A way of quickly discovering the number associated with a staff?
Many times when working with two or more voices in the same staff, someone1 becomes confused and a measure ends up containing notes in excess, or deficient, of its actual duration. The composer is made aware of this situation next time they try to save the document, when a dialog warns them: This score has become corrupted and contains errors.
The dialog presents a list of error such as: "Incomplete measure: Full score, measure 42, staff 36. Found: 12/8. Expected: 4/4."
It's simple enough to delete the offending measure completely and then re-enter the notes correctly. But finding the measure in question can be surprisingly challenging.
Measure numbers are displayed by default at the top of the score above the first system. Scrolling horizontally, I found it easy to watch the measure number change, and then stop when it reached 42.
Edit: I discovered that it's even easier to type Ctrl F and enter the measure number (or Cmd F for our macOS friends). But to find Staff No. 36, I had to start at the top and count while scrolling vertically, which is an error-prone process during which I was apt to inadvertently skip a staff or double-count one.
Is there a way, similar to displaying measure numbers horizontally, to get MuseScore to display the staff numbers vertically? This would make the process of finding the error a little simpler.
Better yet, perhaps MuseScore could highlight the bad measure or do anything to make it easier to find, and perhaps the dialog could come when the error occurs instead of waiting for the last possible moment.
Thank you for taking the time to read this suggestion. I have checked the handbook, searched the forums and searched the Web to find if this is an existing capability of MuseScore, but if it is, I have been unable to find out how it works. Please set me straight if I'm misinformed.
Thanks again!
Attached is a MuseScore document containing what I believe is a "minimal version" of this problem, as is the custom on sites such as Stack Overflow, but it just consists of one measure containing too many notes, which makes it a lot easier to find than it would be in the entire score.
-
Note: Maybe MuseScore, but more likely the composer. ↩︎
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
| corrupt.mscz | 16.22 KB |
Comments
Ctrl+F, measure number
And voila, there you are
Counting staves though is still needed
In debug builds the corrupt measures are enclosed in a red rectangle
In reply to Ctrl+F, measure number And… by Jojo-Schmitz
Thank you very much for that; I discovered a very good write-up about that and spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to make those keyboard-formatted squares. Finally, through the magic of F12 tools, I found that the trick is to enclose them in two tags for some reason. LOL. Thanks again!
The Status Bar offers a staff number, so you should be able to track down the offending staff by monitoring the Status Bar as you click on Instrument Long Name or Instrument Short Name:
![Status_Bar_and Staff_Number.png]( "Status_Bar_and Staff_Number.png")
In reply to The Status Bar offers a… by DanielR
DanielR, that was great news and very exciting. Unfortunately, the only time there's something in my status bar is when I have a note or part of the score selected. If it's a note, it tells me the pitch and duration; if it's a larger select, it tells me the start/end measures and beats. I haven't been able to see any change when I scroll vertically, and I haven't been able to get the Staff number to be displayed.
It may be a feature of macOS, which is another reason for Windows users to be jealous. Thank you so much for taking the time to respond. I usually forget all about the status bar anyway and if I were using macOS, I probably would have missed this, so it's a very well-placed comment!
In reply to DanielR, that was great news… by offbrandbear
Select the instrument name
Use page mode