Instrument groups
I think I brought this up before but now I have fully thought this through. Large groups (e.g. strings) will be grouped with thick brackets. They have an extra amount of space between each other and can optional go under one name. Small groups (e.g. violins) will be indicated with thin brackets or braces. You can have a groupwide name (e.g. Vln.) and and assign group names (e.g. II). They still retain their own names though, so if the play alone it will show Vlns. II not II. There could be an option to display system text above certain large groups in addition to the top instrument.
Comments
Is this a bad idea? No one has responded yet.
In reply to Is this a bad idea? No one… by ♪𝔔𝔲𝔞𝔳𝔢𝔯 ℭ𝔯𝔞𝔣𝔱𝔢𝔯♪
You can do this in a template, using brackets and extra space above stave.
In reply to You can do this in a… by Jojo-Schmitz
You can't totally do this in a template or you could do it from scratch, unless there is some magic in templates I don't know about.
You cannot make the second French horn say Horn II when the first horn is invisible then have Horn centered between the two staves with a I before the Horn I and II before Horn II staves.
The proposal boils down to this:
Allow several consecutive instruments to be assigned a name (such as Horn or Clarinet).
Allow each instrument in the group have it's own part name such as I, II, III or 1, 2&3, Bass and so forth.
The Group name will always be centered on all visible staves and each part will always display its part name. As a result, the only time you will see Horn II is when Horn II is the only horn visible. Otherwise Horn will be centered on the horn staves and a horn number displayed before each staff.
I propose that the instruments dialog control which instruments are in a group similar to adding staves. Include an "Add instrument" button which will add another instrument of the same type directly below the existing instrument. This instrument will be considered its own part, so dynamics will default to affecting only each instrument. Each part will also be assigned its own Mixer channel so for example Violin II can play pizzacato or Horn I can be soloed.
The staff properties can have an instrument group name, perhaps directly above the current part name field. Changing this for one instrument in the group will change it for all instruments in the group.
Allowing nesting of these would be a very good option. This will allow for the common Archi label to be used outside of all of the strings, while Violin I and II (or even Violin I div. with two staves) to be used.
The same display logic could then be applied to brackets so that when the last instrument inside the bracket is not visible, the bracket will remain visible.
In reply to You can't totally do this in… by mike320
It should not be limited to adding the same instrument. If you look at the trombones on scores often the 2 tenors are braced to the bass each getting their own label and a collective lable.
I was thinking that groups could be implemented in a “bracket properties” window.
In reply to It should not be limited to… by ♪𝔔𝔲𝔞𝔳𝔢𝔯 ℭ𝔯𝔞𝔣𝔱𝔢𝔯♪
In my proposal I did allow for such things. My example of clarinets mixed with bass clarinets is the same idea.
I'd love to see this implemented.
The only problem would be, well, what if someone wants to group some groups? Could we group different levels of groupings? And how many subdivisions would we allow? I feel it's one of those things that, while useful, everyone has their own idea of how it should work, and we all know how hard it is to please everyone. However, at a minimum, I think MuseScore should allow muting of different staves within a part for playback. Then the devs can decide what they will do from there.
I thought of this while playing-back (playback-ing?), because it was really annoying to mute/unmute everything in the mixer. I was able to live without proper visuals, so all I had to do in my case was make a [very ugly] plugin to solve that problem (group_mute.qml). It only works with a particular setup, though, because I didn't want to get into the whole dynamic Qml element and runtime generation thing (Grouped.mscz). I'm sure that it's possible for someone more familiar with QtQuick to get it to change groupings on the fly (Just be sure to save the settings in a MetaTag), but that isn't me. I have other things to program.
It's pretty atrocious, but if you can figure how it works (I've tried to help with comments), you might be able to set it up for any given score.
In reply to I'd love to see this… by hdt80bro
Here is an example of how this works: https://files.musopen.org/media/0ff75652-4554-4a04-bfcc-fccbb18c9f8a.pd…
In reply to I'd love to see this… by hdt80bro
Why would you mute everything in the mixer?
In reply to I'd love to see this… by hdt80bro
It is simply a visual representation of a convenience that allows me to abstract away another grouping layer by putting everything into a central container. Basically, less code. Besides, you never know; someone might want that (like how you can mute a video, I guess?). Do you want me to write the plugin for you? If there's interest, I will actually go look into learning Qml to polish it up.
Came up again in https://musescore.org/en/node/274668. I guess someone should make a feature request. I'll do that in a little while unless someone beats me to it.
In reply to Came up again in https:/… by mike320
I did it: https://musescore.org/en/node/274685
In reply to I did it: https://musescore… by ♪𝔔𝔲𝔞𝔳𝔢𝔯 ℭ𝔯𝔞𝔣𝔱𝔢𝔯♪
If you simply put #274685 in brackets [ ] it's supposed to automatically link to this thread and will show the title here. #274685: Instrument Groupings
In reply to If you simply put #274685 in… by mike320
That's nice to know.