Comments about Roman Numeral Analysis feature

• Nov 8, 2019 - 03:37

Just as I needed RNA, 3.3 came out with it. Bravo team for this. I have two requests:

  • I did not find a way to enter the key for the analysis, nor any key changes along the analysis. Typically, the analysis key is indicated as, say 'C#:' right under the key signature and key changes can happen anywhere and are not indicated under a note. I looked for another way for entering keys and key changes but I could not add any text elsewhere but right under a note or a rest. It is possible to enter a key inside a RNA field but this pushes the RNA symbol further away right from under the notes.

  • As notes go lower than the stave, the RNA symbols get pushed down resulting in unaligned / vertically-ragged RNA symbols. A vertical alignment feature would be nice. That is vertically align all RNA symbols based on the lowest RNA symbol in a line.

Comments

• Nov 8, 2019 - 06:55
  • You could use a CHord Symbol on the 1st note/rest (after any new keysig) and move that to below staff and left. Has the extra charm that it transposes along with the score and renders the sharps and flats properly
  • This is done for some elements, like lyrics and voltas, but not for others, maybe RNA needs this too, until then you can manually offset them

Reply

• Nov 8, 2019 - 15:55

Thanks, Jojo-Schmitz, for your reply.

I did try to move texts around before, but I was not using the right method and abandoned. Your reply prompted me to try again and I found the way to move the texts around: I have to select the text object. Not the text box, which can't be selected, or the string of text itself.

I ended up adding/using an expression text and unsetting the italic for the RNA keys. I found the Chord symbol text turns lowercases to uppercases and don't accept colon character. For the work I'm doing, I use lowercases for minors. I also tried Lyrics texts but they are difficult to correctly align vertically as they seem to snap to a grid. So expression text does the right thing for me.

This said, properly rendering flats and sharp is a nice feature to have so I might reconsider writing Gm instead of g for minor keys.

Anyways, thanks again. I think I'm on the right track now.

Reply

• Nov 8, 2019 - 16:01

For the ":" symbol you will have to substitute the shortcuts assigned to this keys, these are "previous beat" and "next beat" so whenever you are making the RNA you can put a text and then the ":" symbol.

Now for writing the key what you can do is write the key (C for example), then the ":" and for making an space press alt+space so it won't change to the next note.

Attachment Size
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Reply

• Nov 9, 2019 - 22:20

You can also add the colon from the Special Characters palette. Maybe do that once, but while you're at it, drag the color from Special Characters to your own Text palette to make it easier to enter in the future. In theory Ctrl+":" should add a colon as well (like Ctrl+space adds a space), but it doens't work on my keybaord - I get a semicolon.

I'm thinking of disabling ":" for navigation in RNA because it's so obviously useful as a character, but then, ";" is very useful for navigation. Open to suggestions. Maybe make ";" and ":" both add the characters but allow Ctrl to make the work with navigation (backwards from how it is now)?

For alignment, alignment by system has been requested for chord symbols as well, same code is sued so if one gets implemented, so will the other. Meanwhile, I recommend just icrceasing the default distance.

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• Nov 10, 2019 - 18:35

Well, it should already be the case that Ctrl+colon would enter a colon. It's just currently not working on all keyboards, probably because colon is often Shift+semicolon. Ctrl+colon (aka Ctrl+shift+semicolon) works on my Chromebook running MuseScore as a Linux app, but not on my Windows computer, go figure. Maybe that's fixable, maybe not, which is why I was wondering about other possibilities. But ideally, yes, we'd fix it so Ctrl+colon (Ctrl+Shift+semicolon) always worked.

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• Aug 21, 2020 - 05:00

Workaround for vertical alignment: once done editing the symbols in a staff, select all (right click - more - in same staff), switch off auto placement in inspector, increase vertical spacing until satisfied.

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• Aug 21, 2020 - 05:08

Actually, for 3.5, this is now automatic. Just set an appropriate value for the maximum you want them shifted below, in Format / Style / Chord Symbols.

Also, in the few cases where you do need to resort to manual adjustments, it's better not to disable autoplace. You can position them where you want and other things will still avoid collisions with them - best of both worlds.

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