Dots (of augmentation) should toggle
If I have a crochet which I want to make a dotted crochet I select it, and then click on the "dotted crochet" symbol on the toolbar. All very fine and correct. But if I now realise I didn't mean that , and click a second time on the "dotted crochet" symbol on the toolbar, it does not toggle back to a simple undotted crochet; it becomes an undotted crochet followed by a quaver rest - and furthermore, this quaver rest can not be edited or deleted. I have to delete the whole bar and retype.
This happens even if I didn't make the first change: if I have imported a piece of music and wish to change a dottedCrochet-quaver group into two crochets, I can not select the dotted crochet and undot it without introducing this unnecessary and uneditable quaver rest.
Why isn't the "dotted crochet" symbol on the toolbar a simple toggle? And why is the inserted quaver rest uneditable?
Comments
It is a simple toggle.
Turning it on lengthens your note; since MuseScore by default overwrites what is there, this means it eats whatever was in that spot before.
Turning it off shortens your note; since it now no longer occupies the remainder of its original duration, there is no sound there anymore; hence a rest is shown as that is how silence is shown in music notation.
What turning it off doesn't guess is that you also wished to move the next note sooner and lengthened it to compensate.
It doesn't guess that because there's an equal amount of users that instead want it to also move the following notes (which can either be till end of measure, or end of system, or end of section, or end of score; all valid but different options) earlier but do not wish to lengthen those notes as well in turn.
And then there's a group of people that actually want to end up with that rest there.
MuseScore does exactly what you ask it to do and doesn't infer or guess any subsequent actions you might also want to do after that. The command is "reduce this note/chord duration for the amount of it's dot" and that is exactly what happens.
If you want to move things, use Cut and Paste, so MuseScore doesn't have to guess how much you want to move.
And the remaining rest most certainly acts just like any other rest. You can't delete it, because the result of removing the sound from a period of silence results in that exact same duration of silence. But you can overwrite it with sound (either by inputting new things or by pasting over it).
There is a plugin for MS3 (not yet available for MS4 afaik) which is called "Duration Editor"; that plugin does enforce the "fluid measure" duration editing in which things within the measure do shift to make room (or contract to compensate) for the new duration. It sounds like the type of plugin you'd want to use for your use case.
In reply to It is a simple toggle… by jeetee
Right - I understand now what I got wrong: i had misunderstood the meaning of "delete". Because I am mostly handling mediaeval music, especially plainsong, to me a line is a sequence of musical events, just as 1 3 5 7 9 is a sequence of numbers. So to me lengthening merely changes one element of the sequence: to say 1 4 5 7 9, while deleting deletes an element of the sequence; to say 1 5 7 9. But in Musescore, a line is a length of time, filled with musical events, and that length is therefore fixed - deleting and lengthening are both impossible without changing one or more of the other fillers. I understand better now.
In that case, may I make a suggestion? Your approach often creates notes tied across barlines, which are tiresome to adjust; it would make things simpler and quicker if the "Display note values across measure boundaries" option were available from a pallette, rather than through the Format menu.
But thank you for your patience and for such a clear explanation.
When I do it I get a quaver rest not crochet. But either way it certainly is editable. You can highlight the rest and either select a different rest duration or input a note at that location.