Initial editing impressions.
Hi folks, first post and all that:
I recently needed some muzak for my little game and started poking about and found Musescore. Having been a musician in the past (20 years ago... :)), I figured I could probably write up something at least reasonable for placeholder work if I had decent tools. Well, Musescore has surpassed expectations. But, in the process of learning it and fighting with, I assume, default behaviors, I had questions as to why things were done in certain ways and what the heck is going on in a couple other places. So:
The first and foremost item is possibly a request. My first attempts at setting up complicated beats was a massive failure. I tend to setup my score using whole notes over the entire length of the target to divide the song into the components of catchy bits, bridges and whatever other fillers might exist. (I usually have some catchy riff in mind to drive the work, I just need a framework to apply it to in order to make it work throughout.) I then go in and start adding basic percussion and breaking up various bits to fit the beat and riff. So, in the case of 4/4 time (my experiment was most simplistic, 4/4 and C) I just drop a quarter note bass drum hit into the drum track and copy paste it to fill the primary melody I'm working on. This all seemed to work like a charm and I could work out the rough melody and chord progressions prior to dealing with matching drum beats and such to the intentions.
It is at this point of modifying things which seems to screw up or I'm just using things incorrectly and the default behaviors are not appropriate for me. My melody is in a 4/4/2 pattern, nothing surprising. (I tried to stick to the most simplistic usages possible for this experiment.)
Anyway, the difficulties came from a combination of "oops" and behavior I didn't expect. So, the most simplistic example is trying to insert a back beat snare on the drum track. (I.e. 1/8 off of the bass hit which is setup as a list of quarter notes in 4/4 time.) If my understanding is correct, the most effective method of doing this is to select the bass hit note, hit "N" to enter note/edit mode, press "Q" to half the duration, then select the "snare" and I should be able to drop the snare on the newly inserted rest. (Of course if you have cymbals and all that, going, there won't always be a visible rest.) What I really wanted to do is select an 8th note from the menu, go over and select the snare drum item and then just drop it after the bass drum hit. Ignoring all the other "notes" being played in the track since I selected the one I was interested in. Any adjustments to time should be automatic for the dropped note.
I believe the most major complaint I ran into was the behavior or the "q" and "w" keys during editing. When I'm editing in the note mode I find it annoying that I can modify bars outside of my current bar of interest. I select a bar, hit 'N' and when I'm puttering about if I hit 'w' an extra time I end up with a tie to the next bar. Not my intention at all, but seems to be consistent. Additionally, I probably intend the addition or removal of rests in the music as I use q/w but I probably NEVER intend to remove notes and those keys do so regularly. :( Mostly, I'd say unless "shift" or some other control key is held down, modifications are limited to the current bar. It's just too easy to f'up the next bar on accident right now.
I'd love to upload my little experiment. For 3 hours playing with Muse, I'm rather proud of my results. It is built on the most simplistic of all musical cores, 4/4 and C, but as a prog rock style building music, it's not bad in transitioning from opening (requires the crescendo plugin) to hello and then to a little bass driven future, haven't gone further than that though.
All8Up
Comments
Thanks for the feedback. Using Q/W when entering drums is probably not really the best way. Entering drum notation is better done with N, select duration, select instrument in the drums palette, select voice if necessary, and use mouse to put the note.
In case you don't know, you can upload your composition on http://musescore.com See Share scores online
In reply to Thanks for the feedback. by [DELETED] 5
Sorry for the delay, busy with programming stuff lately.
So, I don't quite understand the idea of just using N for this work without q/w. The percussion work turns out to be easier than other items using a combination of the 'N' edit mode and the q/w keys once I got used to it. It actually works fairly well. I.e. say I fill all the bars with quarter note bass drum hits. Just something to give me reference. Now I want to start refining things so I select a bass hit, press N to enter edit and hit q to half the duration of the note which inserts a rest which I can then place a new 8th note bass hit replacement on. Bingo, I have a double hit.
How else would I go about editing the bass drum track in the above? I have 4 quarter notes already placed, now I want to modify them. I guess I could just delete the measure and refill it using edit mode. But what if in that particular measure I had decided to work on cymbals/snares/etc before the bass drum? I tend to work the music bit by bit forward and backward keying specific items of the progress based on complexity and need. Bass drum is important but for many bits of my little test song the cymbal, snare and ride were the really driving features at certain points so I ignored the simple quarter note bass drum beat till I had the other items sounding good first.
At that point, editing the existing bass drum was less than pleasant sometimes. (Not to mention "undo" didn't seem to actually work till I saved on occasion. I.e. I'd modify something, didn't like it, hit undo and replay to hear the bad thing. Hit save and play again, it started playing the old version as expected. Minor glitch type bug there.)
Anyway, the above is "mostly" resolved, I figured out a way to work and have some pretty complex drum beats going. I'm not yet really comfortable and any help in understanding a better way to do things is VERY welcome.
My other current issues seem to be likely caused by the fact that when I dealt with sheet music it was mostly for horns, reeds and related, so I'm not very familiar with chord playing instruments and their notation. If I want to play a C chord on a piano but change from the top A to a B (hmm, is that a C#?) on the second beat, how is that properly displayed in notation? Do I have to tie the C to C and E to E together and just change the A to B?
In reply to Sorry for the delay, busy by All8Up
If I want to play a C chord on a piano but change from the top A to a B (hmm, is that a C#?) on the second beat, how is that properly displayed in notation? Do I have to tie the C to C and E to E together and just change the A to B?
You probably want to use voices .
Using Q/W or note values is just another way to do it. If I have 4 quarters bass drum and want to change one for 2 8th, I would select the quarter, press 4 to change it to an eight, select the create rest, press N, and press the shortcut for bass drum defined in the drumset or click on it in the drum palette.
In reply to Sorry for the delay, busy by All8Up
First, no one ever said using Q & W is bad. Just that it isn't common, because there are almost always more efficient ways of entering notes. So it seems that some of the reason you are struggling may be that you simply haven't discovered the more efficient ways of working.
For example, in the images you posted where we wish to turn the quarter note into four sixteenths, hitting Q/W is never necessary or helpful. Simply click the first note, press 3 to set the current duration to sixteenth, and type your four sixteenths. You don't have to first create four sixteenth notes/rests and then change their pitches - just type the notes, and they automatically replace the quarter.
Not sure about the bass drum example because I am not exactly sure what you want to do. If you a clip of how you want it to look, I can tell you an efficient way of creating that. If you also post what you entered, I can show you a reasonably effective way of turning it into what you want, but there is pretty much no way it's going to more efficient than simp[y entering it correctly in the first place. Deliberately entering it wrong then trying to turn it into what you want is never going to be as efficient as entering it correctly in the first place. But even given that, turning wrong notes/rhythms into right notes/rhythms would not normally be helped in any way by Q or W - instead, you simply type the right stuff directly on top of the wrong.
EDIT:L if you mean the simple act of changing a quarter into two eighths, that's done exactly as I described two paragraphs above. Hit 4, then enter you two eighths. If the first eighth you wish to enter happens to be the same pitch as the quarter, the act of hitting 4 will preserve that, so all you need to do is replace the rest. I guess pressing 4 is no easier than hitting Q or W, but it is more direct, and in the case of changing the quarter into a sixteenth instead of an eighth, it continues to require only one click rather than 2., Plus it makes it clear that subsequent notes should be entered with that same duration.
In reply to First, no one ever said using by Marc Sabatella
I never took the idea of folks saying using q/w as a bad thing, just not what most folks seem to think is the best method of editing. Given some of the amazing stuff I've downloaded as examples, I know this is capable software. Anything I say is not trying to argue the capabilities or be negative, just that my usage seems to currently be more creative and the editing seems, at this early level of understanding, not as good as it could be, for me that is.. I read any sheet music for multiple instruments without issues (other than piano/guitar etc chord items) and when trying to "compose", if my efforts justify that term, I think in the sheet and not via the keyboard.
So, I was thinking of the visual editing and you are talking about hit this key, that key etc.. I intend to try and figure out your description, but it's not really the thing I was talking about.
I'd add that I've produced literally hundreds of pages of notation - including drum parts - using MuseScore, and I don't think I've ever once found a reason to use Q or W. Definitely not the most straightforward way of doing anything; they are more like hacks for correcting certain types of mistakes more quickly.
So perhaps if you showed examples of what you are trying to enter, we could help you see how to do it more directly.
I will acknowledge, though, that drum notation is more awkward than ordinary notation to enter. There are reasons why it is done differently, but definitely room for improvement. If you do much with drums, I highly recommend customizing your drum set preferences (right click staff, edit drum set) so you can assign your most commonly used sounds using the letters A-G, just as you can for other instruments.
In reply to I'd add that I've produced by Marc Sabatella
Replying to this will be a bit more difficult than the prior one. It's more about how I work and want to edit and less about anything wrong with what Muse is doing. It's just not obvious to me yet how I'm supposed to achieve various goals using my standard technique (rusty as it is) of writing out a basic pattern and then going back and refining it. The basic patterns can be complex or simple but almost always start with a bunch of whole notes and a basic 4/4 quarter note bass drum beat.
As a programmer/musician, I can visualize how I would like to edit "existing" measures and Muse doesn't work anything like that. I'm still pretty lost though and before I bitch, I'd rather understand the current system. But I will draw up some shopped variations of what I expected in certain cases, maybe they will be useful for better user friendliness in the future.
In reply to Replying to this will be a by All8Up
Ok, a quick example of what I kinda expected.
The first two attached images are simple snips from Muse as things exist. Standard bar of 4 quarters and then the second quarter selected in edit mode.
The third image is what I would get if I hit 'q' twice given the second image.
What I'd actually hoped for/expected was the fourth image. Basically by me selecting a specific note size, the rests would be shown as ghosts I could place a note on. At such a time if I placed the selected sized note on the current one, the appropriate rests would be inserted. If I place it on one of the rests, it will change the starting note size, insert the remaining rests and place the note as desired.
It's just my personal ease of use programmer thinking in play here. Maybe it wouldn't work with the existing systems, can't be sure. Would be nice though.
In reply to Ok, a quick example of what I by All8Up
Assuming Editing-4 is wrong and they are 16th rests.
Here you want to have 4 16th, but what if you wanted a tuplet or a 2 16th and a height ? I think MuseScore chooses to have a 16th rest and a 8th rest because it's the way it should be notated if you would not add notes and so it minimizes the work in this case.
In reply to Assuming Editing-4 is wrong by [DELETED] 5
Sorry for the long delay again, vacation travel.. :)
Anyway, the idea of the screen shot was not so much about "correct"ness but more about how a visual representation could be made of your options given current selected note and newly selected duration. It was a 5 minute photoshop job, sorry if it was worse than a good description would have been. :)
Let's just take the case of an electric bass line or keyboard bass line depending on target. The first thing I do, as mentioned is layout a 4 quarter beat to give me audible timing. I then layout a chord progression which is usually easiest using a base line by just laying out whole notes. Sometimes half notes are required here and there but mostly whole notes for your overall progression work. (During chorus, sometimes even quarters.. :))
Anyway, given the basic guides I come back and start detailing. My first thought as to what I was supposed to do when editing, didn't pan out. There is nothing wrong with that, but it does make me wonder why that first thought could not be accommodated. As such I mocked up something to help explain, but I was in a hurry and did a horrible job of it. Sorry. :)
So, let's try in ASCII where we assume a 4/4 time for simplicity and I just type out the idea and describe it without Photoshop.. :) Obviously with variable spaced fonts this isn't going to be particularly good but at least you can cursor around to figure out the number of spaces etc and also I'm going to use '~' tilde as a generic rest, whatever variation should be simplified to the fewest possible.
Ok, so, assume I have a whole note "A" in a bar:
|O |
I want to turn it into two half notes in the first pass:
|o o |
What I was expecting (purely from a no past experience in anything more advanced than an old Amiga program) was when I selected half note to place and then the whole note in score, then hit "N" for edit was:
|O ~~ |
With the "~" tildes "ghosted" showing where I could place the new note or overwrite the old one with the new duration without modifying things out of the bar. If I hold shift or control or something I would get:
|O ~~~|
Letting me effect the next bar intentionally.
The general idea though was that the currently edited bar would expand out, include some "ghost" rests as valid locations for placement. That doesn't fix other issues but it is a start. An issue I was thinking about for instance, say I want to insert a quarter note but 1/16th off beat, I would need to hit some modifier key, say '[' and ']' to change the ghost rest density. I.e. I'm placing a quarter note and want to place it at a time not divisible by 4, modifiers could make division 8/16/32 etc, going "less" doesn't make any sense for the selected duration that I know of though. Though, maybe in strict progression setup, hitting whole then ']" twice to place 4 holes could be useful I guess.
I hope this all makes sense, I'm not complaining really, I'm just explaining how my first "want it to work this way" sort of thinking turned out. As a programmer/UI person for many years, I just hope that my initial impression with reasonable (I believe) description could possibly provoke further dev into even better usability. Hell, soon as I'm stinking rich off my latest game, I'll contribute and help. :)
In reply to Sorry for the long delay by All8Up
I think rather than try to describe what you are looking for using ASCII, why not simpy post actual MuseScore files? It will make things much easier if people wish to show you how to do whatever it is you are wanting to do.
In reply to I think rather than try to by Marc Sabatella
This isn't a score related post. It's just an editing in general post. My first thoughts and such, I didn't mean to offend anyone in giving my honest first impressions. I do apologize if I've replied to this thread too often though. It was not my intention to be an ass. :(
As to the score, it's still mostly a joke. could upload it as a "made this in 3ish hours" while learning sort of thing but it's crap other than some neat bits here and there. :)
In reply to This isn't a score related by All8Up
I understand your point. You want to have a grid of rests to fill in. As you said, MuseScore is not working like this. And for several reasons. One I can think of, it the handling of tuplets, or the handling of dotted notes or rests. Also, why beats? and not 8th, or 16th. What about 12/8 measures etc... The note entry method you would expect is more something your will find in a drum machine (like hydrogen) or in a sequencer.
Regarding your particular example, it's a lot simpler to edit in the current state of MuseScore. Select the whole note, press 6, select the half rest, N, and the name of the note you want.