Move a line of lyrics to a different line?

• Feb 14, 2016 - 01:03

I often run up against situations where I want to move a whole line of lyrics to another line. For example, I want to add a new verse to the start of a hymn and shove the rest down, or rearrange the order of verses.

It seems that MuseScore permanently identifies a lyric as Verse 1, Verse 2, or whatever, so it always pastes back into the same line I copied it from, when I click on the starting note.

Can we make it paste a whole selected line starting with a syllable position I click on, or into?

Being able to select a verse by subtype is great for differential formatting (which I rarely do), but it's aggravating to be able to select it yet not be able to move it to a different line order (which I often need to do).

Is there a way to accomplish reordering, short of going back to my Word document and copy/pasting the verse into its new position syllable by syllable?

Thanks.
Linda


Comments

Unfortunately, this is one area where MuseScore definitely could stand a lot of improvement. Eventually, these typres of lyric operations should be supported better, but there is no great solution for now.

If you don't mind "getting your hands dirty" you can export your score as an XML and then use an editor to change the line that the lyrics are on. Suppose you had lyrics on lines 1, 2 and 3 and wanted to insert a different one at line 2 and move the existing 2 and 3 downwards:

Export to a MuscicXML file
Open it with a suitable editor (I use Bluefish in ubuntu)
Do a search and replace with [lyric number="3"] becoming [lyric number="4"]
Do a search and replace with [lyric number="2"] becoming [lyric number="3"]
Save the file
Open the file in MuseScore
Line 2 is now effectively empty and ready for you to fill

In reply to by underquark

I don't mind dirty hands, broken fingernails, whatever.

Hmm...

Running the score out to MusicXML and back into MuseScore loses some of my layout settings, so I'd be replacing time spent on one task with time spent on another.

If I have more than one or two verses to rearrange, it would be worthwhile, though. So thanks for the suggestion, underquark.

In reply to by underquark

Instead of exporting to MusicXML, simply save as ".mscx", which is also plain text format (".mscz" is just a compressed archive containing an ".mscx" file and some metadata). You should be able to change the lyric verse number in the mscx just about as easily as with MusicXML.

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