How should I merge multiple movements of a piece?
I have a 3-movement piano sonata that I have been working on. Each movement is in a separate file, and I want to create a combined file for formatting purposes. Is there any way to do this?
I have tried to copy-paste them in, but time signature and key signature changes do not get copied. Unfortunately there are a lot of all three of these, so copy-pasting is my last resort, unless there is a way to copy and paste while respecting all these elements.
The handbook said the album feature is being enabled in 4.x (x > 0!), but I haven't seen anything yet. I have heard about section breaks, but that doesn't help with how to get all the music into the same file.
Thanks for your help.
Comments
At present you cannot copy-and-paste a new movement without some preparatory work:
1. Add a section break at the end of your first movement.
2. Add measures after your first movement.
3. Working from beginning to end, add all changes of time signature and key signature.
4. Ensure that the measure count is correct for the blank second movement.
5. Add a section break at the end of your second movement.
6. Copy-and-paste the entire second movement into the empty measures.
7. Repeat the process for each subsequent movement.
8. Apply your chosen style to the entire work with Format > Load style.
It's tedious, but until we get back the Album feature which was removed from MS3 there is no workaround. Except to not join the .mscz files, and instead to generate a separate PDF for each movement. Then it's easy to join the PDF files with free software - for example PDFsam Basic:
https://pdfsam.org/download-pdfsam-basic/
In reply to At present you cannot copy… by DanielR
Thanks for your help @DanielR. That's probably what I'll do.
See the issue raised on Github a year ago, and the subsequent discussions:
"Time & key signatures and tempo markings cannot be copy pasted"
https://github.com/musescore/MuseScore/issues/15590