Better 3-staff piano functionality
Currently, trying to write in three or more staves for a piano piece is rather a bear, especially if the piece switches back and forth. It is possible by either using the split staff feature or by adding a new staff in the instrument editor and then selecting hide empty staves. Annotation style cutouts can even be added by checking "cutout" in the Staff/Part Properties. However, this method is very clumsy as a staff must be made for the entire instrument. Having composed music that alternates between two and three staffs, it is a giant headache. With the focus on making MuseScore 4 a true composition software, I think that improving this functionality is a must.
My suggestion is to implement staffs similarly to midi channels. This would allow me to set instrument channel 1 to a 2 stave grand staff and channel 2 to a 3 stave grand staff. I could then switch back and forth between instrument channels seamlessly, greatly streamlining my composing process. One of the benefits of this implementation would be allowing other data tags to be linked to instrument channels.
A second suggestion is to allow cutout style annotations to be added on a measure-by-measure basis. This may be harder to implement, but would truly be a game-changer.
I'm not sure how difficult these solutions would be to implement, especially considering the need for backwards compatibility, but I figured it was worth a shot. Please comment below if you agree, disagree, or have a better solution.
Comments
I understand the request for better/more versatile cutaway behavior and got the impression that it is at least being considered and looked at for MS4.
I completely don't understand the 2stave-3stave request though. What's the actual issue with starting with a 3stave piano (something that is quite uncommon) and only turn on the hide empty staves option after having done the composing work?
In reply to I understand the request for… by jeetee
I'm not sure if you don't understand my suggestion or if you simply disagree with its necessity. If you're unclear on my proposed solution, I'm happy to re-explain.
As far as the issue with the current method, starting with a three-stave part and hiding empty staves absolutely works. However, in my experience, composers are not always aware that they will need to make use of three staves until they have already begun a piece. Retrospectively adding a third staff, or in rare cases a fourth, can really screw up an existing score. For the tech-savvy, this is just a minor inconvenience, but musicians are not renowned for being tech-savvy. Having the ability to switch dynamically between two, three, and even four staves would greatly streamline musescore's experience and allow composers to focus more on music-making and less on technical issues.
From a practical perspective, I imagine this could be implemented in musescore by the program creating a piano part with three staves an hiding the third by default. The third stave could then be turned on or off for particular sections. Yes, that is technically the same as what is currently possible, but my suggestion is essentially to hide the extra steps in the background.
In reply to I'm not sure if you don't… by ClassicalComposer
I won't speak for jeetee, but it sounds like we are in agreement that some clarification of how this would work is necessary. I've been thinking about this and I thought that perhaps a "smart staff" could be used.
How I imagine it working would be that the staff would appear if you moved your mouse over the top line of where the staff would be if it were visible. This should normally keep it from appearing if you are adding a hairpin or pedal for example. Once the mouse causes the staff to become visible, it will remain visible in one of 3 situations.
This of course would be an option for a given instrument rather than automatic for every hidden staff. Getting used to the staff appearing and disappearing will take some getting used to, but will be worth the effort if the user writes a lot of piano music that has extra staves.
There would also need to be a decision on what to do if there is more than one invisible staff and the mouse is moved below the first one. Do both become visible? Does the first one go invisible and the next one stay visible? I lean towards keeping all higher staves visible or it will become difficult to make staff 3 visible if staves 2 and 4 are visible but not 3.
I think these smart staves should be smart as long as Hide Empty staves is not selected. Once that is turned on, they would act like any other empty staff and fall back on the Hide when empty option in staff properties. This is of course based upon the version 3 hide options, I'm hoping version 4 is more flexible still.
Thoughts?
In reply to I won't speak for jeetee,… by mike320
So the smart staff idea is really creative and I like it. However, I can see it getting very annoying, especially for those who tend to compose in page view such as myself. Maybe the smart staff feature could be triggered by holding down a hotkey (like alt/option) and then hovering over the invisible staff.
To solve the problem of out-of-order hidden staves, a second shortcut could be used to reveal all invisible staves on a given line. The ability to have hidden staves in any order could be useful for users who want to be able to separate parts out easily.
Additional staves could be added after adding the third staff. This might even allow staves to be added without entering the instrument editor, which would be very convenient.
In reply to I'm not sure if you don't… by ClassicalComposer
I didn't grasp whether you were looking for new functionality (technically) or a change in usability for the existing functionality.
Thank you for clearing that up for me. As I'm more a behind-the-scenes technical person myself, I'll let the UX improvement suggestion stand as it is for people more suited than myself.
In reply to I didn't grasp whether you… by jeetee
I get where you're coming from. I tend to be more technical myself, but I think cutting edge features like this could really set musescore apart and make it appealing to a broader audience. Finale, which is the gold standard according to my composition professor (it's not, but whatever), doesn't have features like this. As an enthusiast, this doesn't really matter, but as a composition student, it could help me save a great deal of time.
The ability to allow cutout style annotations on a measure by measure basis is being worked on by Emilio Le Roux almost as we speak. He has written some PRs that have not yet been merged, so 3.5.1 is extremely unlikely for us to see them. I'm thinking 3.6 is a possibility. In version 4 there will be no need to consider backwards compatibility.
Even if I had these options, the way I write for a variation between 2 and 3 (or 4 staves) is to create an instrument with the proper number of staves and set staves 3 (& 4) to hide always in staff properties. When you need to add notes to one of the staves, select any note the the lowest voice on staff 2 and use the accessibility shortcut of alt+down arrow to move to the next lower staff. Note that what you see will look wrong, just keep going until you have notes on the staff. One trick I sometimes use is to put a note in another measure just to make it so I can see the staff. Later, I'll either just delete the note or overwrite it. Once you put anything but a rest in the staff, it will become visible. The measure you start in in staff 2 is the same measure your note entry cursor will become active in after alt+down. Also, if you use cross-staff notation to move a note to the 3rd staff it will also become visible.
I'm in the process of putting a score like this into MuseScore at https://musescore.com/user/6105546/scores/6325818. If you want to look at it and have problems downloading let me know here and I'll see what I can do.
Finally, I'm not saying this is the best way to handle varying numbers of staves on a piano, but I do believe it's the best way in version 3. I do think your idea for version 4 needs some more thought.
In reply to The ability to allow cutout… by mike320
That's really exciting that cutout annotations are actively being worked on.
Also, I use basically the same method as you to write for three staves in version 3, I was simply suggesting this as an improvement for version 4.