Remove/optionalize auto-fill measure feature
It is annoying to have MuseScore auto-fill a bar for consistency with the timing setting, e.g. after changing a note from half-bar to quarter-bar MuseScore adds a quarter-bar rest, which I do not want there. This makes it difficult to change note durations, and deleting rests, in particular, is impossible without deleting notes first and then rewriting them.
I suggest, possibly as an checkbox option (name it e.g. Bar Consistency or Auto-Fill Bar), allowing bars to be inconsistent while editing. MuseScore would then not add any rests. It could refuse to a the song with bars like this, or alternatively stop at or skip defective bars. Anyway, editing would become much more fluent.
Comments
Your request is a little confusing. Are you suggesting perhaps a dynamic bar length as an option. What I mean by this is that you would start with a (virtual) blank piece of music paper. You would then enter notes and rests that you want with no barlines. When you decide that you want a barline, you would input one there just like it were another note.
As far as changing note duration during input is concerned, you are always going to have to do some thing to indicate the length of the note or rest. If you press 4 to enter a 8th note, then every note you enter will be an 8th note until you change that by pressing another duration. It doesn't matter if you are replacing an 8th rest or double dotted half rest.
Currently MS autofills the remainder of the measure with what most people expect the rests to look like. The rests need to be there so you and the musician can have a coherent score that matches the time signature and is the desired result in most situations, but of course would not want this with dynamic bar lengths. You wold expect to put your cursor on the next blank space and add a new note.
In reply to Your request is a little by mike320
Thanks for your quick reply. I am not suggesting a dynamic bar length option. Bar lines must be there, and in the end all bars (or measures) must have exactly the right duration. But while editing, this may not be necessary.
"Currently MS autofills the remainder of the measure ...". This is exactly what bothers me. When composing, I proceed one bar at a time. I am irritated by MS adding rests, while I want to add notes. And when changing bars already there, I want to change note durations - MS adds rests to make the bar duration match the time signature (e.g. 4/4). I want to be in control of the notes and rests, I hate seeing MS guessing what I want to do. It is OK to have inconsistent measures for the short time it takes for me to complete them.
It would be nice if MS colored red measures inconsistent with the time mark, for easy finding. And when trying to play a measure like that, MS should stop.
In reply to Thanks for your quick reply. by Hannu Pohjanpalo
In what way does having the correct number of beats in each measure interfere with your work? It's the exact same number of keystrokes / clicks to enter notes whether those rests are generated or not, and having them automatically generated can save clicks in many cases where you are wanting to enter rests. Plus it prevents what would otherwise be a common mistake of forgetting to enter the full number of beats for some measure, which would leave you with a corrupt / rhythmically incorrect score.
You *are* in control of notes and rests. Enter what you want, and if it adds up to four beats, everything is perfect. Unless you were *planning* on deliberately creating underfull or overfull measures, which would normally be rare, but you can do this as well, using Measure Properties or the join & split commands in the Edit menu. And FWIW, for the next major version of MuseScore, measures deliberately shortened or lengthened in this way *will* be marked for easy finding. But you will still have to create them manually - normal note input will continue to create correct measures only, as it should.
In reply to Thanks for your quick reply. by Hannu Pohjanpalo
If you are entering notes to replace the rests that MS "inserts" then they disappear and have no effect on what you are entering. They may be a visual nuisance for a moment, but the moment you enter the note they automatically vanish. I don't understand your problem with this. There must be something on every beat, either a note or a rest. MS simply pads the end of the measure with visible rests, and this is completely sensible.
It may be OK or you to have inconsistent measure for a short time, but it is near impossible to implement. The code necessary to decide when to shorten and lengthen each measure becomes incredibly complex. There are so many things going on at a time in a measure that it would be a programming nightmare for a small nuisance that you would have to go back and manually fix if MS didn't do it automatically.
I am only a user like you. I, like most people, enter notes one measure at a time. The rests at the end of the measure help me to ensure that I have properly entered the notes and rests earlier in the measure.
As far as MS stopping on playback when it finds a short measure is concerned. There are instances where I have short measures and I do not want MS to stop because it thinks I made a mistake. This is not a me thing, it is a normal thing. I have seen many scores that end a section with a short measure followed by a barline of some sort followed by the remainder of the measure used as a pickup to the next section. If MS responded like you want, this would be impossible to enter into the program.
IMHO the dynamic measure length option is more reasonable because there is an abundance of modern music that has sparse barlines only for reference rather than to dictate time. The dynamic measures would make entry of such music easier than having to adjust measure lengths and make barlines invisible as is currently the case. This is necessary to avoid having to write a 1/2 note that spans current barlines from being written as 2 tied 1/4 notes with an invisible barline between them. I'm afraid to use the "display note values across barlines..." option due to it's experimental status. I don't want to take the chance my work will be lost.
In reply to If you are entering notes to by mike320
I understand that this is not a problem for all - maybe people have got used to this.
The worst here is that when you want to delete a rest in the middle of a measure, you just cannot do it. ** Rests are like notes, you must have the possibility add and delete them at will **. The easiest solution then would probably be having MS always, when seeing a need to add a rest, do the adding at the end of the measure. And, accordingly, when the user deletes a rest, it is actually only moved to the end.
Of course not all would like changing the way things work today, so maybe this should be implemented as a selectable option.
In reply to I understand that this is not by Hannu Pohjanpalo
That is an option that many, including myself, have lobbied for. It's status is not clear to me. Since this is developed totally by volunteers, the end result for this feature is subject to someone stepping up and making it happen. The way it seems that this will be implemented is that the delete key will turn a note into a rest like now and some other key combination will cause the notes to shift and (hopefully) fill the end of the measure with rests. I say hopefully because the other discussion suggested reducing the number of beats in the measure by the deleted rest, but this would leave us with inconsistent measure lengths.
In reply to I understand that this is not by Hannu Pohjanpalo
What does "delete a rest" mean? A rest is silence, deleting it makes no musical sense. Presumably you really mean, you want some unspecified number of subsequent notes (just one? everything to end of measure? to next double bar? to end of piece?) moved earlier in time to *replace* the rest. Only you know how many notes you want moved. So, simply select them yourself then use cut and paste.
In reply to What does "delete a rest" by Marc Sabatella
I believe he said the end of the measure.
In reply to I believe he said the end of by Isaac Weiss
Sure, in at least one of the thousands of possible uses, taking all notes to the end of the measure and shifting them does happen to be exactly what you want. Speaking from experience with other programs that blindly assume this, I can say it's *not* what one wants at least as often as it is, and you end up spending more time trying to fix the erroneous shift that was automatically performed than you would have just doing the job yourself to begin with.
But sure, I have little doubt that some day we will implement a command to automate this proces,s so for those small percentage of cases where this happens to be exactly what you want, it will save a keystroke or two :-)
In reply to I understand that this is not by Hannu Pohjanpalo
BTW, not sure what you mean about MuseScore always adding rests to the end of measures. If you mean you'd like to see this happen when shortening a note, realize that this actually moves all notes in the measure earlier in the time - exactly what one would *not* want much of the time. MuseScore puts the rest right after the shortened note specifically because it will *not* move notes earlier in time without your explicit permission, nor should it in most cases. in the cases where you happen to want notes moved earlier in time, only you know how many notes you want moved - chances are very slim it will happen to be exactly the rest of the measure. Which is why in practice, doing the cut and paste ends up being more efficient on average than having the wrong notes moved and then having to repair the damage.
But indeed, an optional feature that made this arbitrary guess could be useful for whatever cases it happened to be exactly what you wanted.
In reply to BTW, not sure what you mean by Marc Sabatella
Technically MS doesn't add rests to the end of a measure, it simply replaces the existing rest to the not you enter and the left over beats as rests. The OP seemed to consider this to be an addition of rests while I realize it is not.
As far as the shift remaining within a measure is concerned, I feel that is the only viable option for the program at the present time. If you allow a shift all the way to the end or some arbitrary point later in the score then there will very possibly be an issue with tuplets trying to span a measure, which is a no no in real life as well as MS. The idea for this comes from the "timewise delete" feature being worked on. It seems it will use a different key stroke than the current delete key that will either make a note a rest or remove a rest from other than voice 1. I often wish I had this feature when I realize I made a note the wrong duration. I would most often use it to shorten the duration of a note and removing the leftover rest. I do this often when I'm transcribing and get my 1/4, 1/8 and 1/16th note buttons confused. I usually realize it when I run out of room in the measure. I will admit this rarely happens when I type in original music, because I'm watching MS rather than a source document. Its far faster to select the long note, hit Q, right arrow, shift-delete (that's the key I will assign to the operation if MS doesn't) then click the last rest of the measure to finish the correct notes.
Several comments have been received, it looks like the subject interests many. Trying to make sense of it all, I want to simplify my suggestion for enhancement as follows:
- It must be possible to delete rests. A deleted rest is moved to the end of the measure. Rests at the end of the measure are thereby cleaned out so that e.g. two successive quarters are combined to a half rest.
- It must be possible to add rests. An added rest causes a rest of the same time value being removed from the end of the measure. For example adding a quarter rest in the middle of the measure will change a half rest to a quarter one.
Note that this is a pure enhancement, new functionality without changing anything that works today. No new options are needed, and measure consistency with the time signature is preserved.
In reply to Several comments have been by Hannu Pohjanpalo
And to be perfectly clear, if you definition of "delete rests" means, the subsequent notes in the same measure get moved earlier to replace the rest, and a new rest is created at the end of the measure, this is already trivially easy using cut and paste. Simply select the notes you want to move, cut, click the rest you wish to replace, and paste. It's literally only two clicks more than a new command to do this (four clicks in all instead of two), and it has the benefit of working not just in those few cases where "the subsequent notes in the same measure" are the exact ones you want moved, but it also works in *all* cases - if you want just one note moved, or an entire phrase of several measures, etc.
Same is true for adding. Cut and paste already does the job and saves exactly two keystrokes and has the advantage of working in all cases, not just those few where you happen to want only the notes in the current measure moved.
This isn't to say there is no chance of such a command being implemented, but it is important to put this in perspective. The operations requested are already trivially easy and *much* more flexible than the proposed new commands. I think most people who request these new commands don't fully appreciate just how easy these operations are already, nor do they appreciate how seldom the proposed command would actually turn out to be exactly the right thing.