Beaming, tied chords across bars.
I have two suggestions from my use of musescore:
Firstly, beaming with multiple parts on a stave could be flipped to a common-sense position by default. I get that voices 1, 3 are up by default and 2 and 4 down, but sometimes (usually because of ties from previous bars), I need to use the 'wrong' voice at a particular pitch range. It would be nice if, as one enters notes, the beams on the notes could notice if they are intersecting with beams from other notes, and if flipping the beam on that voice would fix that. If it did that automatically, a lot of time could be saved.
Secondly, when, for instance, a dotted minim is suggested, and a chord using a dotted minim must go across a bar, musescore does not allow you to enter this directly, note by note. Instead one must enter the same chord twice and then manually tie each note. It would be nice if one could make chords going over a bar note-by-note as one would normally.
Comments
I'll handle these in reverse.
To tie two identical chords across a barline, enter the chord in the first measure, select the number for the duration in the second measure and press + and the complete tie is created automagically.
I'm not sure what you're trying to say about the voices and stem directions. Can you give an example.
In reply to I'll handle these in reverse… by mike320
Thanks for the advice with the first issue. The situation for the second was as follows: I had two lines in the same stave, and because of ties from the previous bar, they had to be in certain voices (I think it was voices 1 and 2). Voice one, whose stems were by default pointing upwards, was however below voice 2 for the whole bar. I think musescore could be able to automatically, for that bar, make the stems for voice one point downwards, and those for voice 2 point upwards. Though this can be fixed by changing the stem directions manually, or changing the voices (although in my case the ties made this impossible), it is a relatively common issue when producing sketches, say for the piano, and I think its implementation could save substantial time in the long run.
In reply to Thanks for the advice with… by Music1478
Selecting both notes at once using shift+click then pressing X is not time consuming. MuseScore ensures that you know that voice 1 is ALWAYs pointed up and voice 2 ALWAYs pointed down so you know you don't have to guess while in multi voice situations. This is extremely nice in multiple instrument or voice situations and quite commonly useful in piano parts as well. If you just want to switch the two voices, then change stem directions for those notes is the easiest.
If you really want to change voices during a tie, you can tie notes of different voices together. Put the note in voice 1, then the same note in voice 2 on the next beat. Select one note, then ctrl+click the other one and press +. If the same note exists later in the instrument in the same voice, you will get a tie to it (no matter how long) that you will want to delete. It's not fast because you have to exit note input mode, but it's doable. I would only do this if the alternative were to make voice 1 rests invisible.
In reply to I'll handle these in reverse… by mike320
I've also run into the problem with two identical chords across a bar line. I had a chord tiled across the bar line, but determined that I wanted another a note in the chord. I added the note before the bar line, then tried to add that note, tied, after the bar line.
1. I was not able to select the chord while in Note Insert mode.
2. If I used '+', the tied note replace the rest of the chord after the bar line.
3. If I used '+', the keystroke was ignored.
I had to add the note, then exit Note Insert mode to tie those two notes.
I'm using OS: Windows 10 (10.0), Arch.: x86_64, MuseScore version (64-bit): 3.6.2.548021803, revision: 3224f34.
In reply to I've also run into the… by Aaron Grosky
Typically in note input mode, it's expected you would add the tie after entering the full chord. But if you change your mind and wish to add another note later, there is a command to handle this - Alt++ (Alt plus "+", which on my keyboard is Alt+Shift+=). You can customize this in Edit / Preferences / Shrotcuts ("Add tied note to chord). Personally, I encounter this situation seldom enough that I never remember that, so leaving note input and coming back is easy enough. The reason the normal tie command replaces the current contents of the beat) is that "most" of the time (e.g., when not simply adding a note to chord), that's what you want.
In reply to Typically in note input mode… by Marc Sabatella
I understand. Even though the '+' on the numpad doesn't require the shift key, the shift key is ignored for that key, so ++ (or ++=) is the best choice for that functionality.
Thank you for your help.