Inserting or editing notes in a score
Is it possible with Musescore ( or indeed with any sequencing software) to insert a note or notes at a given location and for all the other notes and bar lines to move up to accommodate the new notes or move back to fill the gap left by a deleted note. Is it even possible to edit the note length of one note and expect the following notes to move forward or backward. I am thinking on the lines of a word processor where a spelling mistake or a missed word can be easily corrected and all subsequent words move in insert mode. It seems to me that music notation software always tends towards overwriting rather than inserting.
Comments
No, it is not. Use Copy/Cut and paste
In reply to No, it is not. Use Copy/Cut by Jojo-Schmitz
Thanks for your reply. I think it is a pity that music notation software cannot be programmed to behave like a word processor when editing. For example :- suppose I have four crotchets in a bar 4/4 time. I then change the third crotchet to a minim because I made a mistake. I now want this bar to have 2 crotchets and a minim (which it does) with the original fourth crotchet moved into the next bar instead of being deleted and all other notes following moved forward by a quarter note. I want to be able to delete a note without it being replaced by a rest.
This problem has been on my mind for several years now and I have developed a program to input music from a midi keyboard where notes are added on a first pass as ALL crotchets. A second pass alters the rhythm. I really want to share this idea but not quite sure how I would go about it. I think it would be a help to people who find it difficult to record midi in real time and get a clean score. Perhaps I should try Github.
In reply to Thanks for your reply. I by mtaunton
It's not so much that it can't be done; it's more that you'd very often be wrong about what needs to move. Sure it's doable on a single staff score, but how to handle multiple instruments? Depending on your use case, all kind of 'solutions' might be correct and wrong.
As for your idea of entering melody then rhythm: MuseScore allows you to achieve this exactly the other way around; first enter the rhythm, then use repitch mode to enter your notes.
Finally, regarding real-time MIDI input; one of the GSoC students of this year has worked on a semi-realtime method, which might also be quite close to what you're looking for.
And finally, keep in mind that MuseScore is music *notation* software; it is far from a sequencer, nor is it aspiring to be one.
In reply to It's not so much that it by jeetee
Thanks jeetee.
You say
regarding real-time MIDI input; one of the GSoC students of this
year has worked on a semi-realtime method, which might also be quite close to
what you're looking for.
Would I be able to discuss this with the student you mention...by email perhaps?
In reply to Thanks jeetee. You by mtaunton
You can simply read his blog - see https://musescore.org/en/user/57401/blog
As for the idea of a notation program working like a word processor - I think on further thought thought you'll realize the futility of this. With a word process, of course it is a given that upon deleting or inserting something, everything from there on needs to move to accomodate it. That's because characters in a text document have no sopecial relationship to a specific point in time. But in music, most of the time you make a change, you might want *some* notes to move earlier or later in time, but rarely would be literally everything to the end of the score, because very likely, most of the notes are already at the correct time. Only some relativewly small subset of notes would normally need to be mvoed, and unfortunately a notation program has no way of guessing. So of course it's possible to make such a guess, and some notation programs do in fact provide such an option, but at least as often as not, it guesses wrong, and you spend that much longer trying to fix the new error. So instead, msot notation programs encourage you to use cut and paste so you are always in charge of how many notes move.
In reply to You can simply read his blog by Marc Sabatella
But suppose I am composing a melody of say 24 bars and have just completed it. I then decide to insert 2 extra bars at the beginning for an intro. Or I might decide that a note ending a phrase in bar 12 needs to be longer. This type of editing is difficult in my experience with music notation software. I understand your points Marc and thanks for replying. However, I am not sure how cut and paste would solve my hypothetical scenario above.
In reply to But suppose I am composing a by mtaunton
Inserting bars/measures is easy. https://musescore.org/en/handbook/measure-operations
and if I want to edit a note to be longer at the end of a phrase, I would normally be really happy that the next phrase will not be affected when you change it.
In reply to But suppose I am composing a by mtaunton
Inserting bars is in that respect quite different than changing note durations.
Your first scenario: melody of 24 bars written, wanting to add an intro of 2 bars:
Two empty bars will be prepended to your score.
Second scenario: extending a note ending in bar 12
In MuseScore 2.0.3 (haven't tested on older versions) MuseScore adds bars to the end if required to allow fully pasting the melody into the new position.
In reply to But suppose I am composing a by mtaunton
As mentioned, inserting bars is easy - Ins to insert a single bar, Ctrl+Ins to insert multiple (or use Add / Measures).
As for lengthing the last note of a phrase, no need for copy and paste at all if there is nothing after it you want moved. Simply click the note and then select the desired duration. The note is lengthened, everything else i left exactly where it, just as you would normally want. Imagine what a mightmare that could be if there had been another 12 bars after this phrase, and lengthening the last note of the first phrase messed up the timings of everything that came after! This is in fact one of the clearest examples of why it would be bad if a notation program always moved everything over to make room every time you made a change.
In reply to As mentioned, inserting bars by Marc Sabatella
Thanks again Marc. I now want to pick up on your "nightmare" situation which is why I raised this thread in the first place. I want to insert a note with loads of bars following and alter the timings of all notes in these following bars. This does not need to be such a problem. My experience of midi sequencing tells me to define a note or chord as a structure with both ticks and cumulative ticks as fields. All that needs to happen when notes are inserted is an update of cumulative ticks for all notes following the new insertion. This kind of processing is extremely fast and takes care of insertion of any number of notes, and also takes care of any editing of note lengths wherever they appear in the score. If this kind of editing ( like a word processor) could be incorporated in Musescore( or indeed any midi sequencing program) I think it would make editing mistakes much easier to deal with and encourage the use of such software even more. I have had a lot of success using this approach in producing mid files, but I am still relying on software like Musescore or Notation Composer to display the midi file in staff notation.
Martin
In reply to Thanks again Marc. I now by mtaunton
If you really want to move loads of notes - which would be *exceedingly* unusual - you can already do this - that's what cut and paste are for. And since you and only you know how many "loads" of notes should be moved, it's also the *best* way.
In reply to If you really want to move by Marc Sabatella
But cut and paste moves loads of notes. It is not an unusual thing to do at all. My point is that because editing notes , inserting and deleting etc etc is such a common scenario, the rest of the score could be made "intelligent" as to what has happened and rewrite itself accordingly. I appreciate that there are different ways of editing scores but I just wanted to air the possibility of writing notation software in much the same way as a word processor works with insertions and deletions being accommodated by the rest of the text. Imagine the situation the other way round where word processor could only edit a word in a sentence by cutting and pasting or could only paste text at the insertion point by first preparing a blank section of the required length. That to me is the "nightmare" scenario which most if not all midi sequencer programs have.
Anyway Marc I have aired my views and will continue to enjoy using Musescore and other similar programs. Thanks to all who contribute time and effort. I will unsubscribe from this thread now.
In reply to But cut and paste moves loads by mtaunton
Yes cut and paste is capable of moving loads of notes, or just two, or *exactly* the number your want, which only you can know. That is why asking MuseScore to guess I'd almost always going to fail. It is entirely unlike a word processor where of course practically every single time without fail you want everything to move. Literally needing all notes to the end of the score to move would be exceedingly rare, as I said. The vast majority of edits are to cases where only a few notes need moving - perhaps just the very next note, perhaps everything to the end of the measure, perhaps a little further, but hardly ever more.
In reply to But cut and paste moves loads by mtaunton
Just a minor note added for others following along as well.
I've often seen the expectation/comparison that music editing should work like a text editor. Although I very much understand the basic requirement and idea that drives this question, I'd like people with that idea to consider that the mindset to use current notation programs (like MuseScore) I have is to compare it rather with a graphics creation/editing software application than a text editor.
If you keep that in mind a lot of editing functions (and their limitations) make a lot more sense!
If in a drawing program I want to insert a green rectangle inbetween a red and a blue one, I'll also have to show the program how that needs to be done; and as a consequence manually move either the red and/or the blue ones to make space for my new green rectangle.
This of course does not invalidate the scratchpad/timeshift feature request, but it might help at understanding the intended workflow of the program.
I am trying to write a new score but the Note Input feature is not working for me. It just shows an arrow. It will not let me move cursor to line or space to input the note. I think I must have done something to cause it but I don't know what! Please advise. Also, how can I change the octave of a pitch?
In reply to I am trying to write a new by Treble65
An arrow? MuseScore does not use an arrow for a note cursor - it should be a blue box. And the cursor does not specify a line or space - you simply type the letter name of the note you want, click teh appropriate key on the Piano Keyboard window, or click directly in the staff where you want the note placed. Have you read the Handbook and/or watched the tutorial videos to leanr how nite input works? If so, and you are still having trouble, please describe *precisely*, step by step, what you are doing, and we can help sort things out for you.
Once you manage to enter a note, you can change its octave with Ctrl+Up/Down.
In reply to An arrow? MuseScore does not by Marc Sabatella
Why am I getting posts off my subject please?
In reply to Why am I getting posts off my by mtaunton
because MuseScore.org automatically subscribes you to topics you started or commented on, to notify you of new posts to that topic.