nudging fingerings in version 2.0 Beta
Testing the 2.0 Beta version by starting a new classical guitar score, I faced a rather annoying thing when entering fingerings:
After placing for instance the number '2' and nudging it to the right place adjacent to a note, copy and pasting that same number to a note on another place in the score, I again have to nudge it to its right place. I know that in this version you can choose a default place but that is mostly not enough. Fine tuning is necessary in most cases.
In the 1.3 version after copy and pasting this number for another note the number appears at exactly the same place as the note I did the copying.
Is there a possibility to get this feature also in the 2.0 version please?
Thanks, Joe.
Comments
So you're basically saying you want copy & paste of fingerings to preserve manual adjustments? Makes sense; it appears to work that way for other item that can be copied individually (articulations, lyrics, chord symbols). Could you file this as a bug in issue tracker?
In reply to So you're basically saying by Marc Sabatella
Marc, that is exactly what I ment: not having to adust fingerings every time.
I will file this in the Issue tracker.
In reply to Marc, that is exactly what I by JoeAlders
Joe, I saw your report in the Issue Tracker and I've read Marc's reply. It made me wonder if your manual adjustments are highly variable or if they fall into groups based on some specific characteristic of their positioning.
If it's the latter, you might find that creation of new Text Styles for those fingering situations addresses your issue. I've been using this feature for piano music, as one single fingering style - versatile as it is - doesn't address several other common needs, especially for fingering chords. One example is a style called Fingering-Right, which displaces the number horizontally from a note within a chord; another is Fingering-Small, which uses a reduced point size for fingering applied to grace notes.
In reply to make new Text Styles? by [DELETED] 448831
Steve (hope this is your Christian name),
For classical Guitar scores (that is my expertise)numbers are
normally positioned at the left side of each note head and circled numbers who are normally reserved for strings, on the bottom side but the last can vary according to clarity of notation.
Using MuseScore 1.x through the years, for me it was very easy to adjust (nudge) fingering simply by copying a once convenient place of the number accompanying a single note head to other places on the score when necessary. This varies greatly with the note grouping characteristics of each particular part of note grouping on a score.
So designing numbers anchored to note heads seems on first sight a solution but in fact it is not due to so great varity of note grouping patterns.
I saw it as a wonderful benefit of MuseScore 1.x, that you only have to copy a number adjacent to a note head which shows some close similarity to the new note head which carries the same fingering number and then only had to (now and then) fine adjust it to fit that new situation on the score.
If I understand you correctly I am forced to design a (perhaps) large number of fixed anchor situations to a note head in order to minimize the work you have when fingering a classical guitar score.
If this is the situation with 2.x version then I will stick to the good old 1.3 version.
Joe.
In reply to Steve (hope this is your by JoeAlders
If it's a truly large number of fixed anchoring situations, then I can see the inconvenience and impracticality of creating a new style to fit each one.
BTW, I am very familiar with the manner in which 1.3 made it possible to copy/paste fingering and include the refinements in positioning. I used it so much that I programmed two buttons on my Logitech Optical Trackman for copy and paste in order to do just that! But I cannot really speak to the best way to accommodate what you need in 2.0 or possibly in future advances in MuseScore, as I am an end-user like you. It will be interesting to see what proceeds from the Issue Tracker now that you've filed this item.
In any event the ability to create new Text Styles is a powerful feature of 2.0, so I'm glad to have been able to draw attention to it.
In reply to make new Text Styles? by [DELETED] 448831
Funny, I actually had custom text styles in mind when I asked to see a concrete real world example (I asked this in the issue tracker, but here is just as good). I am having trouble wbat sorts of situations we are talking about, but was imagining that one or two custom text styles would do it. Especially given that you could conceivably your custom elements to the palette to make it easier to apply them than copy & paste.
But I also have another idea. I didn't implement the automatic positioning, but wonder, what if cooy and pasted did not try to do the auto position at all, but just worked the same as 1.3? This would be a disadvtange if you mostly rely on auto positioning, as you'd lose the a auto positioning based on the target note and be stuck with he exact same relative position as the source. But if you are relying on auto positioning, why use copy and paste at all?
So maybe the solution is to simply remove the attempt to do an auto position after a paste. And if you really want it, you could press Ctrl+R immediately after the paste, which actually does an explicit auto position.
In reply to Funny, I actually had custom by Marc Sabatella
Marc,
'you could conceivably your custom elements to the palette to make it easier to apply them than copy & paste.'
I have to confess that I did not know this!
But why is in 2.0 the copy&paste feature for the fingering dropped
in stead of just adding those new features for default positioning? But to make things absolutely clear: these new feature are a great extra help!
But, like Steve suggested I will do some exercises using the Text Styles. Did not do this before.
Joe.
In reply to Marc, 'you could conceivably by JoeAlders
Sorry I do not want to be a pain in the neck but
when trying to execute this using 'Offset' and 'Alignment' in the 'Edit Text Style', I experienced that for upstem beamed notes instead anchoring at the note head it anchors at the beam. So if you have a cluster of beamed notes all the numbering is placed at the same offset to that beam no matter the place of the note head in that cluster.
Trying to illustrate this using the Foto-Mode which is a good feature!
Is this correct or am I doing (interpreting)something wrong?
In reply to Using 'Edit Text Styles' for fingering in 2.0 by JoeAlders
Default for the automatic positioning is always above the note, except for the bottom staff of a two-staff part. For notes with stems up, above the note means above the stem. If the note happens to have a beam, then indeed, that coincides with the position of the beam. With the default text style settings, that would have placed the fingering above the stem & beam, but I guess you must have deliberately changed that to move the fingering lower?
In reply to Marc, 'you could conceivably by JoeAlders
Did you read my comment in the issue report? I wrote up a pretty detailed explanation of *why* copy and paste ignores manual position (it does this so it can apply automatic positioning so copy and paste produces right results when you copy a fingering to a note with different stem direction or other attributes that affect the automatic positioning). I asked for feedback on how you use this - I especially would still like to see a real world example.
FWIW, it *does* work if I simply remove the automatic positioning for copy & paste, keeping it only for the creation of brand new fingering elements. I just need to understand if this is really the right thing to do - if there won't be people who wish copy & paste did the automatic positioning.
In reply to Did you read my comment in by Marc Sabatella
Sorry Marc,
I will carefully read your comments and then will come with a response.
In reply to Sorry Marc, I will carefully by JoeAlders
Marc, hope this will make things clearer:
Here is a typical example of a classical guitar score. It is taken from 'Leo Brouwers Etude No.6 for Guitar': Picture A.
I have added left hand fingering and if I had used the build-in MuseScore fingering possibility without making any adjustments it would have looked like this: Picture B.
As you can see the fingering is barely noticeable.
So I have to make corrections and then I use that 'copy&paste' possibility to get the desired result without having to adjust every single fingering again: Picture C.
I do not know how to use the 'Edit Text Style' possibility in this case for version 1.3 to make things easier because there is only one possibility to introduce offsets for all notes.
Same holds for the right hand fingering p, i, m and a.
Perhaps there are more clever ways to do these things in version 1.3. If so, I will gladly accept advice!!
In reply to Marc, hope this will make by JoeAlders
Thanks for the example. I guess that was created in 1.3, though? Because the default positions in 2.0 Beta 1 would have been much better for this same example. The only notes that would have definitely needed adjustment would have been the bass notes, and that's exactly the sort of common situation for which a custom text style (not possible in 1.3 - we are just talking about 2.0 here) would solve the problem much more easily than individually adjusting fingerings and copying and pasting them.
But I can see if you want both number and "pima" fingerings on the same score - plus string numbers - than manual adjustments will be needed more often. What I don't understand is how you are using copy* paste here - just copying identical fingerings from identical notes? For instance, the "a" and "0" from the second note of the first measure to the second note of the third measure? Or are you also copying these same markings to all the rest of the notes of the first measure?
If I needed to recreate the example you are showing, I'd have added the numbers first - which would place them above the stems -, then right clicked one, select all similar (or all similar in same voice, or in range, if you are only doing this for a portion of the score), then either used Inspector to move them all down simultaneously or to apply a custom text style that has a negative vertical offset. For instance, a custom style with a horizontal offset of -0.50 and vertical offset of 2.50 could be applied en masse to all your fingerings in voice 1 to position them all about where you moved them to manually.
Then I'd have added the "pima" markings, which would appear by default more or less exactly where you placed them, no manual adjustment needed. The whole process would take a fraction of the time it would take to accomplish the same by laboriously copying and pasting each and every marking.
So I guess I'm still not totally clear on how copying and pasting individual markings is really so important here - it seems a pretty inefficient way of doing things now that 2.0 provides custom text styles, the Inspector, and better selection facilities to allow you to select just the fingerings you want to adjust.
Also, of course, you could have just copied and pasted the whole passage :-)
Anyhow, one point here is, there are lots of ways of doing things, and I'm pretty sure you'll find the new facilities in 2.0 Beta 1 mean you won't *need* to copy and paste fingerings one by one any more, and will save a *ton* of time in the process.
But I guess that still doesn't fully answer the question: when one for whatever reason *does* choose to copy and paste fingerings, would there ever be situations were you *want* the new automatic positioning to kick in by default, so that if I changed things to preserve adjustments (which necessarily will include both automatic and manual), you'd lose the automatic re-positioning that takes into account the unique properties of the note you are pasting to (eg, stem up versus stem down)? Currently, the automatic positioning algorithm will place a fingering just above the notehead if the stem is down, but above the stem if it is up. If we disabling the automatic positioning for copy and paste, that means if you copy and paste a fingering from a stem up to a stem down note or vice versa, it will be positioned incorrectly. but as I said before, maybe that's not a problem - maybe you'd never be trying to do that unless you literally did want to keep the same position (like if you had manually placed the marking beside the notehead, so it would work regardless of stem direction).
In reply to Thanks for the example. I by Marc Sabatella
Absolutely, this example was created with 1.3
![brouwer 2 13.jpg]( "brouwer 2 13.jpg")
With Beta1, it gives:
I used a lot and thought about the guitar fingerings. Personally, I don't use of copy and paste.
Why not, indeed? As said above, to preserve manual adjustements.
But, for me, there is a effective way to proceed with this Brouwer's study for example.
- So, start by entry your left hand fingerings (left hand only, I will explain why later), by
pressing Ctrl and selecting the notes, and then double-click the selected fingering from the palette. You know the way to, I guess?
- Then select a fingering -> right click -> all similar elements. All are now highlighted.
Now press Ctrl + Alt -> choose a fingering (1 e.g) , and with the mouse, you move all the fingering block.
Magically, all fingerings will be positioned close to the note heads, at the left, as is generally the case for guitar repertoire. You release, and you make small adjustments if necessary, via the arrow keys (or the Inspector). It gives now. Better, right!
In the case of a multivoice writing, things get complicated ... apparently.
Indeed, by default now in Beta1, as already stated, the fingerings are positioned above the notes (and not left as in 1.3).
In this simple example with three voices, you see that there are a considerable
number of collisions between fingerings and notes. Some fingerings are overlapped by the notes :(
Only the voice is clearly one above. Then the voice fingering 3 collide with notes of Voice 2, etc.
Good new: you get exactly the same correct result with the same process described above.
![multivoix .jpg]( "multivoix .jpg")
But if you want to add fingerings right hand, it becomes absolutely unreadable. And you are forced to manually untangle the two forms of fingerings. Feasible, but unpleasant.
I have not found better yet: entry the fingering of the left hand first, move the block as described above, and then add the fingering of the right hand, by moving them manually later.
The right hand fingerings in the most common cases are positioned above the notes. This means that adjustments will be close and easy to make.
My only regret is that the left hand and right hand fingerings always overlap, and therefore it is not efficient, in these conditions, to move all the fingering block.
In reply to Absolutely, this example was by cadiz1
Two things I see from discussing this and looking at the examples:
1) The string number placement is way off by default. Much too high. Not sure why, but I guess it uses a different text style (I'm away from my computer a while and won't be able to check).
2) The algorithm for automatic placement of ginering numbers is probably based on how things are done for piano. The function responsible for doing this is quite simple, and it would not be too hard to modify it to produce different results for guitar - *if* we could decide on what makes sense. I'm sure we couldn't do it perfectly, but I'll bet we could do a lot better. Like based on the example in question, I might guess the algorithm might go "place numbers to the left of noteheads; place letters above the stems". Or maybe "place all fingerings above stems if there is only only marking, but place the number to the left and the letter above if both exist". Or maybe "place markings above notes if there is only one voice, but to the left of noteheads in voice 2 and above and to the left in voice 1 if there are multiple voices", etc. I don't know, I'm just sort of guessing. But the point is, if you can describe the desired algorithm, it can probably be implemented.
In reply to Two things I see from by Marc Sabatella
1) The placement of string number is too high, indeed.
The reason is that this symbol was diverted from its original purpose (so, for the guitar) it a few months ago, maybe in May or June in my memory, under the demand for other instrumentalists who use this symbol to other purposes, I can not remember for why. The discussion took place on this English forum, but I can not find it.
The merit is that there is no risk of collision with the notes and stems! This is the worst for me to meet this kind of entanglement of notes and numbers.
![1offset.jpg]( "1offset.jpg")
I think however that the default value (Offset, Vertical: -5,00sp) is really too large. Even a value of -3.00 sp remains important, but it helps prevent collisions in the event of notes in the high register. And probably also not to upset those who use those string numbers for another purpose.
2) You have noticed that in a multi-voice context, adding left hand and right hand fingerings, it visually gives a bad result with quasi-systematic collisions. So, unpleasant.
My tought : in keeping with the spirit of the development of 2.0, it would be appropriate to comply with the recommendations of « Behind Bars ».
In left-hand techniques, p.377, we see that the fingerings are placed to the left of the notehead. It's the situation the more common in the guitar repertoire. There will always be exceptions of course. For example, in the last illustration (bottom page, measure 3), to workaround accidentals (sharps)
For the right hand (p.374-375), the variables are even more important. Mostly, however, the fingerings are placed on top. Except for the thumb often, when it supports the melodic line ( page bottom, 374), and also other fingers, depending the voices context (illustration, JS Bach, at the bottom page, 375) and with the chords fingering (at the beginning, p.375).
But generally, as I said, the right hand fingering on top is the most common.
To get to the point, I think the first algorithm that you quoted : "place numbers to the left of noteheads; place letters above the stems" should cover the greatest number of situations.
But again to avoid the problem of accidentals collisions, it could be improved, perhaps by specifying "place numbers to the left of noteheads, and also to the left (or above ?!) of accidentals ; place letters above the stems”. I don't know at all what's possible with the algorithm :(
EDIT: my though moves slightly with time! Or your third idea. " Place markings above notes if there is only one voice, but to the left of noteheads in voice 2 and above and to the left in voice 1 if there are multiple voices"
This would allow to the pianists and melodic instruments to not be directly affected by this evolution?
Finally, I would say it is crucial to not intervene in the process described in my previous message (Select -> More -> Same voice, same staff), and then move all the fingering block with the Ctrl + Alt keys.
This saves an incredible time in the displacement of fingerings. I adopted it, forever! Besides, it should not be affected, since it seems to be an independent feature, since you can do the same way with the chords, or staff text, etc.
But perhaps could it be improved, in order to better distinguish the placement of left hand and right hand fingerings.
I notice that by selecting a note, you have access to an additional variable (same subtype)
By cons, by selecting a fingering , this variable is inactive.
So, by enabling this variable (with a choice, letters/right hand fingering, and numbers/left hand fingering), it would be possible to move independently right hand fingering block, and left hand fingering block. It would be really great.
But I still do not know if this is possible!
Oh, what a pity to be only an musician, rather than musician AND developer!
Eternel regret, I fear... :(