Improvements to lyric insertion and editing
I recently moved to Musescore from an older software; I mainly use it to compone and write choral parts.
About lyrics editing, I find that there are 3 main problems that deserve to be fixed.
1 - It is not possible to move (make them slide) syllables to the next (or to the previous) note.
When you add lyrics, if you do mistakes - in particular two-syllables on a note instead of one, or instead no-syllable on a note, caused by two spaces or two hyphens hitted by mistake - and you notice them at final, you probably will have to cancel all the lyrics put after the error, fix the error and then put the remaining text again.
This could be avoided if simply adding a hyphen (or a space) in the middle of a lyric, all the subsequent lyrics would slide forward by one note. Similarily it would be very useful if when you cancel a hyphen (or space) all the subsequent lyrics would slide backward by one note.
2 - There is not a text window to edit lyrics.
This is present in many other softwares and it is very useful; instead of editing lyrics note by note, all the lyrics of one part inside a text window: you can easier edit, correct, add, remove.... text; putting the correct hyphens/spaces between syllables and words, automatically the lyrics find their place under the correct notes. It would be very much quick to add and edit lyrics in this way.
3 - Two notes connected with a tie must be considered as one single note for what concerns lyrics.
All the benefits of solving the first two described issues will frustrate if in presence of ties Musescore considers two (or more notes) instead that only one. This because the presence or not of ties is unpredictable when you make lyrics slide or when you edit by a text window, and so they will cause errors.
This also frustrate some possible workarounds that I red in the forum; for example to move a portion of text by one note, select and copy it, then cancel it, select the correc starting note and paste repeatedly.
Some of what above, I've found on this old discussion: https://musescore.org/en/node/283991
Comments
1 - Nice suggestion one making mid-insert hyphens move the remaining syllables. But do note that you can just select the remainder and cut and paste them too. No need to reenter everything.
2 - No, there isn't.
It's been a project idea for GSoC for a couple of years now as well. So hopefully someone comes along with the time and skill to add this, it would be most welcome.
3 - I don't fully agree.
As in: yes, usually tied notes are single syllables. But sometimes the 2nd note is covered by a melisma, sometimes with nothing.
Also consider that for multiple verses a tie might not always be a tie.
In reply to 1 - Nice suggestion one… by jeetee
Thanks for your reply!
1 - I red somewhere of the cut/paste (it's described in the last rows of my previous message), but it's not so smart: you paste syllable by syllable; if you have a long text you need CTRL+V maaaany times!!
2 - Ok, let's hope in some skilled volunteers
3 - Melisma if I'm correct is the opposite: more different notes (without tie) with one syllabe, and it would not be a problem. For the rest, I know that in some sporadic cases you may need to consider tied notes as single notes, but I think that since in the most of the situations tied notes have only one syllable, this should be the normal behaviour of the software and the special case has to be solved in special way; not the contrary.
Of course I'm speaking of lyrics editing, for all the rest of the functions tied notes can be considered as more single notes as now.
In reply to Thanks for your reply! 1 - I… by matteogianang1
1 - No need for that. It only pastes syllable by syllable (but you can hold down Ctrl+V ;-) ) if you're inside lyrics edit mode and are pasting plain text.
Go out of lyrics entry mode, click the first syllable to move. Hold Shift and click the last (or use any other means of selecting them, such as via Select > More...). You can now cut, click on the target start note and press paste to have all of them moved at once.
3 - I see the argument you're making, but am not on board with it (yet?)
In the current scenario, yes you have to press space or hyphen or underscore an additional time for when a tied note also is a single syllable. It is the common case, but the effort of overcoming it is fairly low imho.
On the other hand, if you were to auto-skip/extend over that tied note during lyrics input the effort of not doing so when you don't want to becomes probably a more involved effort?