Measure Numbering

• Dec 13, 2015 - 21:02

I use the measure- and beat-number indicator in the 'status bar' at the bottom of the screen to keep track of where I am when I'm transcribing old manuscripts into MuseScore--which is a difficult and critical task, as often I am constructing a score from individual parts which do not match in length!--and I'd like to request that the team consider modifying the way this read-out counts measures.

1.When I'm producing a score of a multi-movement piece, I set all the movements in a single file, because that makes it a lot easier to do the final page make-up once the music is done. Using the really GREAT new 'section break' feature means I no longer have to enter negative numbers in the 'measure properties' dialogue to ensure that the measures in each movement are numbered starting from m. 1. But the read-out in the status bar gives me the measure number counting from the first bar of the entire score, so after the first movement, it's not very useful unless I want to start doing mental arithmatic.

2. To add to this dilemma, pieces of music will often have anacruciæ or 'pick-up' measures consisting of a single beat. Normally, I set that measure as 'irregular' and tell the program to exclude it from the measure count so that the bar numbers printed in the score are correct. But again, the status-bar read-out doesn't take account of this anomoly, which means that even in the first movement of a multi-movement piece, the read-out is telling me I'm in m.22 when I'm actually in m.21. By the time I get to movement four, and have to subtract 78 and 1 and 96 and 1 and 112 and 1, I almost want to to take a felt-tip and start writing on the computer screen....

Can this oddity be fixed so that at least one of the two status-bar read-outs indicates the measure number that actually appears on the score instead of the total number of measures counting from zero including irregulars and excluded measures? It would really be appreciated.

Thanks.


Comments

The status line display is meant to display measure numbers unambiguously, and to reflect what number you'd need to enter to find the measure again with Ctrl+F. So I'mn not sure it really makes sense for the status line to lie in this way. Why not simply rely on the measures numbers on the score itself, which are intended to be "logical" measure numbers?

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

There are actually two read-outs in the status line--left and right. Could not one of them show 'absolute' measure number and the other 'relative/logical' measure number? As for finding something with CTL+F, yes, that would require an input of the absolute measure number, unless a field for 'section' were added, which might be too much.

Why not simply rely on measure numbers on the score itself? To have those numbers always in front of me while I'm doing input would require setting the parameters to dispslay a measure number on every measure and for every staff. When working with larger ensembles than three or so instruments, its rare to keep the score zoomed down small enough to see an entire system/page during input. So I'd not only have the extra visual clutter of those measure numbers everywhere during input, I'd have to go back and reformat those parameters later anyway.

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