Copy 8 bars and fill in hundreds of bars with it
Well, as my subject says, I want to copy 8 bars of music played by an ensemble and fill in an hour or two of measures with that exact 8 bar section repeated over and over. The solo voice doesn't repeat the whole time, so I want to leave that intact. Can this be done as one grand "fill", without manually slogging through a zillion individual pastes?
Comments
No
In reply to No by Jojo-Schmitz
Yes.
Using 5 times reselect all fiilled in portion of the score copy/paste you already get 2^5=32 x 8 measures
Then just copying that again and again will quickly get you 1000 measures
If you really want 1000000 measures then it is worth it to proceed 10 times instead of 5 with the initialisation, getting 1024x8measures
In reply to Yes. Using 5 times reselect… by frfancha
Wow. Thanks! So I'm a total musescore beginner, and I understand your idea of exponentially cutting down on the amount of work by (exponentially) doubling the length of the source measures each time I copy. But when I tried this the ability to select the source material was extremely slow and imprecise, just trying to drag the blue selection box to the right each time. Can you please point me to navigation info explaining how to use the mouse for selecting larger amounts of measures, more efficiently than just holding the sluggish arrow keys down? I'm sure there must be quick-acting summary commands available somewhere, rather than waiting for the mouse to drag through the measures to the right, one-at-a-time, yes?
In reply to Wow. Thanks! So I'm a… by georgezsmith
Don't drag the mouse. Click the last note in the last measure you want to copy the press ctrl+shift+home to select everything to the start of the song, then press R then repeat.
In reply to Don't drag the mouse. Click… by mike320
Sorry, didn't see this while I was replying to SteveBlower. Will try it and get back to you. You guys are incredible! I spent a day or two trying to figure this out and I was about to go in search of another product.
First, add as many bars as you will need. Then select the bars you want to repeat and press and hold the R key. This will create as many duplicates of those 8 bars as you want while the key is pressed. To cut down on the hold time, press the R key once and then select the 16 bars you now have and then press and hold the R key, or go to 32 or 64 bars before you press and hold. Or you can stick the R key down with chewing gum while you grab a coffee.
In reply to First, add as many bars as… by SteveBlower
Double Wow! I assumed you were half-kidding about the chewing gum and coffee, because I dreaded seeing how confused Musescore was going to be when I returned, after leaving Musescore to comprehend that despite the extra zillion "R" requests (and "r" worked just fine, too), we had reached the end of the known universe long ago, halfway through my coffee interlude. But to my amazement, Musescore handled the requested overshoots amazingly gracefully, just waiting patiently for me when I returned like a trained puppy. The program was immediately responsive to me, and didn't require any forbearance on my part in order to wait for the program to make sense of the extra zillion "r" requests.
Still VERY interested in frfancha's idea of exponentially increasing the size of the source selection in order to radically cut the job in size and time. Just don't know how to select ever-larger sections of music quickly and efficiently, without relying on the mouse to slog through each measure as it stretches the blue selection box.
In reply to Double Wow! I assumed you… by georgezsmith
As @Mike320 says, don't use the mouse. The mouse is s-l-o-w and difficult to use with precision.
Check out https://musescore.org/en/handbook/keyboard-shortcuts and in particular the first section on Navigation.
Also, as the number of key combinations is limited, there are a number of actions that can be assigned to shortcuts but which are not by default. If you go to [Edit]>[Preferences]>[Shortcuts] you can see everything that is available and the current shortcut assignments. If you have a favourite action that has no shortcut you can define one there.
In reply to As Mike320 says, don't use… by SteveBlower
Steve, I did look at the "keyboard shortcuts" and at the Edit>Preferences>Shortcuts menu, and couldn't imagine any choices there that would solve the problem of how to select an initial section of music and double it. I was still reduced to selecting the initial section with the mouse, in order to then double it. Then I have to go back to the beginning of the piece, and re-select the now twice-as-large section, in order to then double THAT. And so forth and so on. I.e., it SEEMS like it would be a good idea to do the exponential doubling technique 5-6 times to end up with a zillion measures--which indeed is what I want. But in reality, I was just forced to use the mouse to select each new doubled range, which became unwieldy, ridiculously slow, and eventually caused crashes as the range got bigger. Yes, I'm sure there's a way around this, where one can select the range of doubled-duration music that you've created so far, without using the mouse, but I just couldn't figure out how to do it. Any comments much appreciated. FWIW, I'm on Windows 10.
In reply to Steve, I did look at the … by georgezsmith
If you want to select to the beginning of the score, you can select the last note then ctrl+shift+home to select to the start of the staff. This works for 1 beat or a zillion (aka the limit of the program). At some point you will be content to press r repeatedly rather than changing the selection between r's but that's up to you.
In reply to Steve, I did look at the … by georgezsmith
George, if you are on Windows please be conscient that in any program, and MuseScore is not exception, adding [Shift] to any key combination will transform the 'move cursor' into 'move cursor and select'.
So, if you know that ctrl+left arrow moves the cursor one word to the left (in notepad, word, ...) You automatically know as well that shift+ctrl+left arrow selects the word to the left.
So just have a look at the cursor movement keys, and the selection ones follow.
In reply to George, if you are on… by frfancha
And try ctrl+a
In reply to And try ctrl+a by frfancha
ctrl+a won't help with this issue, it selects everything in every staff, not just the measure with notes in the current staff.
In reply to ctrl+a won't help with this… by mike320
I know pretty well that it selects everything.
And if the goal is to build zillions of measures with the same content, using ctrl a plus copy paste starting from a score containing only the pattern to copy is by far the quickest way.
In reply to I know pretty well that it… by frfancha
Can you please walk me through the procedure? Say I've got a two bar pattern that I want to fill a zillion bars with. Do I start with a zillion empty bars, except for the two bar pattern right at the beginning? Or do I start, instead, with a two bar score containing solely the pattern, and Ctrl-A to select it? And then what?
In reply to Can you please walk me… by georgezsmith
You just need one empty measure at the end to kick off the process.
![2 bars.png]( "2 bars.png")
So for the two bar pattern, you need three measures, the third one being empty.
Make sure there is a shortcut assigned to "go to first empty trailing measure". In my case I have assigned ctrl+E (e like empty), removing that shortcut from its default (expression text), but you may of course choose another one.
Starting from here, no more mouse involved at all
ctrl-a ctrl-c ctrl-e esc ctrl-v
![more.PNG]( "more.PNG")
ctrl-a ctrl-c ctrl-e esc ctrl-v
ctrl-a ctrl-c ctrl-e esc ctrl-v
ctrl-a ctrl-c ctrl-e esc ctrl-v
ctrl-a ctrl-c ctrl-e esc ctrl-v
ctrl-a ctrl-c ctrl-e esc ctrl-v
...
In reply to You just need one empty… by frfancha
Or forget about ctrl-a and follow the procedure of Mike which is actually quicker (2 key combi's instead of 5 to repeat) but require to append all necessary empty measures first as "R" doesn't add measures for you :-(
So...
Starting from exactly the same 2 bar pattern:
Add 1000 empty measures (the add measure dialog box doesn't seem to allow more than 1000 at once :-( )
Click on the last note of the pattern.
Starting from here, no more mouse involved at all
shift+ctrl+home R
shift+ctrl+home R
shift+ctrl+home R
shift+ctrl+home R
shift+ctrl+home R
shift+ctrl+home R
...
Same result ;-)
In reply to Or forget about ctrl-a and… by frfancha
For the mathematicians: given a cost alpha to press shift+ctrl+home and a cost beta ( < alpha ) to press the key R, compute the optimal number of R's to press between 2 shift-ctrl-home to optimize the process ;-)