Move notes horizontally (exchange places)

I don't know; I do not compose, I only make editions of music someone else composed (usually several centuries ago).

I do mistakes, though; for instance sometime I skip something (a measure or a few notes) while entering notes. In this case, the easiest thing is to select everything from the skipped measure to the end, copy, paste it after a measure and fill in the gap with the skipped notes.

I wold expect that if note A makes at least some sense in position A and note B makes some sense in position A+1, swapping them is unlikely (mind, unlikely, not impossible) to make sense; so I would expect this is a less required feature. But, of course, this is only my opinion.

Why 'shuffling notes' is not implemented? Possibly, because it is more complex than it may look at first sight: what to do with ties, with slurs, with accidentals, with lyrics, with dynamics, with tuplets, with changes of time,... if the fragment you are shuffling starts or ends 'inside' any of them?

M.

MuseScore has copy & paste; seems that handles most of what I could imagine any "horizontal moving" facility being used for. I guess I'd have to see a more specific real world example.

The insert function existed in Midisoft like 20 years ago, in Window 3.1. hahaha

Was looking for something simple to use.

I see why people create VM just to be able to use Midisoft which came out back in 1995, I think.

I am sorry. musescore is inferior than a software that existed 20 yrs. ago.

I guess I am creating a VM just to edit some midi files.

Can't believe how limited musescore is.

Can't insert note or notes. Wow.

People, don't waste your time with this garbage.

I can create the video in an other format if you like. To see it, download it first and then it should be OK. Or I can email it, it is 450 kB.

I am not that good at writing. So let's say I have a blank measure. I start with a quarter note on the first beat. I have then my note, a first rest ( the second 1/4 note ) and an other one ( the following 1/2 note ). Those rests are automatically displayed in Cakewalk. I can then move my 1/4 note to the second beat with the mouse. Cakewalk then displays a rest ( first 1/4 note ), my note and still the other rest ( the remaining 1/2 note ).

I can do that even when other notes are present in the measure. Every notes and rests are redrawed accordingly. And they are played as displayed.

I will try your cut/paste feature tonight.

Thanks for your support ! And congratulations, MuseScore is beautiful.
Richard

This right here is exactly the mentality that I suspected/feared the designers of Musescore might have. To suggest that a composer should use pencil and paper first until we are more sure of what we want sets computer-aided composition back 30 years. Would anyone suggest that you write out emails by hand before "committing" them to the computer? No, it's horribly inefficient, and if your software expects this of you, then it's not written with creativity in mind. One of the great strengths of good computer software is it's ability to let you make changes easily, whether it be in word processing, graphic design, programming, or *gasp* music editing. You get an idea; you draw it or type it or input it and then you look at it or read it back or listen to it and see how you like it. Maybe you already knew exactly what you wanted and you're just checking to make sure you got it right, but more often than not, you are a CREATOR and are making this up as you go, because experimentation is key in the creative process. How is Musescore itself developed? Creativity. Trial and error. What I am suggesting here is a huge paradigm shift. I have been writing/arranging music on the computer since the DOS days of the early 90's, and guess what: I don't play the piano very well. I rely on THE COMPUTER to play back for me what I've created so I can decide if I like it that way or not, and one of the most common changes a composer will make in this process is the rhythm. I have a series of quarter note chords. I think I'd like to hear what it sounds like if one of them in the middle starts half a beat sooner. I don't want to delete and re-input that really cool chord I just made because it just might be "the lost chord" and I might never find it again. Besides, it's a 6-note chord and re-entering it would be INEFFICIENT. No problem; I select the chord and slide it over. The notes in the same voice that come before the chord shorten to accommodate the slide. The notes I'm moving lengthen so that they continue to meet the notes that follow. Then I play it back and see if I like it. Well what if I didn't want the chord I'm moving to change duration, only position? Well that's easy to change, because I can just select the chord and drag the right edge to change it's length to leave a rest afterward. And what if I wanted everything after this chord to slide along with it? Well as it so happens I'm also a video editor, and all good video editing programs have a toggle switch (often called Ripple Edit) that determines whether the items that come in time after your current position are affected by your edits. Why not make that option in Musescore? I think the problem comes from focusing too much on the notation, rather than on the music it represents. You want a chord in 4/4 time that lasts for 5 beats? No problem. You enter the notes, Musescore will create a tie over the bar automatically. If you decide afterward you want that chord to start a beat later, no problem. You grab the chord and scoot it over, and Musescore adjusts the tie automatically. Ok, nevermind. I don't want the dotted rhythm either. I just want to join two of those quarter note chords into one chord. No problem. I select them and hit the hotkey for 'join'. How about 'J'? Great; done deal. Now it's a half note chord. Let the creator handle the creativity and let the software handle the technicality, because that's what software is good at. Don't try and force the creator to be the techie. As to the position of "You'll learn more that way," well, let me just say that I learned notation from writing music on the computer and having the computer play it back. I did not learn music from writing notation.

you'd need some kind of modifier key to indicate that. With slurs, 1st/2nd time bars etc the established protocol is ctrl + arrow to alter duration.

sorry, to be more clear

shift arrow to move notes, ctrl-arrow to alter duration of anything. For things that span notes (e.g. slurs) the way it currently works is good.

Could use ctrl-up and ctrl-down arrows for duration, e.g. up makes a 3->4 (semi to quaver) etc. Dot works as before.

It would be great if it could be non-destructive as well, e.g. you have a full bar, you turn a crotchet into a minim, and it pushes everything after to the right by 1 beat rather than deleting the following note. Maybe ctrl-delete a note could shift everything as well, rather than converting it to a rest, same as ctrl-delete a bar removes it rather than erasing its content.

So these would be consistent with the current paradigms in use.

on the point of a single numerical keystroke.

Mostly when you want to change duration, you want to double or halve it. If you just user ctrl-up to double it, you wouldn't need to figure out which number to press. If you get the number wrong, you can destroy adjacent notes.

I end up using Ctrl-Z far too much.

whether to destructively alter or not could be function of insert key, as per windows standard overwrite or not, as I can see sometimes it would be handy to have a change in duration affect the next note(s)

thanks for the info on Q and W, that's very helpful.

However, as for your reasoning about having to enter rests first, it's different.

When you start in a bar, it already has a rest in it, but there are no notes. It's perfectly reasonable to assume you should be able to add a crotchet in beat 4, rather than having to enter 2 rests then a crotchet.

Are we trying to make things easier for people or not? Is it easier to

a) learn this is what you need to do
b) enter 3 thinge to get 1 note

or just enter 1 note? I think this could be made easier, and sure there may be some issues about exactly where a note should be entered. Maybe it's just me, or do people think in terms of notes rather than rests (even though of course they are equally important), especially when considering that to begin with, the bar is not empty, but contains a rest.

I've also found it, or at least I initially found it very difficult to insert a rest, and resorted to creating rests by deletion of notes.

I just tried it, and it's difficult. If you select a quaver, select rest, then hit 3 (semi) and click the rest again (too many steps) it turns the quaver into a semi, but in the first half, and that probably just happened by hitting 3, rather than selecting the rest toolbar icon. How is that rest toolbar icon even intended to operate? I've not found it to do anything.

I just did some testing.

if you select a note, and click the rest button, it does nothing (but shows the button depressed). So it can't be used to turn a note into a rest (for that you have to delete the note).

If you click the rest button, you can't use it to insert a rest.

Take the following scenario, you're in 4/4 and you want to have 3 crotchets, beats 1,2, and 4. Say the notes are A, B and C.

Hit N
Type 5
Type A
Type B
Hit escape to end note entering
Right arrow to select minim rest
Hit 5, which splits the minim rest into 2 crotchet rests
Right arrow select beat 4
Type C

I found an alternative using Q / W

Hit N
Type 5
Type A
Type B
Right arrow to select minim rest
Hit Q, which turns the minim rest into a quaver, etc
Hit W, which turns the quaver rest into a crotchet rest
Right arrow select beat 4
Type C

If you could hit a key to effectively enter a rest (e.g. skip forward) of the current duration, it would be a lot easier. Say for example you could enter a rest by hitting the minus sign (or some other, maybe H since it's one past G), then the above would be

Hit N
Type 5
Type A
Type B
Type -
Type C

Done. I tried all the keys on the keyboard, and found a bunch more very interesting shortcuts, but nothing that would do this.

Entering a rest, could be considered equivalent to moving the note insertion point to the right by whatever the current duration is.

I find myself going in and out of note entering mode a LOT (escape key) in order to include rests in the lines I'm inputting.

Thanks for the suggestion. However, unfortunately not feasible when opening other people's scores.