Make voltas appear on all staves

• May 23, 2023 - 11:19

It seems currently impossible to make voltas appear on any but the top stave of a system. It would be helpful to have the option to place them on any or all staves. Thank You

Comments

• May 23, 2023 - 19:11

Hi Jojo

Thank you, that works. I have to ctrl + drag to the correct measure, as a double-click sends the volta to the top line again, and even with 4 measures selected the volta is only applied to the first selected measure, so I have to drag the control points to extend the line. However, I can work with this.

Thank You.

While we are talking, I would also like to export as .jpg files rather than .png.

When working with multiple layers, it would be useful to be able to print the music in the layer display colours, rather than resolving to black.

Can either of these be done, or added to the next upgrade?
Regards
Carl

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• May 24, 2023 - 10:41

Hi Jojo
The Paint workaround is what I currently use for .jpg. I work with a chamber group (amateur) and a couple of them use ipads. Scrolling pdf is not always smooth, so I tried exporting to png and setting the image files in Word. png also flickers as you change page, but jpg does not, hence the direct export would be nice. Never mind, back to Paint.

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• May 25, 2023 - 14:43

Hm, if there is a bug in the program they are using on iPad causing PDF to flicker, it makes much more sense to submit a bug report to the developers of that app. Similar if Word is having trouble with PNG. Resorting to JPG is a terrible idea for line-based graphics like music and will cause all sorts of issues with lines being fuzzy or disappearing do to the lossy compression algorithm. But, any graphics editor should be able to do the conversion if you don't mind the loss of quality and need to work around a bug in some other app.

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• May 25, 2023 - 17:24

I don't think there is a bug anywhere, it's just difficult when we need to work on the transition from the bottom of one page to the top of the next. pdf doesn't hold still, just jumps from one page to the next, while word seems to want to reload a png file whenever you move to the next page, causing a flicker. jpg doesn't flicker at all, and you can hold it between pages easily in Word, and the resolution is perfectly adequate. Personally I still use paper, usually printed directly from the file, but I do try to accommodate the preferences of the other musicians, so I shall just continue to convert png to jpg in paint.

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• May 24, 2023 - 11:04

Hi Jojo
Thanks for the reply, and yes, I do mean voices. I can find colour notes in the plugins, but not colour voices. Colour notes might look pretty, but I can't see any serious use for it, so I haven't explored it too much. What I want to be able to do is write out a 4-voice fugue with Soprano, Alto, Tenor and Bass each in their own colour and then print it out like this as an aid to understanding as one learns the piece. I currently use Finale for this (sorry about the bad language), but I cannot expect my students to pay £300 for a fancy program when MuseScore does just about everything else they need for free.

Regards
Carl

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• May 24, 2023 - 13:03

Yes, that's what I thought. Assuming I've done it correctly, the plugin appears not to be doing anything. I've downloaded both files:-

1.x+2.x
3.0.2+4.x

Unzipped them and moved them to the MuseScore 4 plugins folder. The Colour Voices icon shows up in Plugin Manager, and I've enabled it. I then select the entire score - Ctrl + A - and nothing changes. The notes show up Blue & Green when selected, but revert to black if I cancel the selection. I have attached the file I was testing the plugin with, in case it is of any use.

I assume the error is mine, but I don't know what is wrong.

Regards
Carl

Attachment Size
Rio By Night.mscz 44.68 KB

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• May 25, 2023 - 15:26

As I am the bass player and direct rehearsals from the bass, I need to be able to see and hear what other musicians are doing while playing my own part. It would be convenient not to have to search for voltas on the top part while I am busy reading my own. I do not consider this unusual or special, thank you, merely practical.

If I later choose to extract a part, then no problem, I can do that when appropriate.

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• May 25, 2023 - 17:40

Well, it is definitely unusual otherwise we'd get more requests for this :-). I definitely like the idea of just moving your part to the top then, very simple to do (drag in the Instruments panel). You can even have a "part" that contains all the staves but in a different order.

But also, as mentioned Ctrl+drag allows you to add the volta to any staff you like - it's meant for the special cases like this. And don't extend with drag; that's never correct. Use Shift+right - same for ordinary voltas as these special ones.

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• May 25, 2023 - 18:36

Thanks for the tip about Shift + Right; I'll try that next time, but as for putting the bass at the top try telling that to the next string quartet you meet!!

I don't like throwing things in people's faces, especially when they are doing such a good job, but Finale has a simple check box to "show [voltas] on all staves". what more can I say?

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• May 25, 2023 - 18:45

Again, people normally play from their own parts, not from the score, so it's kind of moot about the string quartet - plus of course they usually don't have actually basses, just cellos :-). But indeed, no reason one couldn't choose to put their part on top in that setting too, or add the voltas to their own staves.

A design for easily specifying which staves you want voltas & other system-level markings to appear on is being worked on. It won't be as limited as just a check box to show on all staves, though, because you almost never want to clutter things that much. In your case, you need it on just your own staff. Doing on each staff adds extra space unnecessarily and potentially spreads things out to need more pages. What's more common is to do it in sections, like above the woodwinds, brass, percussion, and strings in an orchestral, or saxes, trumpets, trombones, and rhythm in a big band chart, etc. So that's the level of flexibility being designed - not just all or nothing.

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• May 25, 2023 - 20:06

You missed the point about the string quartet. Things are usually done in a standard convention so everyone knows what to expect within reason, and the soprano is ALWAYS above the bass within any given section, so imagine giving Leonard Bernstein an orchestral score with the oboe directly below the trombone because it seemed like a good idea to the copyist! Let's not lose sight of the fact that ALL these programs are (or should be) intended to display the music as the musician expects it, not so the musician has to adapt his lifetime skills at the whim of a programmer/developer - we get quite enough of that from Microsoft, thank you.

When presenting a new arrangement to the group the parts are - quite properly - in SATB order, and the first few runs though can be tricky. requiring intense concentration, and it would be HELPFUL, though not NECESSARY, to arrange certain items so as to make it easier to conduct the rehearsal in a more productive way.
Once the piece begins to sit well with the musicians, I can think about an extraction, but the fact is I am the only professional, leading a group of enthusiastic amateurs, and I will probably always need recourse to the score, and I don't want to miss a repeat sign because the player on part 3 made a mistake, and I'm trying to figure out what went wrong.

OK, I can go along my score and with a pencil and ruler put my own voltas where I want them, but one hopes that such a versatile tool as MuseScore would have an easy way of doing just that.

If future developments address this problem, then well and good, but until then, MuseScore is a tool in my box, and I will continue to choose the best tool for the work I am doing at the time.

Thanks
Carl

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• May 26, 2023 - 00:05

I didn't miss the point, I just assume if someone is non-traditional enough to want to read from a score rather than their own part, they might also be non-traditional enough to be OK with reading their part at the top instead of the bottom. Or they''d be OK with spending the extra few seconds to Ctrl+drag the volta where necessary. Again, that's all that's needed here - no pencil, no need to wait for new feature - it's already simple to add the volta as explained. And yes, future versions will make it even easier.

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