel that in its current state is very close to outperforming its competitors, and these 4 things would make it that much closer. Also, props to whoever made the harp pedal diagram and accent organization systems in the most recent update, they are fantastic additions and work great!


Comments

OK, so I'm just trying to follow.
1. Does 'Implode' do this?
2. What's wrong with top and bottom?
3. I know there are people that ask for this. Personally I find them distracting.
4. I think you can create staves with multiple percussion parts. You just can't get playback.

I learned long ago that when it comes to notation software, I sometimes needed two scores. One for playback and another to hand to real players. Of course, your requests would make some things easier.

In reply to by bobjp

  1. Implode does do this with the notes, but it doesn't do this with actually merging the two staves Example; You have to manually hide the bars in the Flute 2 part, and it doesn't add the number 2 to the name of the Flute 1 Part. I believe both Sibelius and Dorico have a button that does this when selecting two staves.

  2. I'm a little confused as to what you mean by "top and bottom." In a full score, currently you can only display the measure numbers on the bottom of the flute 1 part, or on the bottom of all the staves. You can't select it to be only displayed at the bottom of the score, nor can you even have it be solely displayed by the contrabass.

  3. The main reason I ask for this is when submitting scores for contests or commissions, as often guideline is that they must have large time signatures on the score. Not being able to do this easily nor entirely perfectly makes it much harder to meet this requirement.

  4. Yes, that is what I'm currently doing. Is there a way to get the names of the instruments display in a stacked order next to the staves? It would be nice to have a editable percussion set(like the editable drumset) that would use the sounds of the concert percussion instruments. (If there actually is a way to do this already with the drumset please lead me in the direction to where I can learn to do that)

In reply to by George Buccino

Thanks for the clarification.

  1. My copy of Sibelius (7.5) does this: It will merge two lines together just like MU4 does. Or it will create a new line with both parts, and rename the line. In the first case you do have to rename the merged staff and get rid of the original second part. Just like MU4. In the second case you have both original parts to get rid of.
  2. I understand.

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