Issue with Figured Bass

• Apr 8, 2025 - 05:51

I am trying to add four figured bass entries under a whole note in the bass (corresponding to the four quarter notes that will be in the upper voice). I am following the instructions in the manual:
1) Enter figure bass entry mode.
2) Type in the figured bass notation for the first of the four beats
3) Press Command 5 to go to the next beat of the measure

This does not work. When I do this, the "Add" menu in the upper menu bar lights up, but nothing happens.
Please advise as this issue severely limits my ability to use the figured bass feature in Musescore/

Thank you,

Jerry


Comments

In reply to by cadiz1

Cmd-G to enter figured bass is not the issue. and yes, the space bar brings you to the next measure. That is not the issue either. But I have a whole note in the bass and I want to have four figured bass entries corresponding to four Quarter notes that will be in the upper voice. The handbook say that to do this you enter Cmd-5 to advance to the second beat to enter another figured bass. (Space bar does not do this, it just brings you to the next measure.)

This is the problem. It doesn't work.

In reply to by cadiz1

You can see in the attached screenshot in measure 2, I would like to have figured bass entries corresponding to each of the four quarter notes in the upper part. You can see that right now I have 3, but they are clumsily put in and then do not align with the notes in the upper part. The Handbook say that by pressing Cmd-5 after the first entry in tht measure, the curser will go to the next beat and wait for a figured bass entry. That does not seem to work. Of course by pressing Spacebar, it just goes to the next measure, which is not what I want.

What I am trying to do is a very common occurrence in figured bass, nothing unusual.

Attachment Size
Screenshot 2025-04-08 at 5.45.21 PM.png 893.73 KB

In reply to by jerryverpent

You're right. This issue has been reported many times on Github, for example, the first time: https://github.com/musescore/MuseScore/issues/14916, then later: https://github.com/musescore/MuseScore/issues/17030
It seems that the fix has been merged, but only in the Master branch, for reasons, I quote one of the comments (of Marc): "The fix is in master builds, but unfortunately, it breaks some other functionality, so the fix isn't ready to be included in a release yet".

In reply to by cadiz1

It was supposed to be fixed in a master. I just tried for Windows a Nightly build: https://musescore.org/en/nightly-builds, and well, believe it or not, it still doesn't work... Perhaps it's been broken again?

I've come up with a workaround (not ideal, of course, but at least you can achieve the desired result), namely: go to the top staff (the one with the quarter notes) to enter the desired figures. Then step by step:
Select them (by holding Ctrl/Cmd + click)
Disable Auto-placement in Properties
Click on the Appearance tab
Set the vertical offset so that they come to the location you want below the second staff.

Do you still have an unanswered question? Please log in first to post your question.