Placement of tremolo, fingering: Wish list

• Nov 14, 2016 - 01:47

Two wishes for version 3 (or later):

1. Tremolo tremolo.png

As you see from this example (from a score I am working on), the tremolo bars (I don't know what they are called officially) sometimes touch the beam, sometimes the note head and sometimes cross the ledger lines. On un-beamed notes they are sometimes at the very end of the stem as if they were about to slip off. It is slow work to correct all this because the item to select is so small; one often selects the stem or the beam or even the note head and has to try several times. It would be nice if it were positioned off the head, with the end of the stem sticking out and in such a way as not to confuse any ledger lines. On beamed notes the beam must sometimes be moved away from the heads to allow enough space. From the list of collision avoidances that I read it seems this is not now in the works, but it would help greatly.

2. Placement of fingerings (specifically but not necessarily exclusively fingerings for violins)

Musescore places fingerings for violins inside the staff unless the note concerned "sticks out". This makes the small figures hard to read (they touch the lines above and below or else they are cut in half by a line). Most printed music I own (if it has fingerings in it at all) has them either above or below the staff vertically above/below the note concerned.

Three wishes for this:

- Make fingerings flip to above/ below like staccato dots or slurs (useful especially for alternative fingerings).
- Place them outside the staff in all cases.
- This one is violin/viola/cello specific: For double (triple and quadruple) stops Musescore places the fingerings to the left of the note concerned. This is highly unusual in my experience. The common practice is to place them stacked in the order of the notes above or below the staff. You just have to look at a page from the Bach solo pieces and you'll see why sideways is a bad choice--beyond the fact that the numbers are hard to read between the staff lines.


Comments

Regarding the tremolo, the beamed notes are going to be problematic no matter what, but probably the best approach is to simply edit the beam to lengthen the stems. But I don't understand your comment about issues with unbeamed notes. Could you attach the score you are having problems with?

As for fingering, be sure you try the various different finger options in the palette. There are ones specifically designed to do appropriate things for piano versus guitar LH versus guitar RH. Chances are one of them will work well for your situation as well.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

Unbeamed notes with tremolo here (as entered with no corrections whatsoever):

tremolo.png

Second fiddle is perfect here (surprisingly), but look at the first: The tremolo bars are right on top of the ledger lines. This is certainly bad. Look at the a in bars 1 and 4: The bars here are at the very end of the stem--as if they were about to slip off as I said. I feel obliged to correct every one of these and it is very slow work.

As to fingerings: I find two sets of numbers 0 to 5. The first is placed above the note inside the staff if possible. The second is placed to the left of the note and labeled as guitar LH.

Both of them are placed to the left of the note in chords of 2 and more notes, i.e. in double stops violinistically speaking.

So no, there is no option available right now that suits my needs. I don't understand how guitarists read fingerings, but for string players the placement to the left of the note--as well as inside the staff--is highly unusual and hard to read, especially in music that is rather crowded with double stops or "polyphony". And I do think my wishlist above is reasonable.

Obviously fingerings are not used as often as other features (I usually don't add fingerings--I rarely follow fingerings in printed music myself) so this is not a high priority for me. I just finished a score for violin students though (it is on Musescore.com) and I spent an awful lot of times moving the fingerings around.

In reply to by azumbrunn

"Place them outside the staff in all cases.
- This one is violin/viola/cello specific: For double (triple and quadruple) stops Musescore places the fingerings to the left of the note concerned. This is highly unusual in my experience. The common practice is to place them stacked in the order of the notes above or below the staff. You just have to look at a page from the Bach solo pieces and you'll see why sideways is a bad choice--beyond the fact that the numbers are hard to read between the staff lines."

You can use this plugin: https://musescore.org/fr/project/fixfingering

After entering the first serie set of numbers (false the most likely, sorry, I am not a violonist!), you get by default:
premier.jpg
After applying the plugin, you receive:
après plugin.jpg
après plugin bis.jpg

In reply to by azumbrunn

Ah, I see, you are talking specifically about notes high above/below the staff, where you prefer the tremolo bars to be placed closer to the end of the stem (away from the notehead). Seems Gould agrees, so yeah., we should probably change that. Can you file this to the issue tracker.

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