Help How to put Letters in boxes above staff ?
Hello, I am having trouble adding "section markers " in the form of A B and C in boxes above the staff, as you would use when the conductor says, "starting 4 bars before C " any ideas how this can be done ?
I have been reading the help section for 2 hours trying to do this, but have had no luck working this out.
Thanks in advance,
Mike.
Comments
They are called rehearsal marks - Ctrl M on my PC.
In reply to They are called rehearsal by xavierjazz
Thanks Xavierjazz,
I never knew they where called rehearsal marks. I suppose I will find it in the manual now.
I have just started back playing after 30 years, and thought I would clean up some of my old hand written music.
It is amazing how much I didn't know from school. It is even more amazing I even passed music !
Mike.
In reply to Thanks for the answer, by Mike1001
Welcome back.
Personally, I consider reherasal marks an antiquated method of defining a location in the music. They are a hold-over from the days prior to computer notation programs when numbering bars was a lot of work. More and more published work is done with all the bars numbered. I detest the "go to 12 bars before C" directive and having to count also the first time the directive is given usually somebody in the group gets it wrong by a bar. Having the program number the bars is best and if it gets cluttered you can number at intervals or at the beginning of a system so an offset is typically less than 6.
Of course if you updating a part in a larger piece then you need the marks to keep in sync with the other parts.
In reply to Rehearsal Marks by Zoots
While it is true that numbering bars is easier than ever before, and in some ways better, there are still a number of reasons to possibly rehearsal letters. One is that rehearsal numbers placed on every bar can be distracting and indeed get in the way of densely notated music. Particular for jazz, where chord symbols are often placed above the staff and take up a lot of the room that otherwise be available for things like measure numbers. A measure with a chord aymbol, a tempo marking, and a few articulations is a measure that will be be messy and/or hard to find the measure number on. Whereas measure numbers placed only at certain intervals (beginning of each system, or every 5 bars) can make it difficult to find the location you actually want. Rehearsal letters tend to be placed at places you'd actually want to rehearse from. When I am directing a band, it's a lot easier to take a quick glance at the score and say, "take it from letter G" than to squint and possible count from the previous number to figure out what measure we are starting at. The squinting part is big too - large ensemble scores are necessarily printed at very small sizes, making the measure numbers very hard to make out for those of us with eyes that are 40+ years old. One more very practical advantage - during performance, if I sends people are getting lose, it's easy to pantomime a letter to tell people where we are when we reach the next one. Much harder to do that with numbers, both because the numbers themselves are harder to pantomime, but also because it is harder to find them while in the panic of being lost.
All that said, yes, again, there are certainly converse advantages to measure numbers. I personally am going with intelligently placed rehearsal letters as well as measure numbers at the start of systems (only, so they don't interfere with the notation).
Marc,
I'll go along with the points you've mentioned - as long as bar numbers get put in where possible :).
Numbers are better when rehearsing a whole piece as a group especially as you stumble through the piece for the first few times. Section marks (A, B, C etc.) are, however, very useful if you are rehearsing one section. They are also useful if you are playing parts of a medley or maybe your group is performing and need to be flexible depending upon how much time you have left in a set (not everyone is performing a symphony in an orchestra). Then, also, in a very long piece it is often more appropriate to say "Lets start after Q at bar 286" rather than only referring to the bar number since the human brain is better at remembering things in chunks or sections.
So I feel that both have a place - numbers at the beginning of each line are, indeed, useful and what MuseScore refers to as "Rehearsal Marks" may be more aptly named "Section Letters" if you wish since they have their place in playback, too.
One other thing I've noted - occasionally a part is printed without the number at the beginning of the line and no-one gets too upset but if the printer has missed out a section letter (jumped straight from F to H, say) then you feel a bit cheated..
In reply to Numbers v Rehearsal Marks by underquark
I also like how rehearsal marks (usually) give you a sort of quick visual indication of the overall structure of the song. There's a bit of extra meaning imbedded in a rehearsal mark that's missing from a measure number. It's kind of like a measure number and a double bar line all in one! :-)
- Jeff
I don't use letters as rehearsal marks, I use the next measure number. So instead of "A," "B," "C," etc., I use "9," "17," "25," etc. This numbers the beginning of each phrase, so it's fairly easy to find any other measure number.
In reply to I'm Surprised No One Has Mentioned.... by newsome
That works too, although it has a number of drawbacks as well. Most significantly, if you add measures later, all your subsequent measures number are off. You have to fix that up manually. Of course, that's just a current limitation of MuseScore, not an inherent issue with this approach. Also, the same pantomime issue comes into play. I actually conducted a chart that used this approach about an hour ago, and one of the players got lost during the performance. I *was* successfully able to pantomime "125" to him, but "J" would have been much simpler. And indeed, I got to use that successfully to communicate "B" and "C" to a couple of other lost players on a couple of other pieces.
Whether or not you prefer to have rehearsal letters or numbers rather than measure numbers doesn't answer the question, which I cannot find the answer to anywhere.
How do you enter rehearsal letters in your MuseScore? Is the only way to do that using the "text" option, with no square or circle (need to draw my own)? That's the only way I've been able to do it so far. Surely there's a better way?
In reply to These posts do not answer the question by amyfischer23
Sorry folks, I just found the answer.
In reply to Nevermind (just found the answer) by amyfischer23
Great. No problem.