How to swap two notes / rests

• Dec 13, 2014 - 23:02

Relatively often, I find that I would like to adjust the beats on which certain notes fall; is there a straightforward way to do this?

Example:

I entered the following notes:

C (dotted quarter)
D (dotted quarter)
E (quarter)

At this point I notice that I've made a mistake -- I meant for the D to be a quarter note, not a dotted quarter. If I select the D and remove the dot, it adds a rest in between the D and the E. Ok, fair enough. I now have this:

C D rest E

At this point I would like a way to flip the rest and the E so that I have this:

C D E rest

Instructions to RTFM are quite welcome if accompanied with a pointer to the appropriate part of the FM - I've been through the handbook and FAQs and didn't see anything that seemed to do this.

If this feature doesn't exist, then I could suggest several different UIs for it:

*) Select a note and press 'T' (or whatever) to flip it with the element (note, chord, or rest) to its left, or Shift-T to flip it with the element to its right.

*) Select a group of notes, then drag-and-drop them to a new location in the score where they would be inserted. If that would cause too many problems with time checking, then having them just overwrite the following notes would be fine. (There might be a need to change the duration of one note at the end, or add a rest, but that's within the current abilities of MuseScore.)

*) Most convenient of all, although I suspect not something that would fit with the developers' preferences: Give me a control that says "temporarily turn off time signature checking". I can then insert and delete notes freely without having to worry about the time signature -- if I end up with 27 beats in a 4/4 measure, fine, I did it to myself and when I try to turn time signature checking on again MuseScore would be entirely justified to say "nope. Your score isn't valid, fix it before we'll start helping you again." Basically, give me a way to say "trust me to sort this out and I'll make sure it ends up correct when I'm done."

Thanks for any help or pointers,

Dave

PS This sort of thing also happens when I'm composing and experimenting with different note durations to see which I like best.


Comments

Swapping notes will be possible in 2.0 using Shft+Left/Right; you can check out the Beta or Nightly builds if you like.

The idea of a special "scratchpad" mode has been kicked around a while; I wouldn't be surprised to see it implemented some day.

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