Non-tuplet grouping brackets
It would be nice if there was a way to easily create a "non-tuplet" grouping bracket. The workaround I found on the forum is clumsy at best and crashes my system at worst. Also there is no way to easily change the font size or number denomination. This has forced me to have to go back to Nuendo or (worse) Pro Tools (BLECH)! I have included something I made in Photoshop as a demo. It doesn't have the bracket break. The number is on top but that's fine for my needs. This shouldn't a difficult add and I'm not sure why it isn't offered considering how powerful this software is
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Comments
These look like ordinary lines with hooks to me, you should be able to add them easily from the palette. Just select the range, click the line symbol, use the inspector to add the hooks. If you create these often, Ctrl+Shift_drag one to your palette for easy reuse.
If you have problems doing this, please attach your score and precise steps to reproduce the issue.
I'm not sure what the goal for these is, though. Anyone reading that would surely be very confused, since they look like triplets. Is this some sort of special drum notation? If so, can you link to a document that explains the relevant standard? If it's something that actually occurs in standard notation, then indeed, there should be native support for it. But meanwhile, the manual method should work fine,
In reply to These look like ordinary… by Marc Sabatella
Thank you for your reply. What I didn't show was groups going across the bar line. Tuplets won't let you do that (easily). This technique is used for poly-rhythmic notation. Typically when you are playing a section using values that that overlay and existing time signature (Think Frank Zappa, Vorace, Stravinsky, Steve Vai). I have had difficulty finding the "line" in my palettes. I'm wondering if that is only in the "paid" version of the software? I hope this better explains my request.
In reply to Thank you for your reply… by headbyte
There is no paid version of MuseScore - maybe you're thinking of the optional paid account you can get on the score-sharing website musescore.com? That has nothing to do with any features of the software itself - MuseScore is always 100% free,e no way to pay for it even if you wanted to.
If you aren't seeing the lin, be sure you're in the Advanced as opposed to Basic workspace using the control at top right.
If you can post links to published scores using the notation you refer to - or ideally, and style guidebook explaining how it is meant to be used by editors - that would be useful in understanding how a new feature could be developed.
But meanwhile, doing what I said should work perfectly and very simply. Select range, click line in palette, add hooks in Inspector. And optionally then customize your palette to make adding them even easier in the future.
In reply to There is no paid version of… by Marc Sabatella
Thank you for your reply. Yes, I have been able to do what you suggested. It is very time consuming and extremely difficult to get everything to line up correctly. In short ... not very elegant compared with the rest of the beauty of this software. And as such ... I still respectfully request that this function be added as a feature request. I am making a new example (albeit VERY slowly) to better show the grouping function. And will post when I am done. As far as examples, just about any Frank Zappa piece uses these (as well as tuplets) but I'll try to find one. It's just that mine will be better to describe it (when I'm done).
In reply to Thank you for your reply… by headbyte
I'm not understanding the time-consuming part - adding a line as I described takes about three seconds, and it should be positioned perfectly right out of the box. So if you're having trouble, best to attach your score and describe precisely what goes wrong when you try what I suggested that is requiring you to spend more time.
I guess maybe you mean, if you also want to add the number 3 in addition to the line itself? Again, I strongly recommend against confusing musicians like that, since that's going to be mistaken for a tuplet. But, not you can define text for lines also in the Inspector, and customize the position. So you can totally have a line set up that already has the text and hooks, and add it to your palette. Or just add staff text and drag it into place, which is pretty fast also.
Anyhow, as mentioned, new features are added to MuseScore all the time, so definitely suggestions get considered. But they tend to be prioritized higher if you can point to published examples or style guidelines showing that they truly are a standard notation. So if you have a link to a published Zappa chart that uses this, it would certainly help increase the priority.
In reply to I'm not understanding the… by Marc Sabatella
To get everything nice and straight (aligned) takes FOREVER!!! Here is something to look at (not that great alignment but I did my best. Thanks and enjoy.
In reply to To get everything nice and… by headbyte
And here comes "The Black Page Drum Solo" by Frank Zappa. A perfect example of both Tuplets and groupings. I would like to be able to my groupings more easily accessible and aligned. This ridiculous piece of music says it all!
In reply to And here comes "The Black… by headbyte
As far as I can tell, those are all actual tuplets. Are there some in particular you believe are not? Also, this appears to be a random person's transcription. In order to gauge how common this is and thus how many people would be using the feature, it would be helpful to see a non-tuplet example in music from an established publisher.
In reply to To get everything nice and… by headbyte
Can you attach the actual score instead of just a picture? I'm still struggling to guess what you might be doing wrong, but as I said, literally three seconds to add the lines, and they should be perfectly aligned right off the bat. I guess maybe you mean their vertical position above the staff, you want them the same? Even if there were an automatic feature for this, you'd still need to adjust this manually because the normal in published music is to keep lines like this as close to the notes as possible. Still, that too takes only seconds by selecting them all and using the Inspector to set an appropriate Y offset. Or just set the style default to be something that works for you.
In reply to Can you attach the actual… by Marc Sabatella
I know it's someone's transcription. There is no actual score. Frank had this transcribed by several people. And there was always an issue with certain bars that aren't even in this one LOL! As a Berklee alumni and someone who played this piece for many years, I can attest to this being a pretty fair representation. No they're not ALL tuplets. There are groupings (and tuplets) within groupings. You can't do that with the tuplet function. The line feature is fine. I think at this point (and this goes for a bunch of text related issues), it would be nice if there was an "auto align" feature. Yes I understand about Y positioning, but it would be helpful to be able to highlight a group of text and hit an "auto align" button to get them to all be the same "Y" position. There are times when even after "Setting Style as Default" doesn't quite do it. I appreciate your recommendations though. Thanks again.
In reply to I know it's someone's… by headbyte
And here we go. A little tongue twister for the drumming masses. This is a little exercise to work on Flams + Poly-rhythms. This shows how to use groupings of 3,5 & 7 of 16th notes across bar lines in 4/4 over samba beat just to keep things interesting. It's actually a beast to play LOL!!! Thanks again for all your help. The software really is very powerful (and I'm just a drummer ... well I do play mallets).
In reply to And here we go. A little… by headbyte
Can you post a link to the publisher this score comes from? RIght now this looks just plain wrong to me; I've literally never in my life seen a publisher use brackets like that for notes that are not tupelts. I have a hard time believing that any musicians would understand that these are not meant to be tuplets. But perhaps the publisher who produces this puts out a special guide to their own notation style, and there are people who use music from that publisher often enough to be able to understand it?
In reply to I know it's someone's… by headbyte
There are indeed tuplets within tuplets, the piece is famous for that. And MuseScore supports that directly. But I don't see a single bracketed grouping that is not a tuplet. Can you tell me which specific notes from which specific measures you believe are not tuplets even though they have brackets?
Again, this is the crux of the matter. MuseScore strives to provide direct support for things that are actually used by established publishers. MuseScore also provides customization capabilities to allow individual users to invent and experiment with all sorts of additional notations not actually recognized by anyone else, but those seldom get would turned into direct features, because just supporting ordinary standard notation well already is a full-time job for the developers. So if this truly is a notation in common use by established publishers, then I'd love to help you get this added to to the list of potential new features to be worked on, Which is why I'm encouraging you to find actual examples from published music. The example you have here does not appear to show brackets groups that are not tuplets, and it's also not from a published score, so it doesn't help make the case that this is a common thing.
Anyhow, once again, if you post your actual score, I'm more than happy to show you how to use the Inspector to align elements in a matter of seconds. But basically - select the elements you want to align, change the Y value gradually until they align. An additional button for this would indeed allow one to save a second or so and could be welcome someday, and that has nothing to do with experimental notations like bracketed groups - as mentioned, aligning elements is useful for all sorts of conventional notations used by established publishers.
In reply to There are indeed tuplets… by Marc Sabatella
This was a piece that I wrote myself. As far is this type of notation, this is extensively covered in the Gary Chaffee "Patterns 1 - 3" books. I understand that maybe you haven't encountered this type of notation but it's been around since the mid 1970's. It's well known amongst "Jazz & Fusion" players. As far as an "Alignment Request", agreed that that should be on a different thread and no reason to continue anything here. Thanks again for your help.
In reply to This was a piece that I… by headbyte
FWIW, I've been a jazz player most of my life, but I've never seen it. What I have seen is the bracket without the number, to show phrasing across the beat. The number is what causes the confusion and what I specifically am questioning. I'm not familiar with that book so I checked it out on Amazon and the Alfred site, but none of the sample pages show that notation. Can you post a screenshot of a page showing an example? That would help immensely in understanding what he is aiming for and how he proposes eliminating the potential for confusion. That in turn would help in understanding how these symbols are actually intended to be used and in prioritizing any new features in support of it.
Of course, if you ignore the numeral, the bracket is very easily added already, as mentioned. The only part that requires manual adjustment at all currently is the centered number. So that's the part that would require special support, and the part I personally would be uneasy with, because it's way to likely to confuse both readers of the score but also users of the program who see two similar-looking notations and likely get confused and add the wrong one. So I'd personally want to see really strong evidence that this is in common use before seeing such a symbol added directly to palettes where it's going to just confuse most people.
On the other hand, centered text could certainly be useful for other reasons, so I'm certainly fine with seeing that option added in the Inspector for ordinary text lines. And then if one wanted to use that option to create these look-exactly-like-tuplets-but-somehow-people-know-to-not-play-them-way brackets, you'd be able to.
Marc has been very gracious in helping better understand using the line function to attain what I was looking to do. It was very helpful
In reply to Marc has been very gracious… by headbyte
Glad to hear it! I always strive to be helpful, even when trying to understand the basis for a request in order to better prioritize it. I should emphasize, I have no power whatsoever to make decisions. I'm just an advocate here for making the program the best we can. So when I see ideas I can get behind, I push for their inclusion; when I see ideas I don't understand, I push for more information.