Continues similar

• Aug 22, 2013 - 19:28

In some books, you have notation and then a message:

'Percussion continues sim. for 97 bars' (percussion stave re-appears later on):
Percussion continues sim. for 97 bars.png

'Percussion continues sim. throughout':
Percussion continues sim. throughout.png

'percussion continues sim. to end':
percussion continues sim. to end.png

How could this be utilised in MuseScore?

Attachment Size
Percussion continues sim. for 97 bars.png 79.37 KB
Percussion continues sim. throughout.png 25.36 KB
percussion continues sim. to end.png 40.98 KB

Comments

• Aug 23, 2013 - 04:47

This is a very common text markng, no different from others that I can tell. Except that it also appeara you want to make the corresponding measures invisible. That's much less common - normally you'd still show the staves and either lave them blank or fill the, with slashes. But you can mark measures invisible, no?

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• Aug 23, 2013 - 15:24

I don't understand your question. "How could this be utilised in MuseScore?"

If you mean how it can be done. This is already possible in MuseScore 1.3, by using a staff text annd make the measure invisible. Even playback is possible with copy paste through the score. What would be missing is the ability to hide and remove from layout a particular staff in a given system?

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• Aug 25, 2013 - 14:56

I think I have a more perfect idea:

I don't know what the feature would be called, or where it would be placed.

Open it and the user is presented with something similar to 'Parts...':

1. Tick the applicable instruments (e.g. two percussion instruments).
2. Enter the bar numbers it begins and ends (e.g. 35 to 65).
3. Enter text (e.g. 'Percussion continues sim. for 30 bars').
4. 'OK' or 'Cancel'.

Rules:

There would have to be enough space for the message (appearing before the end of a system).
Bars before the last entered number can appear if they are all on the same system (if the system begins with bar 63, it and bar 64 will appear before bar 65).
The first bar or any beyond the actual full count cannot be entered (I wonder about anacrusis, however - maybe the user can be advised to use a full bar as a reference for their repeat, perhaps?).

About the tickable instruments, I wonder if it could be on stave level too (e.g. hiding two of three organ staves).

Should there be a title (as a reference)? Maybe not?

Do you allow multiple lines for the text in step 3?

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• Aug 25, 2013 - 16:12

I guess I don't understand why there should need to be a whole new facility for this rather special-case situation. Really what you are showing here is just one particular quirky way of combining two simple features: marking a range of measures invisible, and placing some text in the vacant space. The text can be just plain ordinary staff text attached to the last visible measure and moved into position. Marking measures invisible is something that is doable via measure properties. Ability to set this or *any* measure properties for a selected range would be nice. That seems worth doing. But not a whole new one-purpose interface just for the special case of people who want to create this specific unusual notation.

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• Aug 25, 2013 - 18:38

To make it more clear, I think we should favor (and we did in the past), general features that can solve a lot of different problems instead of implementing specific features for a specific problem.
Think about hide empty staff or hide measures, or make invisible, or backgroud color of text frames, they can be used for a lot of different tricks or workaround and solve a lot of different use cases. And no, workarounds are not bad, there are the source of hacking and creativity :)

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• Aug 25, 2013 - 19:03

And with that in mind, I have two different specific proposals to offer.

1) Allow the Measure Properties dialog to work on a selected range of measures. Any changes made in that dialog would apply to all selected measures. You'd probably want to use the same kind of trick used in the Inspector to handle settings that are not already the same in all selected measures - grey it out, have a button to reset it. I could see using this for "actual duration" and "break multimeasure rest" at least as often as for "visible".

2) Implement something like Finale's "Staff Styles", where you can select a region of a staff (not necessarily full measures!) and apply a specific attribute to that region. One of the attributes would be invisible, another might be "blank" (staff & bar lines only, no notes or rest), another might be "slash" notation, etc. This might also be the best way to implement things like allowing one region of a staff to have different transposition properties - the new "instrument change" text is all but useless for many purposes without this.

#1 seems easier to do, and perhaps worth doing even if #2 eventually also gets implemented. On the other hand, #1 also seems like the sort of thing that *could* be done through a plugin. #2 - or something similar - strikes me as something important long term, but probably more disruptive think about right now.

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• Aug 25, 2013 - 20:23

Regarding workarounds: Hacking and creativity is fine :), but I suppose at the end of the day, people expect the software to work properly and be durable for future changes. For me, workarounds are sometimes a sign that whatever you are using may not be ready for proper solid use. I mean this in a constructive sense, of course :).

1. Open attached BAFTA-winning score (produced in 1.3).
2. Right-click each bar from bars 3-8:
3. 'Measure Properties...'.
4. Untick 'visible' at Stave 6 (Tambourine).
5. 'OK'.

6. 'Style'>'General...'.
7. Tick 'Hide empty staves'.
8. 'OK'.

Result: The instrument name, etc is still there in systems after.

Discussion: The elements of the instrument need to be there in order to make the bar visible again. Deleting the notes in bars 5-8 would work, but of course, I wouldn't be able to hear them. The added stave text becomes invisible with the bar.

With my proposition, I don't think you would have to worry about any of the above.

Using MuseScore 2.0 Nightly Build (b0f01b4) - Mac 10.7.5.

Attachment Size
Continues Similar.mscz 4.49 KB

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• Aug 26, 2013 - 01:08

Well, yes, of course people expect the software to "work correctly". But that doesn't mean there needs to be a special purpose dialog for every single unusual, quirky, encountered once-in-a-thousand-scores type of notation that anyone might ever invent or use. That would be entirely impractical. There must be at least a million of these sorts of special purpose notational devices people have invented over the years; you simply can't have a special purpose dialog for every one of them. So instead you concentrate on the fundamentals- the things that are standardized and everyone would expect to work the same way - and then on providing a decent set of building blocks from which you build whatever other sort of unusual special purpose notation you feel like.

The notation you are describing is *not* fundamental at all - it's an extremely quirky and non-standard way of notating something that the entire rest of the world notates a different way that doesn't involve invisible measures. So it's exactly th sort of thing that users should not expect dedicate dialogs for but should instead expect to build from more basic building blocks like invisible measures and staff text. If the notation you are describing currently can't be built from these more basic building blocks because of some bug or other, fine, then fix the bugs*. That way, *everyone* who might want to use the standard technique of making measures invisible benefits - not just the tiny minority of users who might want to use invisible measures in the particular quirky non-standard way you are describing.

*EDIT: actually, in this case, it's simpler than that. I misunderstood what you saying about Hide Empty Staves and thought there was some of bug you were describing. But no, I think it's working properly - it's just a matter of your not using the correct basic building blocks here. You want a staff that plays back but does not display. That's fine; that's a basic building block a lot of people can use for a lot of different purposes, not just this one special unusual one. 2.0 provides such a facility although - it's the "Visible" attribute in the instrument list. Create a separate staff for playback just as lots of people already might do for other reasons - playback of chords from chord symbols, writing out of ornaments, etc - and mark it invisible after putting whatever music on it you don't want to display. Then make the regular staves empty at those places so they disappear too when Hide Empty Staves is on. This is a good example of using simple, basic building blocks to create a special purpose notation. Those same building blocks are useful to many people for many different purposes, as it should be.

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• Aug 28, 2013 - 03:44

I know I've probably said it before, but as someone who generally prefers software like this to automatically manage things, such as placement of elements (due to the intricacies), I am cautious about manual intervention.

However, I do appreciate the building blocks provided and the problem of accommodating many functions that could be considered non-standard.

Therefore, I probably would be prepared to accept your suggestions.

If it would not become native, maybe aspects could become a plug-in at some point to make it all easier?

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• Aug 28, 2013 - 13:59

Well, the thing that *is** common is wanting to take a range of measures and set measure properties for the whole at once. This particular application of that might not be common, but the basic need is. Not sure if that's doable in the new plugin framework or not, byt this much at least seems worth looking.

But aside from the actual setting of the measures invisible, I can't really think of any aspect of creating this particular notation that is particularly labor-intensive or automatable. You want music that is heard but not seen, you accomplish that by placing it on a special staff that you mark invisible before printing. But it takes no longer to place music on the special playback staff than on the regular stff; a plugin can't make that easier. Or, if you've already placed it n the regular staff, you use cut and paste to move it, and again, a plugin is hardly going to be easier than the basic cut and paste mechanism. I suppose a dedicated "mark this staff invisible" plugin that you run before printing would save two clicks, but that's hardly worth writing a plugin over. Esepcially given that the normal way of doing this - the instrument dialog - let's you do this to several staves all at once and provides a familiar interface selecting the staves to be so marked. no way a plugin is going to improve on that either. Maybe a plugin to create a piece of staff text and move it to the right, but gain, it's hard to imge that being worth the effort. Actually, defining your own custom staff text style would be far simpler.

So I'm not really seeing any opportipu ities for automation here aside from setting the measure range invisible. The rest is already as simple as I could really imagine it being.

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• Aug 31, 2013 - 19:53

Yes, that point was made. It is already a bit easier in 2.0 since you can scroll through the measures one by one within the measure properties dialog. But operating on a range would make a ton of sense. Or, use the equivalent of Finale's "staff styles".

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