Brackets on accidental; courtesy accidentals in general

• Mar 14, 2025 - 18:41

First, I LOVE the improvements in note entry to 4.5, especially being able to add augmentation dots after note entry. Thank you very much.

I added a shortcut for adding a bracket to a courtesy accidental. This seems to default to square brackets. Is there a way to change this default to curved brackets?

Even with this improvement, I still have to enter the courtesy accidental with a keystroke, and then leave note input mode to select the accidental and apply the parentheses. I know there is a plugin to do this, but it would be nice if a single keystroke would enter the accidental, in curved brackets. (Like the P key in Finale!)

Should this post be in feature requests, instead?


Comments

Still confused, I'm afraid. On the plugins page, there are two different plugins for courtesy (or cautionary) accidentals, and MSS 4.5 came with a plugin preinstalled. I've been fooling around so much, I don't know which is the "real" one.

So, two questions: Could someone please let me know which is the only one I should have, and does it work properly on your computer, recognizing and applying the accidental in parentheses in the next measure? It seems to be somewhat hit-and-miss, sometimes doing nothing, sometimes adding them without the parentheses, and sometimes working just as it should.

Thanks!

In reply to by bobjp

Not so. I just went up and tried it, just to be sure my memory was correct. In Simple Entry, you enter the note, and tap P. This cycles the accidental with, and then without, the courtesy accidental. Yes, if you don't do it at the time, and have to go back, then it's click on the note, and then P.

There's a plugin, but I never used it. Too many clicks.

In reply to by mikey12045

I think we may be talking about two different things.

In Finale while in note entry mode, you enter a note. Is the accidental a separate entry? Then you hit P and it adds the marks around the accidental?

And I made a Mistake in my last post. In MU4, SHIFT+9. Not P. But you have to leave input mode.

In reply to by mikey12045

You ask which plugin you should have. Personally, I only occasionally use the one that comes with 4.5.2. Try the two, compare them and draw your own conclusions (is one "better" than the other?). No one will do this comparison for you, since, apparently, this is not a topic that appears often on the forums (from memory, anyway).
Since it's an important part of your practice, you're really in the best position to do this comparison work, and what's more, you'll be making yourself useful to the community :)

NB: when you make this kind of bug report: https://musescore.org/en/node/379818, you're in the wrong place on this forum (it's useful, but purely informal here).
You need to do it "officially" on Github, here: https://github.com/musescore/MuseScore/issues

In reply to by cadiz1

I've loaded one from the plugins page, and now I'm not sure which one is which. My bad, no question. Could you please tell me which one you currently have, which I'm sure is the default from MSS?

To your NB: I know that, but I want to be sure that I'm complaining about the right thing. And they say to be sure that you've checked the forum, first. And even then, they want you to ask, before posting to github.

In reply to by mikey12045

"Could you please tell me which one you currently have, which I'm sure is the default from MSS?"
This one: https://musescore.org/en/node/379745#comment-1297308

"And even then, they want you to ask, before posting to github."
Yes, but you got absolutely no answer in one month. How long are you going to wait, 6 months, 1 year, more? This thread/bug report will bury itself in the depths of the forum, that's for sure. Go to Github, no one will hold it against you.

In reply to by mikey12045

FWIW I loaded your Daisy Bell score. Then removed the two accidentals on the second line. I only see the one plugin. This one has a configuration window. I made sure "Put accidentals in parenthesis" was checked and clicked "Add accidentals". They were back in the score.
Seems to me that if you could get this to work, it would be faster than hitting P all the time

In reply to by bobjp

I'll do that, the next time I have a score that should have them. Thanks for the offer.

(The next morning...) Well, of course it worked perfectly on the current score. But I'll keep watching, and post a score with the errors. Otherwise, we can chalk this one up to PEBCAK.

In reply to by mikey12045

Interestingly enough, Here's what happened for me.

For both files I deleted all the courtesy accidentals. Save and close. Reopen and ran the plugin. It caught everything. Then I took both files as you sent them. Ran the plugin and it caught everything. I wonder if it is an OS thing.

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