Performing the same action to several or all instruments

• Apr 20, 2014 - 20:01

If I have a muti-instrument score and I want to do the same thing to every staff/instrument. For example I want to insert a crescendo or a dynamic marking such as mp or fff on all the staffs at the same beat. Is there a way to do this? I always just do the same action N times for N staffs.


Comments

Many markings can be applied to multiple items at once by first selecting all the items, then double clicking the palette symbol. So dynamics can easily be applied that way. But the double click method doesn't work for items that require two end points, like hairpins. Those will have to be placed manually. Still, I recall you mention using drag and drop, and that isn't needed for hairpins. Shortcuts are "H" and "Shift+H"in 1.3, "<" and ">" in the experimental development builds, and you can even select the full range of notes you want to apply to before hitting the shortcut, thus saving the trouble of extending each.

In reply to by Jojo-Schmitz

The shortcuts indicate that < and > are Add Crescendo and Add Decrescendo respectively. I can drag and drop the hairpins into the score. that works correctly, and they draw correctly. however, the < and > shortcut keys don't do anything.

What's the usage? do I need to select a note, or group of notes, or measure before pressing the < and > keys? Do I need to be in note-entry mode? etc?

Jim

In reply to by jim.newton.562

you select first note (click) and optionally last note (either with shift-click or Ctrl/Cmd-click) then press < or >. Outside Note Entry mode in the latter case (inside you won't be able to select more than one note), and doesn't matter in the former case.
At least it works that way for me, on Windows 7

In reply to by jim.newton.562

Since different keyboards have different layouts, it wouldn't shock me to learn that "<" and ">" in fact *don't* work on some keyboards. So please try the steps above (select note or notes first, then press shortcut) and report back whether it works for you in a recent development build. And if not, say what keyboard layout you have (if you don't know, then saying what country you live or bought your computer in would be useful).

In reply to by jim.newton.562

It's the same convention used in many other applications, which isn't entirely logical but at least is more or less consistent: shortcuts are labelled according the what actually appears on the key. The key that produces a lowercase "s" is nonetheless labelled with a capital "S", so that's how the shortcut is labelled.

The problem with ">" is that Shift+. (period) is the usual shortcut for adding a staccato dot. So on keyboards where Shift+. is ">" (and that's how it is on mine too), it seems there will be a conflict. And indeed, that key combination does nothing on my system - neither staccato nor hairpin. I see an error message on the console log - "Ambiguous shortcut overload".

So, I guess we need a solution. Hairpin used to be "H" but was changed because that key was needed in tablature entry for French (?) lute, which uses letters rather than numbers to indicate frets. "<" and ">" seem to beautifully logical, I hate to give them up, but then, so is something involving "." for staccato.

In reply to by jim.newton.562

Edit / Preferences / Shortcuts. So yes, the workaround is, define the shortcut to work with your keyboard.

Still, it's an issue if the default does not work on a significant number of keyboards. I have no way of knowing how common it is worldwide for ">" to reside above ".", but in the US at least, it's pretty standard.

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