Solution to a minor vexation : Irish/Celtic/Folk Harp Lever Change warning symbol
Good day all. My wife's a folk harper and spends a lot of time working with MuseScore to generate sheets. One of the vexations is that there is ( or we can't find ) no built in symbol to alert the player, when they should change a lever. This is not for an accidental, but rather for a phrase, letting the player know that "This entire section should be played with the C sharped(e.g.), and this is the best place to change the lever" .
Sibelius offers this as a built in item, and we have been missing out. Perseverance wins out.
Unicode has all the symbols one could want, you just have to find them.
The actual codes and their symbols needed for this trick are as follows:
Sharp : 266F : ♯
Flat : 266D : ♭
Natural : 266E : ♮
Diamond : 25C7 : ◇
On the Mac, go into System Preferences / Keyboard and toggle the "Show Keyboard and Character Viewer in Menu". This puts a new item in the right hand menu set. Click on it and "Show Character Viewer". Next, select to View "Code Tables". Top window, scroll down to the 00002600 | Miscellaneous Symbols , then scroll down to see the , 266D, 266E and 266F items, which happen to be the flat, natural and sharp. Also in the top window, in the 000025A0 section, you'll find the non-playable diamond note.
What I have done is, with TextEdit, I have brought each of these symbols and saved them as pairs in a separate document. In MuseScore, I select a note, before which I want to show the lever notation, and Command-K "Chord" that note. I then paste the lever change notation into the cursor entry spot. Once the task is done, I then move the notation to rest on the correct note line in the staff. Depending upon the measure, I sometimes have to change the stretch of just that one measure as well.
Keywords : Lever , Lever Change, Lever Notation, Unicode .
Comments
Might be better to use staff text for this, and all this symbols should be in the F2 palette.
In reply to Might be better to use staff by Jojo-Schmitz
Staff text seems to work the same, but ... there are sharp, flat and natural symbols in the Regular Palette, these symbols cannot be placed into Staff or Chord text. They do exist in the "F2" palette and are placeable into the Staff and Chord text. However, the 'rotated square' or Unicode 'diamond' shape is not to be found anywhere. I'm using version 1.3 on a Mac. In the end, I still have to use the Character Viewer to get the job done - and IMHO, the Unicode is 'prettier' than the F2 item.
Thanks.
al
the first flat in the image attached is from the F2 palette, the second flat is from the Unicode table as is the diamond.
Attached: comparison.png :
In reply to Staff text seems to work the by aszy
in the bar of the text select "MusicalSymbols" (I hope this is the way)
In reply to in the bar of the text select by Shoichi
Perfect! That's where to find it on a Windows platform! Thanks.
al
In reply to Perfect! That's where to find by aszy
@ aszy, uppercase O, lowercase b
In reply to @ aszy, uppercase O, by Shoichi
Not on a stock Mac install. You may have installed MusicalSymbols font at some point. Attached is the font list on my (mostly) stock install. That said, those are nice symbols! Really nice.
al
PS: found and installed MusicalSymbols.ttf and found that neither the Upper Case O, nor the lower case b produce your results. It has a great number of stock symbols and some rarely used ones, but no 'non-played' note (ie the rotated square or diamond shape ).
Thanks
al
In reply to Staff text seems to work the by aszy
The difference between the flat glyphs will depend on the font used. The F2 dialog doesn't use the Unicode codepoints; it uses the new SMuFL codepoints. In either case, if the current font does not contain a glyph at that codepoint, it falls back to something known - Bravura Text, I think. I think it first tries the actual current font, then the defined "musical text font" from your style / general settings. Something like that; I forget the exact details.
In reply to The difference between the by Marc Sabatella
Thanks Marc, more than just a bit confused by your reply, but I think the gist is that MuseScore has a default font - other than Times New Roman.
al
PS: Downloaded the Bravura font, it also does not include the rotated square , diamond that folk harpers use.
This is such a great group / resource!
My thanks to all.
al
One more comment: I have attached a partial scan of the original folk harp piece that we are working with. You can see the lever change notification in the second line. al
In reply to Thanks Marc, more than just a by aszy
You are better off not downloading Bravura; it is compiled into MuseScore, and only confusion will result from having it installed as well.
MuseScore does indeed have a default font - different fonts for different purposes. "Times New Roman" is a Windows-ism, so definitely not the default fault for a cross-platform open source program. For most text, FreeSerif is the default. For the music notation itself, Emmentaler is the default. For music symbols inserted into text, Emmentaler Text is the default. The basic text defaults are changed by Style / Text (different types of text can have different defaults). The music notation & symbol defaults can be changed by Style / General.
To see what symbols are in Bravura, you can use the Symbols palette - View / Master Palette / Symbols. There are quite a lot (!) of them, so I wouldn't conclude too quickly this symbol is not among them.
In reply to You are better off not by Marc Sabatella
Now you have me curious! Where/How do I get to the View/Master Palette/Symbols ?
On my machine, a MBP, regardless whether I set system preferences to allow the function keys to act as function keys, or if I use the Fn button with the keys, I get the Exposé display. There is no View item in the Menu structure that I can find.
After reading a number of entries, I have figured out how to create a new empty palette. And I have found the Create/Symbols which brings up what might be the Master Palette that you are speaking of. I can drag and drop from the Master Palette to my new empty palette just fine, however - these symbols still can not be placed in either the Staff Text, nor the Chord Text entry.
Is there some magic trick to change the Text that is available in the 'show keyboard' display?
al
In reply to Now you have me curious! by aszy
Sorry, I totally forgot you were using 1.3 rathewr than 2.0 Beta. Forget everything I said about Bravura and music symbols font; that's all new for 2.0.
BTW, you are not supposed to enter flat signs into chord symbols - instead just type "b" and it turns into a flat sign autoamtically. That's true for both 1.3 and 2.0.
In reply to Sorry, I totally forgot you by Marc Sabatella
That's a nice subtle trick! Thanks - so all we have to import is the diamond symbol - that will help some. Does not work if you put the 'b' first ( which we need ) , nor does it give us an easy sharp and natural. I just am tickled to get some of these tricks!
al