How to pause playback without rewind
Is there a way of pausing playback at a particular position wthout rewinding to the beginning? I tried hitting the spacebar at bar 16, for example, while playing a song from the beginning , assuming that focus would then be on bar 16. Instead the cursor was at the beginning of the score.
I tried looking in the Shortcuts list for a "pause" function but didn't find any.
While I'm on the topic of shortcuts:
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Is there a shortcut for quickly getting to the shortcuts list to look for a shortcut? again, I tried searching for "shortcut" in the shortcuts list, but no luck.
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In the Preferences dialog, when one opens it up, one has to tab several times to get to the list of topics, then arrow down several times to get to the Shortcuts topic before one can use the shortcuts dialog. Suggestion:
a. A Shortcut to get to the shortcuts list quickly for those using a screen reader and hotkey navigation would be helpful.
b. When searching for a shortcut in the search field, one has to tab twice to get to the list of search results, passing over some button about sort order. Would be nice if either the search results showed up in the search field as a list or if one only had to tab once to get to the list of search results.
--Pete
Comments
"Is there a way of pausing playback at a particular position without rewinding to the beginning?"
In MS 4.0.2 this is what I observe: the spacebar controls "start playback", "pause playback" and "resume playback" exactly as you need.
You may still see the start note highlighted at the beginning of the score, but the playback cursor remains on the beat where you pause the playback until you resume playback.
To elaborate:
Space definitely pauses playback without rewinding - playback will then resume at the same location. However, it does not change the selection, nor in many cases should it. But it totally makes sense that at least sometimes you'd want to be able to quickly select what is at the current playback position. That seems like a command that should be added, so I'd recommend opening an issue on GitHub for that.
The shortcut dialog is definitely not very accessible, which is unfortunate. See https://github.com/musescore/MuseScore/issues/16157 and feel free comment there with any additional insight. I suspect some of the info in that issue might be outdated, but clearly there is still room for improvement.
In reply to To elaborate: Space… by Marc Sabatella
After working with this some more, as you say, hitting space does seem to pause playback and restart at the paused location.
I am confused though, since after pausing, if I hit a movement key like control+RightArrow to move to the next measure, I am moved to some other measure in the project other than the next measure at which I paused. I presume this has something to do with a playback cursor versus some other cursor but have no idea how to use keyboard commands to route one to another. So the question is, how do I stop some place in a score and then move from that position?
--Pete
In reply to After working with this some… by ptorpey
Selection is completely unaffected by playback. So whatever you had selected before starting playback, should still be selected after you pause. Ctrl+Right thus completely ignores playback, but simply resumes navigation from wherever you were navigating before you started the playback.
Changing the selection will change the playback cursor, but currently there is no way to go the other way - to use the playback cursor to affect the selection. That's what I was saying would make a useful new command. I'm trying to think if there would be some way to trick MuseScore into doing this currently, but I don't think so.
In reply to Selection is completely… by Marc Sabatella
Got it. Using JAWS I was unaware of the selection.
Per your suggestion, I created an issue on GitHub and suggested either a hotkey to move the selection point to the paused location or a setting in preferences to have the selection cursor track with the playback cursor.
After thinking about it some more, I wonder if just hitting escape could clear the selection and make this work as I thought it would?
--Pete
In reply to Got it. Using JAWS I was… by ptorpey
Not sure if this is clear, but "selection" is the same thing as "navigation cursor". IN other words, what you hear being read as you cursor through your score, is the selection. The cursor keys change the selection - that's how navigation works. It's not ideal as it means there is no way to navigate while keeping a selection, which would be needed for various operations like creating discontinuous list selection (currently requires Ctrl+clicking individual elements) or for Select / All similar in range, which would require you to navigate to a specific element while preserving the range selection around it.
Esc clears the selection and hence the navigation cursor but we do preserve a notion of where it previously was, so it resumes where you left off if you then press Alt+Left/Right again (or Shift+L). This was a highly requested accessibility feature when we added it a few years back, so I don't think it would be good to change the behavior to suddenly start selecting something at the playback position instead. I think it should be a separate command to set the selection to the location of the playback cursor.
I checked to see if this was something that could be done via a plugin - and hence a solution could be provided sooner rather than later - but it doesn't seem to be.
In reply to Not sure if this is clear,… by Marc Sabatella
Thanks for the clarification. That explains the behavior I am seeing. Quite a conundrum!
I wonder if the behavior could be different if one is in note entry mode versus "normal" mode. Presumably if one is in note entry mode one does want to navigate and work in that space.
I never quite understood why there was a note entry and "normal" mode since, as you explained before, hitting a letter key will automatically put one in note entry mode if one was in "normal" mode. Maybe because there could be a conflict with other hotkeys?
?Anyway, thanks. I'll keep playing with this.
--Pete
In reply to Thanks for the … by ptorpey
Do you mean, pressing Space while in note input mode? I doubt people do that very often, and indeed I'm kind of surprised to find it even works at all. But probably even more so than normal mode, you'd expect to keep your cursor position. Really,. most of the time I think people expect to keep their selection unless they explicitly change it.
As for why there are two modes - it's actually mostly about the mouse. Click in normal mode selects; clicking in note input mode inputs notes. If it were only about the keyboard, it would probably be easier to figure out a way to eliminate the distinction. There are some differences there too though - like how in note input mode, shortcuts for setting duration, accidentals, and voice all work to set the stage for the next note you enter, but in normal mode, they immediately affect whatever is currently selected. So it really is a more fundamental difference between entering notes and editing them.
In reply to Not sure if this is clear,… by Marc Sabatella
One more suggestion:
How about if hitting space works the same as it does now, but control+space can be used to toggle pause/play and also redirect the selection / navigation point to the paused position?
--Pete
In reply to One more suggestion: How… by ptorpey
This is an interesting idea, especially when wone also considers that it is common for people to want a way to keep restarting playback from the same position. So one version of the command could keep restarting playback from the same position and keeping the same selection; the other could move the selection on pause and also make the next playback start there. Some might say one is more of a "stop" and the other a "pause", although that's not necessarily a perfect analogy.
In reply to This is an interesting idea,… by Marc Sabatella
That would be a nice feature if it can be implemented. Right now it is very inefficient to get back to where I tried to pause in order to make an edit based on what I'm hearing.
--Pete