Transcribing from recording

• Jul 26, 2022 - 15:40

From time to time someone records themselves singing something and wants our pianist (who doesn't play by ear) to be able to play it for them. I know their timing may not be perfect because they held out some notes, slowed down a phrase or whatever. I would like to be able in turn off (temporarily) beat counting in Musescore and freely change duration of notes/rests, and freely move notes/rests/bar lines as I seek to work out a correct timing. (Perhaps while beat counting is turned off use color or plus/minus marks to indicate measures with more or less than the correct beat count.) Then when I turn beat counting back on have Musescore work from beginning to end to correct the beat count in each measure by flowing notes/rests across bar lines as needed. I would want to be able to add a line of lyrics after all notes are entered as an aid to keeping up with where I am while adjusting note durations. As far as I know, there is no practical way of doing this now.

Comments

• Jul 26, 2022 - 16:09

INdeed, that sort of "scratch pad" is a common request though. As a temporary workaround, you could try to create a single very long measure and use the Duration Editor within that, then copy and paste to the actual passage. But as a long term solution, far better is to work on improving your ear for rhythm so less trial and error is required - it's going to be way more efficient in the long run. I don't say that to be snarky - it truly is possible to improve one's ability to transcribe rhythms. Doing so using your own ears (and pencil and paper if necessary) and then simply entering this will usually be the most efficient.

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• Jul 26, 2022 - 18:19

I tried the long measure workaround. I set duration to quarter notes and entered the first 8 pitches. If I changed a note to a half note, it "absorbed" the next note. If I changed a note to an eighth note it added an eighth rest that I could not delete, Effectively, I could only change the duration of the last note in the measure so if I changed a note duration I might as well delete all the notes following it. So, back to entering/adjusting one note at a time and only being able to adjust pitches other than a whole measure at a time. NOT a useful workaround unless I missed something.
If "scratchpad" has been a common request, why not implement a useful version of it?

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