Notes will not paste in another measure if cut a certain way
I am noticing weird idiosyncratic behavior when I cut and paste more than one note a certain way. If I highlight the individual notes (lets say 4 8th notes) via CTRL+click, then cut and try to paste in another measure that already has notes but is not full, it won't let me. However, if I highlight the notes by dragging the rectangle over the notes, then cut, I can paste in another measure. This behavior is not a big deal since I know how to handle it, but I thought I would point it out in case someone wants to fix it.
Did you also know that if you cut a note or series of notes that equal one duration (e.g. a quarter note) and try to paste in a spot that currently has 2 8th note rests - which is the same as the quarter note duration you are trying to paste - it won't let you. You have to first convert the 2 8th note rests into 1 quarter note rest. Again, not a big deal but a weird idiosyncrasy. I think these two behaviors are related.
I am using version 3.5RC, but I think it did this with 3.4.x also.
Comments
This is intended behavior that a list-selection (Ctrl-click) and a range-selection (Shift-click/rectangle drag) behave differently.
When selecting with Ctrl-click you are only copying the notehead+pitch, not the chord properties such as duration.
I don't understand your 2nd remark. It is perfectly possible to paste a 1/4th duration chord over any other duration chord; At least if you selected the full chord (Shift-click) and not just the notehead (single click or ctrl-click), as the latter doesn't maintain duration information.
In reply to This is intended behavior… by jeetee
OK. I think you answered it. I didn't know Ctrl-click did not copy the duration. I am not talking just chords, but individual notes also. Like I said, I think the two behaviors are related to how I select the notes to cut. Question is: should the two methods work differently? Why wouldn't you want to also copy duration when you Ctrl-click?
Thanks
In reply to OK. I think you answered it… by odelphi231
A notehead + a stem + flags = a chord in MuseScore
When you Ctrl-click you only select the notehead, not including the stem/flags/duration part of a chord. The situation is "simple" for single note chords, but Ctrl-Click allows a non contingent selection across many instruments with gaps in between the durations.
If you then paste onto a location where there is sometimes already something notated, sometimes not, then the behavior gets harder to define for all use cases involved.
This is by design. If you shift+click to select the note it is copied with its duration so a 1/4 note would replace two 1/8ths. If you just plain click and copy, only the note's pitch is copied and its duration when pasted depends on what it is replacing; so any duration of note that is copied would end up as an 1/8th if pasted onto an 1/8th rest. See here: https://musescore.org/en/handbook/copy-and-paste
[Edit] Darn! too slow again :-)
In reply to This is by design. If you… by SteveBlower
Steve, I don't know about that. For one thing, you cannot click on a note and replace another note. At least I don't know how to do that. You can only click on a note to cut and copy it to a blank location. Also, I haven't seen where I can click a quarter note and have it change into an 8th note. What I have seen, which is my OP, is that if you click on an individual note, it will not let you paste it somewhere else if there is anything there (including a rest). But as mentioned, if I cut and paste via drawing a rectangle around the note, then magically it will let you paste it where there is a rest - but not a note.
In reply to Steve, I don't know about… by odelphi231
Not sure what you mean. You can certainly paste one note on top of another. And changing a quarter to an eighth is simple - just click the eighth note icon or use the containing shortcut.
Probably we are miscommunicating.
Best if you attach a sample score and describe precisely what change you are having trouble with.
In reply to Steve, I don't know about… by odelphi231
"you cannot click on a note and replace another note". I don't understand what you are trying to do there. If I click on a note I would expect any operation to affect that note, not another one.
"You can only click on a note to cut and copy it to a blank location." If you select the note or chord while holding down shift or by clicking and dragging a selection rectangle around it and cut or copy and then click on another note or rest and do a paste operation using CTRL+V or Edit>Paste, the cut or copied note is pasted at that position leaving any remaining duration of the note or rest unchanged. So, if you select a 1/4 note C, cut it then select a 1/2 note A and paste you end up with a 1/4 note C followed by a 1/4 note A.
Did you read the handbook section that I pointed to in my previous post? It probably explains things better than I have here.
In reply to "you cannot click on a note… by SteveBlower
Sorry, I didn't fully explain. Sometimes when typing fast I sometimes leave out the full explanation. When I said, "you cannot click on a note and replace another note", I meant click to cut and paste to replace another note. I have since learned that you can do that by using different cut/paste key-combo than what I was using.
When I said, "You can only click on a note to cut and copy it to a blank location." I mean you can't put a cut note in between other notes to ADD to that measure. You can replace a note, but not add to the measure unless there is a blank space. I have tried doing it and it wants to replace notes, not add notes.
In reply to Sorry, I didn't fully… by odelphi231
No, you can't insert notes with a paste operation. But most often users want the duration of notes in a measure to add up to what the time signature indicates and replacing notes or rests does that. If you insert notes you make the measure longer. Notes can be inserted with shift+Ctrl+Note letter after selecting a duration - see https://musescore.org/en/handbook/note-input#insert-notes. Then you can copy and paste whatever you want over the over the inserted note(s).
In reply to Sorry, I didn't fully… by odelphi231
But unless your goal is to literally create measures with too many beats in them, you wouldn't want that type of insert anyhow. More likely, you want some as-yet-unspecified numbers of notes to be pushed later in time, spelling over into the next measure as necessary. And maybe you want this to propagate for some as-yet-unspecified number of subsequent measure. MuseScore has no way of guessing how many notes you might want moved, so the solution is simply: first select the notes you want moved - only you can possibly know how many - and move them yourself with cut and paste.
In reply to But unless your goal is to… by Marc Sabatella
No, I was thinking maybe you have a measure that has "room" (rests) at the end of the measure and you wanna insert some notes between other notes to fill out the measure. BTW: nothing wrong with Musescore allowing notes to "spill" into subsequent measures and the score is automatically reformatted. That would be a COOL feature. Yes, cut and paste works but (like I have mentioned in other posts) it would be nice if Musescore worked like MS-Word. MS-Word has an insert and replace functionality. If you insert words in between other words and it comes to the end of the line, an automatic carriage return (remember carriage returns - showing my age) is done and words spill over into the next line.
In reply to No, I was thinking maybe you… by odelphi231
Well, music is different from text in that there is the whole notion of time. Music has the sense that the note ion beat 3 of measure 19 should probably stay there even if you mess a note on beat 2 of measure 6. I guess a better analogy here might be to a table in Word, where indeed edits to one cell generally don't affect another - unless you choose to move things around by explicitly cutting and pasting what you to where you want.
You mention there being room "at the end of the measure',. but again, MuseScore really has no way of knowing that's where you want to stop. And indeed,d in many cases, it isn't - you might really want to the notes in the next two or three measures to slide over (depending on how far ahead you got before catching your mistake, for instance, if the issue is you skipped a note). That's again why it's really more efficient for you to simply tell MuseScore explicitly what you want moved and where you want it moved to.
In order to normal copy & paste to work the way people would expect, the selection has to be a contiguous range. Think about it - what would it even mean to select one note in one measure of one staff, another note from a different measure in a different staff, and another note from another measure in a third staff, then try to copy and paste that?
Ctrl+click is meant for creating special discontinuous selections of things and then perform operations on those selections that are clearly defined.
In reply to In order to normal copy &… by Marc Sabatella
Ok, thanks. I guess in some unique situations, that would be helpful.