Entering new notes somewhere in the middle of a measure
Especially entering rhythmical patterns by mouse can be a boring task.
When I want to enter a new note somewhere in the middle of a measure, then I first have to enter a rest of the corresponding length to get a cursor at the appropriate position.
Another way is to change the whole rest value of the empty measure to i.e. 1/8 rests, then place the new notes and finally combine succeeding rest's to longer rests.
This might be quite an effort for a whole piece of music.
For this I'd like to have some kind of (configurable) grid above the recent measure that permits me to i.e. enter a new note immediately anywhere on this grid in the new measure.
All this could be visually supported, by an overlay that I describe in an other Feature Request called "An Overlay for the recent measure"
Comments
I appreciate the suggestion, but don't really understand the problem you are trying to solve. What does it mean to "enter a note in the middle of a measure? Music notation doesn't work that way. It is read left to right; that's how it is normally written as well. If a particular note is intended to be *played* in the middle of the measure, the only way music notation has of conveying that to the reader is to have notes or rests preceding it to tell the reader what beat the given note is to be played on. That is, if a note is to be played on beat 3, the one and only way that music notation has of conveying this is to first show what happens (notes or rests) on beats one and two.
So rather than having MsueScore try to guess what beat you intend a note to be played on based on something that has absolutely nothing to do with how music notation is actually structured, it seems far more natural to actually enter the notes or rests that the person reading the score is going to have to see anyhow. It would seem very opposed to how music notation normally is read to have MuseScore work differently from this.
In reply to I appreciate the suggestion, by Marc Sabatella
It's a convenience feature to enable an editing style that resembles a little bit editing in a piano roll view or a drum edit view. I just want to place a new note on the 3rd beat in a new measure. I don't want to care about the rests. That's what I want the program to do for me. Especially when creating complex rhytmical patterns I try to figure out the pattern by counting and then have something in mind like. "one - two - AND - tree - AND - FOUR - and - one - AND - TWO - ..." This inner counting to me translates easily into a rather graphical pattern than into a sequence of rests and notes.
I don't want the program to guess where to place the new note, but to give me a grid, where I can insert my new notes. (See the grid in the image appended to my suggestion: "An Overlay for the recent measure")
In reply to It's a convenience feature to by Palmstroem_
I do understand the request. To me, though, it seems it comes form thinking of MuseScore as a sequencer that just happens to be able to display notes in standard notation, rather than as a notation program first and foremost. The entire point of MuseScore is to produce printed notation, and rests are part of that just as surely as notes are. Saying "I don't want to care about the the rests" in a program whose entire purpose resolves around creating printed notation that necessarily includes rests makes little sense to me. If you want a rest to appear in your printed score, I don't really understand why you wouldn't want to enter it yourself.
But sure, as long as any new features in no way whatsoever interfere with normal usage of the program, and add too much complexity to the code, I have nothing against them. I suspect you'd find the feature you are describing is far more complex in reality than in your diagram, though, considering that normally, music in standard ntoation are not spaced in any sort of grid. I mean, sure, longer notes get more space than shorter ones, but the spacing isn't regular. So the grid lines would need to be irregularly spaced, or you'd need to rewrite the spacing algorithms to allow for strictly proportional spacing.
In reply to I do understand the request. by Marc Sabatella
Yes that's exactly what I mean with my point
2. It might reshape the current measure a little bit for the notes fitting into the grid. (or it might adopt the grid appropriately)
in my Feature Request: An Overlay for the recent measure to increase usability.
And yes. It brings in a touch of DAW user interaction but nevertheless focusses on writing scores.
My way of using MuseScore is perhaps less focused on perfect score writing but kind of interactive composing and arranging. Sometimes I just write down some ideas to quickly present it to the choir and band. There might be 2 or 3 variations to check out which mit be the best. Then, if I and they like it, I continue the work, consolidating various ideas and so on. The final result is always a musical performance and the scores used for it are not always perfect in terms of printability or an official release. As long as my singers understand, what I mean (and often they have to add notes by pencil) it's good enough for the performance and for me.
For long time I used just a pencil and an eraser, but MuseScore is really good, so I like to use it more and more. Maybe I'm the only one that uses it that way, but I assume writing a perfect score is perhaps not the main focus of all MuseScore users.