I need to insert a note/rest between a stream of existing notes.
Right now, it is like I have a 3000 word document. I need to insert a comma after the 3rd word. I am told to cut-copy the 4th-3000th words. Key in the comma, and then paste back the 4th-3000th words.
That is no good. Microsoft Word, Excel and Libre Office are far more complex machines. And they let me insert a column or a picture. MIDI sequences are much simpler. I have written routines to handle midi sequences and was able to insert notes, after some processing some simple rules.
I am a rebel. That is how I write my music. I am autistic, I am unable to follow conventions. I just wanna write my music. I have used some older programs, but they no longer work after Vista.
The holdback here seems to be that very experienced people are saying, THAT is not the way to do it, you are breaking rules.
Pascal was a rulebook programming language. It was very restrictive and PATERNALISTIC. It was designed to make sure programmers stuck to the rules. So we all abandoned Pascal and did C/C++. And Pascal is dead, while the world runs on C/C++.
Please let me in on how to insert a note into a stream of notes. Please tell me how. Otherwise, change the program to allow it, please? I know what I am doing, just let me do it the way I want to. I need to move notes here and there flexibly, to try out different patterns. I need to experiment flexibly, without restrictions.
Are there a couple of high horses here and in Sibelius?
Comments
That's not exactly a trivial thing. Every single line would need redoing, every single beam, etc. It isn't like a Word document where the only thing that changes are the line breaks. One way or another, you're going to be moving everything around in the piece, whether it's simply cut-pasting as you describe or going through and adjusting every single pedal mark and octave line, as well as beams and such.
As a way to do this in a way that doesn't require massive alteration of the piece, consider altering the time signature briefly. If you're in 4/4 time and you have one moment where you just need that extra rest, stick a 4/4 time signature on the measure immediately after the one where you need the rest, and then put in a 5/4 time signature on the measure in question. Now you can insert your rest, and the rest of the piece will be unaffected. It's not perfect, but it works.
In reply to That's not exactly a trivial by LuuBluum
"It isn't like a Word document where the only thing that changes are the line breaks."
Microsoft Word/Libre Office seem simple to you. You also haven't considered Excel, like when we insert in a cell. Or an HTML editor. All of them are more complex operations than MIDI or notation processing.
To the programmers ... there is something called sorted treemaps, in case you don't know.
I understand. Unfortunately Musescore isn't that end-all-be-all program yet for composition+notation but is currently heavily sided for transcription work, and even with this it has some situations with spacing by default that hopefully will be resolved in future updates, but for the most part it has great customization options for a free piece of software.
Although it can definitely be used for composition, depending on your work flow I would suggest you look into alternative programs for your work. Some digital audio workstations use clips for MIDI; in turn you can split these at any point and then add in a new clip in between. This might be something more productive for you. Even things like trackers, although distasteful for most people it seems, have a sort of "infinite zoom" or insert mode that push notes forward. Things like this can be very useful for composition depending on what you're doing. You may already know this, but what the hell. On your spare time give some other programs a chance such as Sekaiju, the tracker OpenMPT, and then maybe something like Ardour or LMMS. They may not be what you're wanting, but definitely give them a try. Remember, as you already know, they're all just tools for you to be able to play and work with. Nothing wrong in using a bunch of different programs to achieve what you want, and then later on transferring them to notation if that's the desired end result, but it would be really nice to have one program for composition & notation all in one, namely, Musescore, for free ;-) In the mean time, hats off to open source programmers.
In reply to I understand. Unfortunately by worldwideweary
The same issue with Sibelius, which is very expensive and seems to sell itself as an all-in-one composition tool.
If a quaver gets split into semiquavers or {{Xemi}^n}quavers, it's my fault which the rules guardian should not worry about. Perhaps it might make their tool look unprofessional.
The work around to your issue is to change the length of the measure where you want to add the note. Insert the original time signature into the measure after the note, THEN enter the time signature that will allow you to enter the note into that measure. Press shift-T if you need to make your own time signature to properly fill the measure. You can then add your note while only cutting and pasting at most a few notes rather than all the way to the end.
First, a suggestion:
Open two documents.
Do your little essays in the blank document.
If you have a part that you like, you will transfer it to the other document.
---8<----------------------cut here------------------------>8---
An example of what you might try in a word-processing application.
In the example below, try to insert a chord at anywhere.
1. But do not exceed the limits of time signature.
2. And when entering a chord, make sure that the others automatically slide to the other measure.
3. Try also if you can not fulfill the conditions 1 and 2.
How many edits did you have to make?
These are just chord symbols. Also, think that they are notes.
Sounds liek you already know how to insert a note: determine how many subsequent notes you wish to move, cut, add the note, paste.
There are a number of very good reasons why most notation programs attempt to do this automatically.
The most important is, it is almost never the case in real world usage that when inserting a note or rest you would literally want everything moved over from there to the end of the score. More normally, it would be only a measure or two where you want things adjusted, and there is no way a computer program can guess exactly how much. So even when programs do try to guess (Finale has such a facility) it is wrong as often as it is right, causing you to do need to do more work to fix the error thus introduced. Cut and paste has the advantage of putting *you* in control of how much gets moved, as *you* are the only one who knows.
Also, word processors and spreadsheets - and even sequencers - don't have to deal with the very real and complex issue of correct rhythmic notation. You can't take a half note on beat 3 of a 4/4 measure and just move it to beat 4 - you need to split it up into two quarters tied across the barline. But then if you move it again, do you change it back? Sometimes that will be the right thing to do, other times not. What about ties you created manually? Same for beaming decisions, etc. Moving notated music in time is a *far* more complicated affair than moving text, and it's not just about technical difficulty - it's just plain subjective and again, any guesses made are liekly to be wrong a good deal of the time.
None of which is to say that no such feature will ever exist. Just that I think you greatly underestimate what is involved, and how often if a program literally tried to do what you are asking, the results would be incorrect.
PS: C/C++ have rules, too, just like music notation does.