implode twice

• May 17, 2021 - 18:43

I am trying out the improved implode feature for the first time, making a condensed score from a small big-band chart.

For much of the time it works great. but there are some things that do not do what I expected. It is not clear to me if this is intended behavior or just missing features.

Here is the first example. The top staff was initially empty and contains the result of doing an implode of the lower three staffs, and then doing another implode on just the top staff.
implode_ex1.png

It seems the third staff is not "merged" with the second staff. The A in the third staff remains in voice 3 and the C is in voice 2, also after the second implode.

Is this a bug, missing feature, or intended behavior?

If, on the other hand, I first implode the two bottoms staffs (twice) and then implode the result I get what I would have expected (except that the second staff from the bottom now also contains the contents of the bottom staff):
implode_ex1b.png

I did an experiment and imploded three staffs leaving one of them empty.
implode_ex3.png

Is this the way it is supposed to work? Or should I write a ticket? or is there already a ticket (I could not find one when I looked)?

Attachment Size
On Revival Day RJM_condensed_example.mscz 14.85 KB

Comments

• May 17, 2021 - 21:48

It's the way it was designed. The idea is that the first import implodes multiple staves onto one using multiple voices and thus allows for completely independent rhythms, then the second looks for opportunities to collapse into one voice but only where the rhythms match. Both are desirable outcomes in different situations, so rather than write two separate tools for it, this scheme was devised. The first step yields a result you might want in choral writing, the second in creating a piano reduction.

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• May 17, 2021 - 22:00

Indeed! I understand that the second implode will look for opportunities to collapse into fewer voices. That is a good thing and just what I want. I have no problems with that.

But from the examples i show, MuseScore doesn't do a perfect job of collapsing into fewer voices in the second implode. In most of the examples, there is an opportunity to merge voice 2 and 3 into just voice 2, but that does not happen. Is that by design? When is that useful?

Also it seems that when the top two top staffs are empty in a measure, but there is content in the lower staffs, a full-measure-rest is added to voice 1, and the notes from the lower staffs are not merged, but kept in voice 2 and 3. See the last example.

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• May 27, 2021 - 22:45

OK, I'm back. For some unknown reason, some of my examples did no longer work when I tried them again. But others did. So here is a hopefully more clear example of what the unclear behavior of implode.

Here is the bar with three instruments that I want to implode:
implode_before.png

And here is the result.
implode_after.png

That is, implode did not manage to merge voice 2 and 3 into just voice 2.

And here is the same result again, but with the top staff selected so that the voice coloring is visible
implode_after_voices.png

An my question is: is my expected behavior incorrect? Did MuseScore do what implode is intended to do?

Attachment Size
implode_test.mscz 18.96 KB

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• May 28, 2021 - 18:33

I see what you mean. I guess the algorithm for the second implode (implode voices on a single staff) onlydeals with combing things into voice 1, not combining things between other voices. I can't think of a reason why it should be that way. Seems like an unnecessary limitation. I typically only use this for combing two voices (eg, from separate S & A staves to a single SA staff) so I hadn't noticed that personally.

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