Linked Parts discussion
I just did my first ensemble score in a 2.0 development build. I have a few observations, questions, and suggestions regarding the linked parts facility; feel free to contribute to this discussion.
- First impression is that it basically works as expected: a simple File / Parts / New All and you're in business with all parts generated. Most things you do to the score or a part that you'd normally want to affect both (eg, adding, deleting, or changing actual content) do so. Most changes you do to a score or part that you'd want to be local (eg, layout changes) are. I didn't push this hard, though - my score was simple enough that the parts didn't need much editing (a huge testament to MuseScore in general and 2.0 in particular, BTW). I still don't have a good feel for which types of changes are *supposed* to link and which are not or whether there is yet any way to override these defaults.
- Since we don't really have a good set of 2.0 templates yet, I created my score from scratch. My score is landscape mode with smaller than usual scaling - common for many types of scores. First thing I found it necessary to do in all generated parts was go to Layout / Page Settings and change this, I know there is a global preference to select a style to apply to generated parts, and I guess I should have set that up first. But while I don't mind having a global option, but I also feel there should be a per-score override for this. I expect to have at least two different sets of parts preferences: one for my classical scores, one for my jazz scores. I guess for templates, the parts can already be generated as part of the template (? is this a good idea) and thus have the correct styles already applied. But it would be nice to be able to specify this in scores created from scratch. Even better if one could change this setting for the score *after* generating parts and have it reflected in those parts. Although I guess that could be messy. Thoughts?
- Next thing I had to do in all parts was delete the staff names in each of the generated parts. The Create New Score wizard is smart enough to not generate staff names for score of a single instrument. I'd suggest the part facility work the same. On the positive side, I was pleased that deleting the staff names in the parts didn't delete them from the score.
- As mentioned, the actual editing of parts went very well.
- File / Export Parts sounds promising, but I can't figure out how to use it or what it does. Was kind of hoping to generate a bunch of PDF's all at once. Is that possible, or intended to be possible?
Comments
- There is currently no way to override the default.
- I'm not sure I'm following. You are missing an option to change style/layout settings in batch mode for all parts?
- No instrument name for part with one instrument could be done. But it's always easier to remove than add... I still think that displaying instruments name should be a on/off option instead of having to delete the text itself.
- File / Export Parts is buggy. Looking into it as we speak.
In reply to - There is currently no way by [DELETED] 5
Regarding instrument names: yes, a simple option to display or not sounds lovely. I could see it working a number of ways. I could see a simple style option that one has on for the score but off for the parts, but that presupposes you've set up a separate style for parts. Or, a style option that says "suppress staff names if only one instrument", and then this same style option could apply to both score and parts. Or have a special set of style options attached to the score but designed to affect the parts - maybe a separate menu item under the Style menu, "Style / Parts" that brings up a dialog with just the settings you'd be likely to want different (page layout & this one, really).
Anyhow, yes, obviously, I can delete instrument names, but this seems the sort of repetitive operation that should be easily automatable, and realistically, should be the default because it would be very rare anyone would want it otherwise.
Regarding "no way to override the default" in my original post - here I'm talking about the default for which edits affect both score and part and which affect only whatever you are currently viewing. Like for instance, it seems that any change to the actual chords/notes/rests always affects both score and parts no matter which you are currently viewing, as one would expect. Same for adding any new score elements (text, clef, key signature, time signature, probably a few other things). Also editing the *content* of text, etc. But changes to position/shape/layout elements affects only what I am looking at. So if I drag a dynamic while viewing the score, part is not affected, and vice versa. Same with adding line breaks, editing shape of slur, etc.
That's normally fine. But sometimes it would be nice, when viewing a part, to be able to make an edit like that and have it affect both score and part. It's not really crucial, as of course I could reproduce the edit, but that partially defeats the purpose of linked parts. The reverse is perhaps more important: if there are certain things that normally affect both score and part but I for whatever reason want to have different, there would be no easy way to accomplish that without an override. I can live with that if MuseScore is sufficiently conservative about which edits affect both score and parts. And so far, it does seem to "just work". But I'd like to understand better what the actual principles are here.
I know I've mentioned this before, but Finale had something in effect where edits while viewing the score always affect both score and part by default, edits while viewing the part only affect the score by default, but holding Ctrl while making the edit flips that default. Or something like that. This worked, but realistically, you spent a lot of time thinking about it (or screwing up), because the default might have been easy to describe and easy to implement, but didn't correlate well with what you actually wanted. MuseScore's defaults out of the box seem better to me.
BTW, for anyone contemplating trying linked parts yourself, there is currently still a pretty fundamental bug in how the concert pitch toggle works with linked parts, as described in #18099: transposition info incorrect when switching between score and part. But it's quite also possible to avoid or to workaround, so I'm not letting that scare me off.