Automatic add measure
I'm transitioning to MuseScore from Sibelius, and I'm wondering if there is equivalent functionality to some of the features I've come to take for granted in that program.
One such feature is automatic add measure. I prefer to enter notes (and chords) using a keyboard whenever possible. In Sibelius, if I fill all the measures in the piece and continue to input notes, it automatically adds a measure at the end and continues to add new notes. In MuseScore, however, it seems that it keeps the insert on the last note of the piece and changes its pitch to be the note I played last; in order to add measures I must do so manually using the Insert Measure functions. That or I add a ton of measures before I start and hope I don't run into the end without noticing.
Is there any way to automatically add measures at the end under these circumstances?
Comments
Not yet. I miss that also.
Gosh, you're right. I've started using MS4, and hadn't yet gotten to that point, but yes—it just stops, doesn't it?
It might've been an oversight, but the MS peeps are pretty methodical, so that seems unlikely. Maybe it has something to do with a philosophy of requiring scores to be deliberately planned—i.e., requiring people to lay out new systems before they're allowed to fill them? Maybe automatic extension was considered too spontaneous?
I can see that from a copyist's viewpoint. But when composing, we're trying to be spontaneous—so why interrupt the flow with extra left-brain steps?
Besides, there's no telling how many systems music requires till it's on the page—so MS creates new pages to accommodate systems as they're filled and expanded, right? So even the "you must plan ahead" theory doesn't quite make sense.
Maybe automatic extension can be added as an option, for those of us who'd like to stay in the creative flow with minimal distraction. 🤞
In reply to Gosh, you're right. I've… by Andy Fielding
I see people have been asking about this for at least a decade now:
https://musescore.org/en/node/18894
(And good ol' Marc was helping people back then, too—what a guy!)
In reply to I see people have been… by Andy Fielding
On copy/paste this does happen, like if you copy 5 measures and paste onto the last, 4 measures do get appended
In reply to I see people have been… by Andy Fielding
Other than that: there's a shortcut to append measures, Ctrl+B for one, Alt+Shift+B for more
In reply to Other than that: there's a… by Jojo-Schmitz
Jojo: You're absolutely right, and that's certainly easy enough.
What's more, now that I've used MS more, I've remembered how annoying it could be, the way Sibelius presumed to add entire pages of empty bars, even before you reached the end of the current page. More often then not, you'd then have to take the time to select the first unwanted bar, go to the end of the score, select the last one, and delete 'em (a first-world-type problem, granted—but still, right?).
So it all evens out, I'm saying.
I've looked into this a little bit more...and it wouldn't be as straightforward as it might seem.
It has to do with the insertion point and "modes" of operation. Let me explain:
In Sibelius 7 (I'm sorry, I don't have access to any later versions to see if it's been changed), "note entry" mode is distinct from "note edit" mode, even if you're not really toggling between the two. In note entry, you select an insertion point before the next note in a measure, and when you keyboard-enter the note or chord, it places it in the following note position. Note editing, on the other hand, is done by selecting the notes themselves and doing the edits (you also can't use your keyboard to edit the notes, but that's neither here nor there for this discussion).
As a result, if you enter notes by keyboard and get to the end of the score, the insertion point has a location to reside after the last note in the last measure, even if the measure is full. There is no reason to add a new measure at this time, but it is poised and ready to do so if you continue to add notes, as the insertion point after the last note in a measure is equivalent to a point before the first note in the next; the program can safely wait until I actually play another note to decide whether or not to add that measure.
In MuseScore, on the other hand, there is no distinction between inserting notes and editing them. In fact, "inserting" notes is effectively "editing" the currently-selected rest and turning it into a note. When a note (or rest) is being so edited, the selection/insertion point is always on that note, not before or after it; after the note is entered the insertion point moves onto the next actual note.
This has implications when the end of the score is reached. After the last note, the "next" note is the first note of the following measure - which does not yet exist. While Sibelius makes its decision to add measures before it inserts the note I play next, Musescore must make that decision after it inserts the note I just finished. So an automatic add would always result in an extra measure at the end you have to end up deleting manually, even if you're just trying to change the last chord instead of continuing to add notes. I'm not sure if that's better than manually inserting my measures beforehand, breaking my workflow - though what I usually end up doing here is just adding a ton of measures when I notice I'm getting near the end, so I end up having to manually delete a bunch of them anyway.
The only reasonable way to get around this (that I can think of anyway) would be some sort of toggle control - when it's on, it would add a measure every time the last measure is filled, but when it's off, the measure count is locked and can only be extended with a manual insert. Anything else would require a change to the selection paradigm, and I think that's generally out of the question.
But what are your thoughts?