enharmonics, courtesy accidentals

• Mar 1, 2011 - 16:16

Hi,
I'm new to MuseScore, after more than a decade with Finale...
I've plunged right in to my first project in MuseScore, figuring the best way to learn is "on the job training"--
having a grand time so far, entering notes via Midi keyboard.
A few immediate questions have come up:
- how do I force courtesy accidentals?
- enharmonics (respelling): when I play Ab and MuseScore enters it as G#, how do I fix it?
If you can just point me to appropriate places to looks these things up I can probably answer other questions on my own as they arise...
Thanks!
Ch.S.
___________
Manontroppo Music has a new look!
http://ManontroppoMusic.netne.net


Comments

One of the best resources is the online handbook (my preference over the local handbook included with the software because you can choose specific topics). If you look over at the righthand toolbar you'll see "handbook" and that's where you want to go. I'm sure you can figure it out from there. If you can't find exactly what you need then just post a forum, usually general forums or maybe the forum that deals with help and support and bugs (depending on your need). There are plenty of people willing to help and answer questions, myself included (provided I posess the knowledge you need to know; I'm still relatively new myself (: ). Some people that are particularly helpful are Werner, Thomas, David Bolton, Marc Sabatella, and lasconic. They're usually pretty quick to reply to your posts as well.

As far as answering your questions, to force courtesy accidentals, simply drag and drop on the notehead from the accidentals palette. (Make sure you drop it on the notehead or it won't work. Also if you don't know how to access the palettes, go to display-palettes.)

To fix enharmonics, select the note you need to change by clicking on it, and you can either drag it up or down or use the arrow keys to move it up or down to the correct place. Sometimes you may need to go higher than you want to and then return the note back down to get the right note with the correct accidental (ie. if you are going from an F to a Gb, as you move the note up, the next note would be F#, not Gb, so you would just go up to G and then back down to make it a Gb), or, following the same process as forcing courtesy accidentals, you can put the correct accidentals.

Now I'm not exactly sure if you can perform these processes through the MIDI keyboard as I don't own one myself, but you at least have the instructions for doing the operation manually.

Best of luck!

In reply to by rj45

Thanks for replies.

For courtesy accidentals, I was hoping for something like this (a la Finale): select a note, hit the appropriate key, and the appropriate courtesy accidental is automagically supplied: natural flat, #, etc, whatever doesn't change the pitch. Can I set that up via Edit > Preferences > Shortcuts? Or do I have to choose the correct accidental and drag it?

For enharmonics, I like the up-and-down arrow approach! But again I was looking for something Finale-ish: select a note, and then the appropriate key toggles between the possible spellings: e.g., G# and Ab. (For more exotic things like G## instead of A you have to work harder; but most of the time, an enharmonic change means choosing between just two possibilities.

In reply to by JSB_

You don't need to drag the accidental - as I mentioned in my previous reply, you can define a shortcut to add the accidental. But you d have to create separate shortcuts for flat, sharp, and natural, and choose the correct one when you want to apply it. Unless this has changed in this respect in the last two or three years, that's the same in Finale.

But also as I mentioned in my previous reply, there is not currently a single key to respell a single note, and I agree it would be a great enhancement.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

I used Finale 2000c (later updates added only features I didn't need) and the courtesy accidental thing was: select note, hit a key (I don't remember which) and #, b, natural as needed was automagically supplied. But dragging the needed acc'l in MuseScore is not onerous.

As for respelling, e.g. change G# to Ab, the arrow-up arrow-down method is quick, easy, and intuitive. I like it!

So in both respects I'm happy with MuseScore as is.

Text handling, OTOH,... ;-)

In reply to by JSB_

As I've been trying to explain, you *can* use keyboard shortcuts to add courtesy accidentals in MuseScore. I just don't know what default shortcut is, or I'd tell you. I don't know because I customized it on my system. I use 0 for natural, - for flat, and = for sharp, because they are adjacent on my keybaord and that's sort of close to how I used to do it in Finale. To see what the shortcuts are, or customize them, or add your own, go to Edit->Preferences->Shortcuts.

In reply to by JSB_

> As for respelling, e.g. change G# to Ab, the arrow-up arrow-down method is quick, easy, and intuitive. I like it!
Hey, is something added to that arrow functionality? I used to do this note by note, because I couldn't do that with a bunch of marked notes. Now I can! I can mark one or several bars and hit the arrow keys to transpose. And doing that back and forth will mostly fix the enharmonics. Transposing a bunch of notes seems even faster than transposing a single note, probably because a single note is getting played for each step you move it with the arrows and the playback takes its own time.
It seems I get every time a B instead of Cb, but that's a minor problem. Cb seems a bit exotic like the afore mentioned G##. Yes, I'm happy, but the enharmonic switching shortcut would still be a great thing. It might add more logics to how to actually deal with the switching.

In reply to by Stefanokud

...and I'm assuming no key signature, and with an accidental on every note, I'd go with midi entry. Then, for any needed enharmonic edits (for instance F# to Gb), you can Ctrl+click to select multiple notes at once and use the up/down arrow keys to go up/down accordingly - like going 'up' and then back 'down' to turn sharp(s) into flat(s).

The alternative, using the computer keyboard, is to add the correct accidental as you enter each note.
Regards.

I guess this is a feature request, that a whole atonal composition/movement receives an accidental on every note, regardless if it's "necessary." The reason is psychological: atonal music does not do what most performers expect: conform to a key. Early atonalist knew this, and wrote accidentals on every note. This is extremely tedious, unless you are a professional copyist, therefore getting paid to suffer. There should be a setting, or "button" to do this work instantly for a whole composition/movement. Thanks.

In reply to by Stefanokud

Did you see my response above? You can already do this. Just enter the accidentals using the toolbar, palette, or the corresponding shortcuts, and they will be displayed whether needed or not.

it would probably be possible to write a plugin to take a score in which accidentals were entered via the arrow keys and convert them them into explicit accidentals.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

I think I know what the confusion is. You were referring to chromatic or 1/2 step modification of the notes which do not necessarily result in a symbol being displayed. When I said "accidental" I was referring to the symbol only (like sharp, flat, natural). To display the symbol under all circumstances would be my wish. However, your 1st suggestion is too labor intensive. (I write intensely chromatic music). The 2nd idea is good, but it is beyond my present ability. Thanks for responding.

In reply to by Stefanokud

I think you are still misunderstanding me. There is nothing labor intensive about pressing a single button to enter an accidental, is there? I mean, MuseScore can't read your mind about whether you want the accidental or not, so I can't imagine there being any way around needing to press *something* to enter an accidental. Perhaps if you posted an example of what you mean, we can show exactly the series of steps to create it, and you'll see what I mean. Pressing one of the keys I mentioned *does* result in an accidental being displayed each and every time,. always, no questions asked.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

As can be seen here, this music is heavily chromatic. The notes are already known by the program. I have added cautionary accidentals, one at a time, to notes that the program already knows. "Labor intensive" is a phrase meaning, in this case, scanning with your eyes the composition to see where the cautionary accidentals should go. It is very tiring to the mind, not the fingers. I am merely looking for a feature where cautionary accidentals are added to all the notes, except the ones that are immediately repeated.

Attachment Size
3 fragments for piano, 1st set_I.mscz 6.66 KB

In reply to by Stefanokud

So, for example, are you talking about the two Eb's in the LH in measure 6?

My point is, you have to tell MuseScore you want that second note to be Eb anyhow, right? If you simply type "E", it enters as an E natural. So you must have had to hit the down arrow to turn it into Eb. I'm just saying, instead of doing that, click the flat sign on the toolbar (or use keyboard shortcut - I have "-" configured to do this. can't remember if that's the default or not). So it is absolutely no more work to have that Eb display with an accidental than it is to have it display without an accidental. Either way, it takes two clicks/keystrokes: one to enter the E, one to make it flat. It's the exact same number of clicks to do this whether you want the flat sign to appear (type "E -") or not appear (type "E down").

Bottom line: if you want an E with a flat sign to appear, you need to press two buttons: one for the E, one for the flat sign. I fail to see how this can possibly be considered "too labor intensive". Exactly two clicks to enter two symbols. One click for each symbol. What could be simpler?

In reply to by Stefanokud

Hmm, I think the reason for the confusion is that I am talking about creating a new score from scratch. You now appear are talking about taking an existing score that someone else has already entered without these extra accidentals, and adding them. That is indeed going to be extra work.

I tried writing a plugin for courtesy accidentals but couldn't get it to work. I think maybe the plugin framework doesn't support what it needs to. The plugin framework has been reworked for 2.0, so maybe it will become possible in the future.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

Yes, Marc, this is similar to what my situation happens to be. When I transpose individual measures, it erases the manually applied accidentals. I work very quickly on precomposed material, and I don't have time to check evey note. Tedious work for the brain, a good opportunity for a music notation software programmer. Finale has an interesting plug in for cautionary accidentals, by the way.

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