Decoupling the presentation and the music ....
In some future release of the product, I would enjoy seeing presentation of the music and the composition decoupled. Specifically:
1) I would like to be able to work on a large score from the score page, or form a section, or from an individual instrument without having to worry about presentation. An endless linear view of the music with as many or few instruments as I choose.
2) I would like fixed headers and footers to be applied at print time without having to see them in the music mode. A header/footer system should support cover page, pure text pages for song details, pictures, then the music pages, secondary header and footer support for music pages that are not the first page.
3) Front and back cover pages with inheritable data from my publishing company. Ensemble music from any of the big publishing houses are an example. The Alfred Music company sends out charts with their static details on every set of charts and a different logo and title for the specific music. In other words ... I don't want to have to put the static things on each piece of music every single time I write one.
4) Version control for the music. I would love to be able to branch and create new versions of material without having to manually copy/paste a directory and then renaming every file in it with a [v2.10a] to [v2.10b].
Scenarios:
1) When I place a rehearsal mark on the music in the score view ... and then print out the tenor saxophone part only, that rehearsal mark should show up in the part. I should not have to create a new file to print a single part. I should just be able to couple the tenor sax data to a Part Template that I have created for the score. Storing data twice or more (the score, section, individual part version) keeps this tool from being a serious contender.
2) Assume I am working on a 5|4|4|4 + Vibes piece for a big band. I should be able to work on the song as a whole without working about page or line breaks, headers and footers, composers, authors, poets, copyrights or other print stuff. I need to focus on the notes. The interface should be a linear stretch of music that shows all 18 parts, or just the 4 instruments trumpet section or just tenor sax 1. When you are working on the music ... you could care less about what it is going to print like, and having to deal with print and visual components AND the music is a pain.
Hope this helps someone.
Comments
These are some good suggestions! A couple of observations:
- A linear scroll mode is high on my list of things I'd like to see as well, and has been a pretty request, so hopefully, we'll see it some day. FWIW, I sometimes fake this by temporarily changing my page size to a long horizontal strip. But that doesn't help with the desire to see only certain staves at once. That's an additional aspect to this that I don't know if anyone has given thought to.
- Seems you can already use a template to place the static stuff on your scores, no?
- Rehearsal marks *are* already printed on parts automatically. But it is of course true that you have to explicitly generate the part before printing, and generally you'd probably want to save it too if you do any manual adjustments (as I virtually always do), and this means multiple files. That's the way Finale was until just a few years ago, too, but then they added Linked Parts (which Sibelius and other had already had) to fix this. You'll be happy to know that MuseScore will have linked parts in 2.0 as well.
In reply to These are some good by Marc Sabatella
I am excited about linked parts. :)
Templates ... yes and no. I guess what I should have said was an
ability to add variable based information into templates. Perhaps best
done with cascading templates.
Scenario: I am do a transcription for song A. I am publishing the
transcription with company A and company B. It would be nice to have
the song data in one place and simply apply
CompanyA_JazzEnsemble(template) to the song at print time, and then
CompanyB_JazzEnsemble(template) when I print to distribute to company
B. Inside of each of these templates would be variables or references
to other templates that contain an information page on my studio and
business while filling in the correct company, then getting the song
title and information from the song data, and finally grabbing and
producing a reference code number at the bottom of the page based on
the company template and the version information in the song.
lol .. I know ... pie in the sky. But in order to get to pie in the
sky, you have to make sure your architecture and user interface layers
are not coupled and overlapped. It helps with immutability; a critical
component of software as you try to support the past and plan for the
future.
I also use the spread the page out options to simulate the linear
sheet. The problem I have here is my MAC. I seem to run into that bug
that makes it impossible to scale it back down and print directly to a
printer later. I cannot figure it out. My print process for Musescore
on the MAC is:
1) Command-P then Open as PDF in Preview.
2) Since it is always messed up and showing it on the wrong sized
background. I Mark, then Command-C , Command-N to create a new PDF in
memory with the correct-ish sized material.
3) Print or Save that PDF
4) Close and tell it I don't way to save ... twice ...
5) Repeat for every part. :-P
By the way, thank you for the quick reply on this. I am pleased you
think they are nice ideas. Anything I can do to help .. please do not
hesitate to ask. I would love to see the two giants in this industry
have someone to worry about someday.
best regards,
James
Linear scroll mode and the ability to select which instruments to view is also very important to me. Page layout is very cumbersome to work in, and should only be used when printing.