Allow lyric entry beneath rests - request
I would like to be able to enter text in the lyrics lines beneath rests.
Pressing Space always skips rests to advance from the current note to the next available note.
Because most people probably don't want to enter lyrics beneath rests, it seems to me that "Allow lyric entry beneath rests" should be a Preference setting that could be turned off by default, but that could be turned on by those of us who need this feature.
Comments
Duplicate of https://musescore.org/en/node/270510
In reply to Duplicate of https:/… by Jojo-Schmitz
Not really. The other post was asking for help in the general forum.
This post is a request posted in the feature request forum.
I'm assuming that these serve different purposes and that a feature request posted in the general forum may not necessarily be seen and responded to in the same way as in this forum. At least that's how other forums that I'm familiar with have worked.
In reply to Not really. The other post… by carlkmn
True, still the cross link serves a purpose.
I'd still like to know why and in which situation is could be useful to have lyrics attached to rests. Also whether you'd see it as a genewpreference setting or a per score style setting.
In reply to True, still the cross link… by Jojo-Schmitz
I can imagine one use case, and that would be if wanted to communicate some extra info to the singer. Such as if a song's lyrics switches between two different characters (like a man and woman), then might make sense to indicate that character switch as a lyric below the rest, like "Man: " and "Woman: "
And while I'm aware that text could be added as regular staff text formatted like a lyric, the problem with that is regular staff text won't result in automatic layout adjustments to make sure there is enough space between the "lyric" under the rest and the lyric under the subsequent note.
In reply to I can imagine one use case,… by ericfontainejazz
Here again, though, there really isn't anything rest=specific about this. There might well be a note before the new lyric, and you probably wouldn't want the "Man:" text appearing directly under that note - it's really about putting text just to the left of a lyric regardless of what note or rest might be in that vicinity now. So staff text -
attached to the note itself and them moved to the left - is actually the better solution. That said, sure, extending the existing lyric number mechanism to also recognize "Man: Ly" as really being "Man: " to the left and then "Ly" centered would be a possible enhancement. We do this sort of thing already a bit but there are some reasons we don't go further - see #24856: Ignore "parenthesized expressions" that precede lyric syllables
In reply to Here again, though, there… by Marc Sabatella
I understand. I also see the difficulties in that related issue.
What about adding an optional ability for a staff text anchored to a particular ChordRest to be assigned to lyrics style and to force layout to push the next ChordRest right ensure there is enough room so the staff text and subsequent lyric text don't overlap? I'm noticing that 3.0 is already sort-of tries to make room for a long staff text if it would collide with a notehead, although if when I drag that staff text to collide with the lyric, what I notice happening is that the lyric gets pushed down below the staff text, which isn't ideal, cause I'd like them to remain at the same vertical position by pushing the ChordRest of the lyric right.
In reply to I understand. I also see… by ericfontainejazz
As mentioned, it's the wrong thing to attach staff text to the previous note - it results in the space between the "Man:" and the "Ly-ric" being determine by note spacing when it should be directly adjacent. So you really need to attach the staff text "Man:" to the same syllable, and then move it left. Or hope the automatic collision resolution does the right thing, except that it's completely unknown whether the right thing is to move the staff text left, up, or down - or to move the lyric. Depending on context, any of these might be correct. So realistically, moving the staff text left manually is likely to be the way to go.
In reply to As mentioned, it's the wrong… by Marc Sabatella
fine, but the advantage of allow lyrics under rests for lyric instructions would be that musescore would already properly perform automatic layout adjustments to ensure that spacing between chordrests is wide enough to permit the entire text under the rest to appear. And if the page settings or other style settings like text size got changed, the these currently-existing lyric layout logic would nicely re-adjust the spacing. What you describe here with moving the staff text would mean that user might have to manually add leading space or horizontal offset to the text or chordrests to make sure it doesn't collide with subsequent (or even prior) lyrics. And unfortunately those manual adjustments might not apply when page width or styles change.
In reply to fine, but the advantage of… by ericfontainejazz
Yes, using lyrics under the previous rest (or note) would force enough space in the special case where the previous rest happened to be too close, but it does nothing if the previous rest or note was too far. And it helps not all if the previous note already had a lyric. Hoping that automatic collision avoidance will help is great, but attaching to the previous note or rest is just plain wrong. The word "Man:" in the example logically has absolutely nothing to do with the previous note or rest. Indeed, there might not have even been a previous word or rest - this could well be the first note of the song. The word "Man:" is logically attached to the same note as "Ly", plain and simple.
Improvising the collision avoidance to allow it to do the right thing is fine, but as mentioned, the right thing is unfortunately situation dependent. If that bit of text happens to be something like the "Man:" in this example, then what makes sense is to leave the lyric alone but move the staff text left, true. But there are probably other cases where the right solution is to put the staff text above, or below, as I said. Ideally, there would be an option or property to set to control how collisions are resolved, either globally for all all staff text vs lyrics collisions, or case by case. But needing to set that is still manual intervention.
Bottom line, I don't see a one-size-fits-all solution here. No matter how you slice it, manual intervention will be required in some cases. I favor an approach where the adjustment required is relatively uncommon, relatively easy, and relative "robust" in the sense of not depending on other aspects of the layout like the current spacing (which depends on number of measures per line). Finding the right balance between all those possibly conflicting factors is tricky.
Only solution I see that avoids the needs for manual intervention is to go back to an implementation we had for a while during 2.0 development where there was a separate "lyrics verse" element you could attach to a lyric, that basically prepended "1." or whatever to the lyric and tried to do the right things layout-wise. It never really worked right and was scrapped, but maybe we should revisit it, and extend it to allow arbitrary text.
In reply to Yes, using lyrics under the… by Marc Sabatella
Ok. Thanks for all those good thoughts.
What you describe for pre-pending lyrics verse numbers sounds like something that I think would be useful to considered again for 3.0, if it could be generalized to allow for prepending generic text before a lyric.