Creating uniform measures

• Feb 24, 2011 - 02:41

A feature that I, personally, would find to be very useful, would be a button in the toolbar that could be used to make a specific measure uniform. Say we had four chords in a measure, and we wanted to bump the top note down an octave. As it is now, we would have to individually move each of those four noteheads. What I'm envisioning is that this button would base all similar notes/chords in the measure off of the selected note that you have revised. That way you would only have to alter one note and not four, or eight, or 20.

-Reed


Comments

In reply to by David Bolton

I mean that in changing the first note/chord (specifically chords) you would be able to make the measure uniform in that all the chords of the same type would also be changed. Thus, your measure is uniform, having all the same chords, not just different variations of the same chord. Ideally, if you had a chord that you repeated throughout a measure, say you wanted to lower the top note an octave (or you wanted to raise the bottom note an octave) or invert the chord from its root position to a first or second inversion, then, instead of having to change each chord you would only have to change one, and then through the "uniform measure" button, you could be able to make all the other chords inverted without having to manually invert them all yourself. So really, it's more making the notes/chords uniform throughout the measure rather than making the measure itself uniform. Sorry for the confusion.

In reply to by [DELETED] 5

Nifty! I did not know how that was done. Thanks! But I still have a problem. Let me more vividly explain what I need to do. I have (in standard 4/4 timing) a quarter note valued chord, two eighth note valued chords, a dotted eight, a sixteenth, and finally another quarter note valued chord. All chords are a C chord (C, E, G). If I decided I didn't like the way that sounds and I wanted to make it a first inversion chord (move the root note, in this case C, up an octave) I would have to go through and raise the C in every chord manually. Repeating the revised chord wouldn't be a problem except that it would mean all my chords have the same value. I want to be able to retain the individual value of each chord without having to manually invert each chord. This "uniform measure" button that I'm proposing would allow you to automatically invert all the chords within a measure while maintaining the individual values of each chord. In the case of 16 sixteenth note valued chords in a measure, you would have to either manually invert all 16 chords or invert one and then repeat it 15 more times. I want to be able to invert one chord and then have the software invert all the rest in that measure at the touch of a button without altering individual notational values. It would really save me a lot of time. I don't think there is a way to do that on 0.9.6.3. If there is, I'd really like to learn how it's done. If there isn't, then may I suggest it be an item of consideration for future editions of MuseScore? (Sorry to everyone who's tried to help but hasn't quite hit it on the head-sometimes, especially when you know exactly what you want, you have a hard time explaining it efficiently enough to give others the same vision necessary to help you correct the problem. Really, though, I'm not trying to be a pain in the neck. And thanks for doing your best to help, I really do appreciate it.)

In reply to by rj45

As lasconic says, Ctrl-click to select the notes and then hitting a key to move them all at once works. The ability to do simple operations like that on arbitrary groups of selected notes it's actually one of the one of the nicest things about MuseScore for me as compared to Finale (although I realize Sibelius can do this too).

But I should mention that my method of using "R" to repeat the chord doesn't completely rule out changing the rhythm. Just hit a number key after repeating the chord. Although it seems this does work with the whole chord still selected - that may be a bug. Currently, it seems you'd have to do a quick left/right to return to just having one note selected, and then hit the number. And then "R" is disabled until you again shift left/right. That seems like perhaps another bug, although I've always been fuzzy on when exactly "R" is supposed to work and when it isn't.

Anyhow, I can't imagine the operation you describe would be all that common, but between these two methods of dealing with it, MuseScore is already way ahead of Finale.

Thank you so much lasconic and Marc! Your knowledge has helped out a lot! I work a lot with chords, particularly in transcriptions, and after a while it just gets real old repeatedly selecting and lowering notes in similar chords when you want a0n inversion instead of the root chord. What you have shown me is much simpler! Thanks so much!

Do you still have an unanswered question? Please log in first to post your question.