An Overlay for the recent measure to increase usability.
Sometimes it is rather difficult to select one distinct measure as there might be notes or bows or whatever in the area above the score line where you usually click to select the measure.
For this and some other usability reasons I'd like to propose a transparent overlay that renders above the recent measure (the one the mouse is currently above).
See the attached image!
This overlay is a little bit a mixture of a score editor and a piano roll editor.
1. It shows a grid that permits to place notes directly on a distinct position within the measure.
2. It might reshape the current measure a little bit for the notes fitting into the grid. (or it might adopt the grid appropriately)
3. It shows the note length as lines. Notes lengths can also easily be changed by pulling the ends of these lines.
4. It permits for easy dragging notes to the left or right, changing their timing. (click the note and drag)
5. It might show additional buttons for some simple task on the whole measure. (select, erase, insert, Also the "N"-button could be there again to have it somehow closer to your interaction ... not shown in the image.)
6. This grid can optionally be shown or not. (changeable by a hotkey)
I wonder if others like this idea. Please give a short message if you think this could be useful.
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
| Musescore Takteditor.jpg | 116.06 KB |
Comments
I agree that it is sometimes difficult to select a measure.
Your selection frame/grid idea looks good (but complex, so maybe an idea for version 3.0 or something - i.e. a major amount of coding so probably not for version 2.x).
Meantime, I wonder if it would be possible to implement a simper solution to selecting a measure in that after clicking on an element one could choose "Select whole measure" much as one chooses a downloaded file and can select "Open containing folder".
In reply to I agree that it is sometimes by underquark
Yes, I thought of that too. Some kind of small (colored) squares on top and/or bottom of the bars could perhaps do the job.
Or a hotkey: With [M] + click you always just select measures.
Here are some advanced features an overlay like the proposed could provide.
7. The overlay could be extendable to 2 or more measures.
8. The overlay could serve as a kind of playback loop clamp. So if a play button is pressed the selected measures are played in a loop. This could be very helpful to write rhythmical patterns.
9. The overlay could serve as a drop in locator for new notes played on a MIDI-keyboard or entered by the keyboard. (A kind of timeline on top could be used to place a cursor)
I'm working on similar ideas (currently not for musescore but for a music notation editor I'm writing from scratch). One involves selecting the duration by dragging left or right, the other involves selecting the duration by clicking a cell in a grid. I'm glad to hear someone else thinks these are better ways to enter notes!
I've given both ideas a lot of thought and have written a lot about them. There are many issues to consider - some obvious, some very subtle - before I can dive in and start programming. However I think the ideas are so promising that I am expending a lot of effort to bring them into existence. Here are a few issues, with some possible answers:
- how to enter rests? My solution: use the right mouse button for deleting existing notes and entering rests, and the left mouse button for entering notes (and chords)
- what should the different duration choices be? Don't forget that there are more than just whole, quarter, 16th, etc. - there are also dotted and double dotted notes, triplets, quintuplets etc. (not to mention durations like 5 16th notes tied together). My solutions: for horizontal dragging to select durations, let the user select a set of durations to use while dragging; for the grid idea, let the user select the default grid divisions ahead of time (and change them locally whenever something like quintuplets is needed).
- what happens when an existing note's location or duration needs to be "fine-tuned" by changing it slightly? If a note's duration is to be increased slightly for example, what happens to the note(s) to its right? Are the notes all moved to the right, is the duration of the note to the right decreased by the same amount, does what happens depend on whether the note to the right is a rest or not? And what about distinguishing between moving a note to the left (for example) vs. "stretching" a note to the left (i.e., moving its starting point to the left AND increasing its duration)? My solution (and also the solution to pasting copied notes into a score - whether to insert them or replace the notes at that location): have separate INSERT and REPLACE "modes" so the user can choose what happens to the surrounding notes.
- how to make chromatic changes to a note's pitch (and select spellings such as B# vs. C vs Dbb) by just using the mouse? My solution: use the mouse wheel to make these kinds of changes.
These are just a few of the issues I've had to think about while designing the way this kind of note entry should work. If you're interested enough in all this to read through and comment on my notes and ideas, let me know and I can send you a few documents to look at. Either way I'm going to continue to pursue these ideas and either write my own editor or somehow merge them into musescore.
In reply to I'm working on similar ideas by tmclint
First, congratulations and good luck. You have obviously put a lot of thought into this (and you can code too ..... :) ). I like some of your ideas: Mouse wheel for changing pitch, for example. I am not at all involved as a developer so cannot estimate if your ideas are good and/or usable. But it's great ..... :)
Regards,
In reply to I'm working on similar ideas by tmclint
Yes definitely. Send me your ideas please. I'd love to review them.
At my way of writing scores it is very clear that I would like to have a well defined behavior on the left and right side of the notes. The worst would be if all the notes on the right side would follow. So I'd like to have any note on the right side that is affected by the new length to be removed (on mouse release!). If the note i'm editing is getting shorter, then rest's should be inserted automatically.
In General I'd like to care about notes but not about rests. I'd like rests to be generated automatically in general. So I'd need not the right mouse click for rests if I had a grid like proposed in this thread.
Your proposal with the various note length is nice and ok. I'd use it with a well designed set of length I usually need. (I'll never ever write quituples and rarely duble dotted notes). So my default set would be something like: 1/32, 1/16th, 1/8, dotted 1/8, 1/4, dotted 1/4, ... maybe sometimes I'd put trioles into it.
A really cool feature would be, if I change the length of a note by pulling to the right, then while dragging to the right the note is getting longer just to the point when it would affect the next note to the right. Then it stops (even if I continue mouse movement) and perhaps marks the notes on the right side in red to show. "These notes would be deleted if you continue to pull to the right." Then I would have to stop my mouse movement (or even drag a little bit to the left again) while keeping the mouse button pressed and start again pulling to the right to really erase these notes. This step back could be done also in advance before my note length has reached the next note on the right side. So, when I know, that I want to erase the note on the right side, I simply could start my movement with a small move to the left.
This would result in the convenient behaviour that, when I enter a new note somewhere in the middle and pull to the right without caring for the notes there, the new note would get just as long that it "fills" all the empty space without a rest.
If i like to erase a note on the right side, I would have to drag to the right - stop (or move a little bit back) - drag to the right again. This could feel like running against a wall, taking a step back and then braking through the wall.
So most of my enterings could be done by click - drag to the right - release.
The mouse-wheel is nice as well and I'd definitively like it, but think of touch-devices which might be more important in the future! So perhaps you could also add an option for pitch changes with vertical mouse movements like I have proposed.
The concept of changing the grid before entering trioles i.e., and maybe by changing the recent note length is exactly how I think about it.