Request for an easier way to select a very long passage in a score.
I want to select and then remove a movement of several hundred measures from an orchestral score. It is very tedious to select that movement by the usual way of clicking on the first and last measures of that movement.
Would it be possible to have a feature when the user types in the measure numbers of the first and the last measures of the section to be selected (and later removed or whatever)?
This would surely be very helpful for many users.
In theory, clicking on the first measure, then holding down ctrl and moving to the last measure and clicking on it should work. But very often it does not work for a long passage. My only way to proceed so far was to repeatedly select and remove shorter passages, a very long and tedious way.
Thank you very much.
Comments
I agree a method to select by specifying measure numbers would be a Good Thing. However, in its absence, you might like to try using the time line (from the View menu). You get a view of many more measures there and can move around with the scroll bar and click + shift/click to define your selection.
Not sure what you mean about the click / shift+click not working for long passages - can you post an example where it does not? Also, Ctrl doesn't really play into this, there is no reason to use it during this process.
But anyhow, there is a little-known builtin command to do exactly what you want - see Edit / Select Section.
In reply to Not sure what you mean about… by Marc Sabatella
Yep, I also wasn't aware about it, but to complete it, you need to have section breaks inside the score for it - which should be the normal way between movements.
In reply to Yep, I also wasn't aware… by kuwitt
This answers the OP's first request but not the more general feature of selecting from measure X to measure Y where X and Y are a long distance from each other. One might hope that the find feature would help. This will allow you to position yourself in measure X or measure Y but unfortunately, if you click to start a selection in measure X, when you enter Y in the find box (actually even the first digit of Y) the selection is cleared. Also the focus is always shifted to the first stave after repositioning via the find box.
One small improvement I could imagine could be, that if you select a measure and press ctrl+F to go to another measure, that it doesn't leave the focus of the selected measure before, so that's possible to select the latter measure for a range via shift+click.
In reply to One small improvement I… by kuwitt
I thought of this too, but unfortunately it completely breaks Ctrl+F for blind users who need it to select the new location. There could however be some optional way of triggering it, like adding Shift to have it just do the range selection right away, much like the difference between Ctrl+End and Ctrl+Shift+End.
In reply to I thought of this too, but… by Marc Sabatella
Good point to beware the accessibility.
Maybe it would need an additional shortcut, for example - just brainstorming - shift+click to memorize the start selection of a range, alternatively alt+click; ctrl+F to go to the final measure at the end of the desired range , shift+click again to select the range.
Warm thanks to all of you kind responders for your expert thoughts regarding my request. A very useful variant of the new feature that I am requesting would be if, as well as the option of specifying the first and last measure numbers of the part of the score to be selected, one could also have the alternative option of specifying two rehearsal marks. Then musescore would highlight the part of the score starting from the measure with the first specified rehearsal mark and ending with the measure just before the measure containing the second specified rehearsal mark. This would be a real boon since it is so simple to insert and remove rehearsal marks.
(Yes of course I meant click-shift, not click-ctrl in my original post. Sorry.)