Part creation enhancements
I mainly use musescore for doing arrangements for UK style brass bands. When it comes to creating individual parts from the score, I don't want any text before the start of every stave. On the version of the software shipped with Ubuntu 12.04 there are some space characters in the 'long instrument name' which I have to delete every time in order to stop an indent on the first stave.
I've grabbed the source code for version 2 from git and built it locally and see that now the long and short instrument names are passed into the new excerpt so every stave has text before it.
I appreciate that this is useful in many cases, but it's just creates extra work for me, and no doubt for many others.
I've been playing around trying to make an option to create new parts without the instrument text. I've added a checkbox to the excerpt dialog to control whether short and long instrument names are included in the new excerpt(with the default being to include the text as at present).
I've never programmed in C++ before and this is the first time I've touched the musescore source code, so the chances of me having done this correctly are close to zero, however it does seem to work for me and saves me 20 seconds of editing per new part created.
What I've done is added some code to void ExcerptsDialog::createExcerptClicked(QListWidgetItem* cur)
just before score->startCmd();
which does this:
if(!includeInstrumentName->isChecked())
{
QListparts=nscore->parts();
foreach(Part* p, parts)
{
p->setLongName("");
p->setShortName("");
}
}
I wonder if this functionality could be added (correctly, rather than via my hack) to musescore?
Thanks all for a superb piece of software!
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
| excerptdialog.png | 33.48 KB |
Comments
That's a nice idea, I approve!
Although I've noticed that depending on what version you are using (and maybe the phase of the moon), those extra spaces go away when you save and reload the score. Also, it's very simple to delete the (apparently empty) instrument name before the first staff - just click empty space there and hit delete!
I actually like the indent on the first system of my parts (old habits, I guess), but since I never know if those spaces will remain after a save/reload, the first thing I do with a generated part is always to click that empty space, hit delete, then select the first measure and hit the keyboard shortcut I have define to insert a horizontal frame, then my shortcut for "save as"..
Hi
It seems quicker, but I'm not sure about this as an option, generally.
If we do have it, maybe it would be better being available generally, and not confined to 'Parts'?
In reply to Hi It seems quicker, but I'm by chen lung
My thinking has long been that the new score wizard should make the long and short instruments empty for scores of only one instrument, arguably two.
Doing the same for part extraction makes perfect sense to me. I guess it uses spaces now to get the indent, but if users want that, inserting a horizontal frame seems the better way to go anyhow.
In reply to My thinking has long been by Marc Sabatella
I'm a little bit reluctant in adding another checkbox in the part extraction dialog. Do you think the display of the instrument name could be a style parameter?
In reply to I'm a little bit reluctant in by [DELETED] 5
In my limited experience with Musescore, I'd say that is a better place because if I understand it correctly it would be a logical place and would also be universal, ie, you can turn it on and off for any score at any time
In reply to I'm a little bit reluctant in by [DELETED] 5
Yes, I think style is perfect. That way some template/styles could be defined to use it, others not, according to the convention for that type of score. And using the 2.0 score default style, you could define whether you want it for scores created from scratch.
In reply to Yes, I think style is by Marc Sabatella
My workflow with musescore may well be typical for those writing for musical ensembles.
1. Do some work on a score
2. When ready create parts
3. Try the parts out on the ensemble
4. Go to 1
When I'm making changes as a result of what happened when playing the parts with the ensemble, Ideally I'd like to just make edits to the score and then create the parts. In practice, because I end up doing quite a lot of work on each individual part after it is created, more often than not, it's quicker to make changes to both the scores and the parts. This process is time consuming and prone to the introduction of discrepancies between the scores and the parts. There's a good bit of donkey work I have to do on the parts once they are created which I'm sure can be designed out of the system. The business of the instrument names on the staves is one of them. The other 'easy to fix' area is the Page Settings. My scores tend to have a small scaling space (1.12mm) and my parts are larger (1.6mm). Often other aspects of page layout will be different between scores and parts. e.g. the part paper size may be A5 and the score A4, or the scores may be landscape and the parts portrait. Unless I've missed something, the excerpts inherit all this information from the score so it would be good to be able to intervene just before part creation to override these settings. Currently I end up either having to make multiple edits to each part or temporarily making radical changes to the score layout before part creation. The first option is laborious, and the second is scary as much of the score becomes invisible due to large scale/smaller paper.
So ideally I'd like to see something in the part creation interface that would govern the items controlled by the page settings dialog as well as the 'instrument names on each stave' setting. Furthermore, I would like the data from this to be stored in the score file so that I don't need to enter it every time, and so that it can exist in the template file.
In reply to I think this is part of a slightly bigger picture by phildriscoll
"This process is time consuming and prone to the introduction of discrepancies between the scores and the parts."
That's why in MuseScore 2.0, parts and score are linked. You can change a note in the score and it will impact the part, and same for the other way around.
Parts and score can also have a different default style now. See Edit -> Preferences -> Score. Unfortunatly, page size and spatium are not part of the style.
I found this bug report from long time ago: http://musescore.org/en/node/3764
Maybe we should delete the instrument name by default and don't make it an option after all.
In reply to "This process is time by [DELETED] 5
Having seen version 2 for the first time this week,I hadn't realised parts were linked to the score - that's fantastic!
I'd be happy with the deletion of the instrument name by default, but there are no musical genres I work with where I would expect an indent on the first line of a part. If there was an indent by default, I'd be no better off than I was with version 1.2. I'd like to see either no indent, or if there are a significant number of users who need it, some option to control the indent.
Is there any chance of having a different default page settings for parts and score as well. I'm guessing here, but I can imagine that parts and score will nearly always have different page settings for most users.
In reply to Re. I think this is part of a slightly bigger picture by phildriscoll
As lasconic mentioned, in 2.0, edit/preferences/score gives you separate style controls for score and parts. Not true for page layout; that's still something I'd like to see (to have landscape score, portrait parts, different scaling).
I don't have strong preference as to indent or no indent by default. Make it a style parameter and I can make my preference part of the template or the default style. And even when creating scores from someone else's template, assuming it's implemented as a horizontal frame, it's two clicks to add or remove the indent - not a big deal at all. But fwiw, in my experience, indents on the first lines of parts are very common in classical music, less so on jazz. So that's how I'd probably recommend the templates shipped with MuseScore be set up.