Attach lyrics to rests
It would be great to be able to add lyrics to rests. I know there are a few work arounds, like using CTRL-t, but they are clumsy and don't work well with multiple verses.
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Can you explain your use case? Are these actually lyrics? if so, how is the musician reading them supposed to understand the pitches or rhythms? And how would you propsoe MuseScore handled the spacing?
In reply to Can you explain your use by Marc Sabatella
It is for cases where only the musical accompaniment is written out on the Treble and Bass clef. So there is no musical note to attach it to. If MuseScore allowed one to attach lyrics to rests, problem solved.
In reply to It is for cases where only by hwhillhouse
That doesn't answer my questions, though. How is the person reading the score supposed to know what notes to sing if there is only accompaniment? And how is MuseScore supposed to know how to space the lyrics? It won't even know which lyrics go in which measure, much less how they line up with the accompaniment. I'm also not understanding where you are picturing these lyrics being placed - on a separate staff that contains only rests? Why would you include that rather than a regular staff with notes?
In reply to That doesn't answer my by Marc Sabatella
Such a score is not meant to be self-contained so that a person who does not know the song at all can sing it. However, if you know the song and can hum the melody of the lyrics, then you would be able to play and sing the piece.
This is very common in guitar tablature on the internet. For instance, if you go to www.ultimate-guitar.com, you will find ~800,000 songs that are mostly just chords and lyrics. For a specific example, look at Stairway to Heaven at:
https://tabs.ultimate-guitar.com/l/led_zeppelin/stairway_to_heaven_tab…
When trying to do this for piano in MuseScore, one encounters a problem (actually two). First, you can't add a lyric to a beat that doesn't have a note. Second, it is very clumsy to add multiple words to one note.
One might hope that adding such a simple feature to MuseScore would make it significantly easier for people to contribute scores for popular music.
In reply to Such a score is not meant to by hwhillhouse
For 'internet style' Tabs like your (Stairway to Heaven) example:
...one really doesn't need a score writer app - there are no notes whatsoever. (A typewriter could reproduce this.)
For your particular case, you wrote:
...if you know the song and can hum the melody of the lyrics, then you would be able to play and sing the piece.
So... you want a notated piano accompaniment with lyrics as *text*, because the *melody* is not present. (Lyrics are normally assigned to melody notes, not rests and non-melody notes.)
Perhaps using text frames for the lyrics could help with multiple verses. You can put the lyrics above or below the staff, and the text frame expands as different verses get added. See attachment...
Piano Man.mscz
...although I must say that 'standard practice' is to notate the lyrics (attached to the melody) on a separate staff.
Regards.
In reply to Such a score is not meant to by hwhillhouse
You could fake your lyrics rhythm by using a hidden voice. You can't attach lyrics to rests, but you can attach them to invisible notes. So you could try and work with that as a possible workaround.
As for entering multiple words to a single note, you just have to hold Ctrl (or option on Mac) while typing the space. I'd hardly call holding a single key very clumsy, but perhaps you weren't aware of this method yet..
In reply to You could fake your lyrics by jeetee
Thank you jeetee! I did not know about the "Ctrl-space" input. I have used that in the score now, but I am not sure how to use the "hide note" trick you mentioned. Here is the first page of the score I am working on as an example. Both Treble and Bass clefs are for piano, and the lyrics are attached to those notes. However, in the first measure, there is a G chord held for the whole measure, but the lyrics only start on the second beat. I worked around this by using 4 quarter notes with ties, but a cleaner way would be to enter one quarter note and three quarter rests with pedal starting on the first quarter note. One would need to position the lyrics to the first rest. Any suggestions?
Thank you Marc. I just saw your last comment. I see what you are saying. Having all the lyrics be staff text is perhaps a good option.
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In reply to Thank you jeetee! I did not by hwhillhouse
For something like this, I'd say either doing what you did or using the hidden note method would be equally effective. To do the latter, simply enter the melody that goes with the lyrics in a second (or third) voice - see the Handbook under "Voices" if you are not familiar with this - then select the contents of that voices (Ctrl+A, use View / Selection Filter to exclude the other voices) and press "V" to hide them. Then you have the notes and can attach lyrics normally, and they will space correctly and do everything else lyrics are supposed to do. On screen, you'll see the invisible notes greyed out by default:
But in the print or PDF (or on screen if you turn off the display of invisible elements via the View menu), you see this:
One slight bug exposed by my example: if you do a select all then press "V", dots remain visible. That's because they are being toggled twice - once because the dot itself is selected, once because the note it is attach to is. The solution is to mark everything invisible using the Inspector instead of the "V" shortcut. This bug is already reported as #116771: Note's dot's visibility is incorrect when toggling visibility with note and dot selected and will hopefully be fixed for a future version of MuseScore.
I could also probably imporve the spacing by using voice 3 instead of voice 2, which would cause MuseScore to not offset the "G" on the second beat. Or I could merge the noteheads using the Inspector.
In reply to For something like this, I'd by Marc Sabatella
Awesome! Thank you Marc!
In reply to Such a score is not meant to by hwhillhouse
Did you link the right example? The one you showed doesn't use a separate lyric staff at all - the lyrics are attached directly to the tab staff. You can do that easily in MuseScore, no need to create an extra staff full of rests.
But indeed, since these lyrics don't correspond to the notes, you probably don't want to use the lyrics feature, which is all about the automatic spacing to match syllables with notes. instead, simply use staff text, with an appropriate text style to make it appear below the staff. This is much easier to do and much easier to read and takes much less space than adding a another staff full of rests just for the lyrics.