Request a way to have concert key chord symbols on top of score in presence of Hide Empty Staves
This is my first issue post; if the items below should be addressed as separate issues please advise and I will correct.
These are from tests of the 2.0 beta; I had noticed them in 1.x but was waiting to see if they would be addressed.
1. Chord Symbols apparently associate with a single voice/instrument line; if that line is hidden due to the "Hide Empty Staves" feature, the Chord Symbols are no longer visible. Could Chord Symbols be treated similarly to System Text, which remains visible no matter the status of "Hide Empty Staves"?
2. When a voice/instrument line that has Chord Symbols, Staff Text, or Lyrics is copied/pasted to another line, the Chord Symbols, Text, & Lyrics also copy and must frequently be deleted. Could copy/paste have a feature where Staff Text & Lyrics are optional to copy? (I'm not sure how this would impact Chord Symbols if the change I recommend above is implemented.)
Comments
First, welcome!
Second, yes, one issue per issue is nice. And it's better to ask questions in the Technology Preview forum first if there is any doubt about an issue (ie, it's not just a straight-up bug report).
Third, there already *is* a new-for-2.0 feature where you can filter out out various different types of elements on copy. See View / Selection Filter (F6 shortcut).
Fourth, yes, chord symbols are associated with a single instrument only. This is ordinarily correct behavior - just because you have chord symbols on your piano part, that doesn't mean you want them appearing on your saxophone or drum parts too. It's not clear why you would be attaching chord symbols to empty staves - could you describe you use case? Is it anything like what is discussed in #28746: Crash on changing instrument (from 2-3 channels to 1 channel)?
Marc, thanks for the response, and thanks for all the work that went into this incredible FREE product!
The F6 filter is exactly what I was thinking of, thanks for pointing it out, learning curve!
Re: the Chord Symbols, I use MuseScore to make simple piano/vocal arrangements for our church group, and the guitarists just go off of the chord symbols at the top. However (for instance) if there is no top part because the Soprano line is silent for several measures (with Hide Empty Staves enabled) then the chords go away. I could put them in another vocal line, or the piano, but they might not be at the top of the page, or might be at the top on one page, and a lower line on another.
Also, when I'm working on more complex scores, (this is just my work habit here) I like to fill out the chords simply first (putting the symbol at the top), then kind of flesh them out, and sometimes the line that has the symbol attached ends up not being used and it goes away when Hide Empty Staves is enabled.
I understand your point, and definitely would not want chord symbols to appear where they are not needed; at the same time it would be good to have a means so that they don't go away when they ARE needed.
OK, so your use case *is* basically the same as discussed in that other issue I linked to.
The way to have chords not go away when they are needed is to not attach them to a staff that might go away. So I think the right way to support this is to allow a 0-line guitar staff, put it on top, and set it to never be hidden, then you can attach your chord symbols to it. And then if there were a way to streamline that process, so much the better.
Sure you meant #28746: Crash on changing instrument (from 2-3 channels to 1 channel) rather than #28476: Chord symbols with System flag set do not transpose when propagated to parts, Marc?
I support this request, for the same use case...
Ah, thanks for correcting the typo!
Amending Title to the remaining issue...
I attached the excerpt from a pop song book, hopefully this will make the intent clear (picture being worth a thousand words and all).
You'll note that chords & guitar fingering symbols are on all 4 systems, however the top & bottom systems have a vocal line while the middle two systems are instrumental only.
Attaching a "0-line guitar staff", as Marc indicated, may provide what I'm looking for, although I'm not sure what a 0-line guitar staff is or how to create one. If you could point me in the direction for that, very much appreciated!
In any event, the attention you're providing to this matter is above & beyond the call!
A 0-line staff is something that had been discussed earlier, but not yet implemented
Yes, thank you, I think the intended use case is now clear. I've changed the title of the thread to make it clear there are actually multiple ways this could be supported - system text is but one, and one that definitiely has issues as I have mentioned.
A 0-line guitar staff would be an ordinary staff for guitar that happens to be set to 0 lines via Staff Properties (currently, the lowest you can go is 1 line, so this would require a change in order to make happen). BTW, you can currently create a 1-line staff and set staff lines to be invisible, which solves this almost perfect except the initial barline at the start of the system still tries to extent to the guitar staff.
I have an incredibly clumsy work-around (building on Marc's concept noted previously); two problems once implemented-
A. The barline that connects all the staffs at the beginning of every system is invisible. (You could make it visible, but then it extends to connect to the invisible staff above it.)
B. The instrument/voice name at the beginning of the "invisible" line won't stay invisible; you can make it invisible from Inspector (F8), but it becomes visible again when the score is saved, closed, and re-opened. This may require a separate issue log to be generated.
Sample is attached.
Procedure:
1. Put a voice or instrument as the top-most line (apparently any voice or instrument will do).
2. Copy melody/chords as necessary to that line (so that chord symbols etc. can be attached in the next step).
3. Add chord symbols, guitar fret symbols, etc. to that line.
4. Open staff properties for the line, and check the Invisible Staff Lines & Never Hide options.
5. Selecting all remaining elements in the line that you don't want to appear (one at a time, and selecting All Similar Elements in Same Staff; applies to notes, beams, barlines, clefs, key & time signatures, etc.), unselect Visible using the Inspector (F8).
6. From View pulldown menu, unselect Show Invisible.
WYSIWYG
I once brought this up (link ).
Werner just implemented a flag in staff properties to hide the system barline for a staff - works only for the top staff or staves, I guess. Seems it could help here. Feel free to give it a try once it becomes available in a nightly build (should be soon I guess).
Also see this .
Is anyone aware of any progress or new thoughts on this issue? For my specific purposes (simulating the look of a contemporary pop song book, with chord symbols or guitar frets automatically placed above the top line, even if the top line is not a guitar, or changes instruments due to Hide Empty Staves being enabled) having chord symbols available as a System Text option would be the easiest from the user standpoint (although I have no idea how much effort would be required from a programming perspective to implement, or if it's even possible).
I refer to the jpg that is attached above in Item #7 for the desired outcome.
Thanks,
I don't know, and I apologize for the intrusion, take a look at the attachment and see if it can be helpful to you.
I exchanged the voices 1/2 of the second staff;
Copied from the first to the second (as a new one voice);
Exchanged again the Voices 1 and 2;
Eliminated Voice 2;
Eliminated the guitar;
Added a vertical frame to make space for the new top staff.
Only a trick ...
Came up once more in #263538: System-wide chords
Came up again in https://musescore.org/en/node/290607
Workaround is to add it to all/multiple staves, and hide on those that you don't need them to be seen on score/part
Came up again in https://musescore.org/en/node/293408
Can I "bump" this? Lately it's has been a frequent issue for me when writing multi-part pop music, especially band or analysis scores where the number of visible staves changes often. Having to change the part with visible chord symbols each time a bar moves to the next system (which happens pretty frequently in a MuseScore workflow) is tedious work.
I think the easiest (and most effective) way to make this work is to have an option for chord symbols to behave like system text instead of staff text. It's very rare for chords to be different for multiple instruments, so I wouldn't call that incorrect behaviour.
You just did...