Copying/Deleting Lyrics
I find myself frequently wanting to do something with Musescore that there seems to be no way to do. If it's indeed possible, I hope someone can please tell me how, or point me to the documentation. If it's not, I'd like to make it a feature request.
The situation is this: I have a score in process, a simple unaccompanied melody with one voice part and one line of lyrics. What I want to do, preferably, is to copy the existing measures, notes only, not lyrics, to the end of the existing score.
Alternatively, I'd like to be able to copy the existing measures, notes and lyrics, to the end of the existing score, and then delete all the lyrics of the copied measures in one simple, quick operation -- in other words, the end result would be the same as copying the measures notes only.
Am I missing a way to do either of these?
Comments
With MuseScore 0.9.6, when you copy paste some music, you copy paste everything chords + melody + lyrics.
To delete a line of lyrics you can select them by Shift + Drag. A blue rectangle should appear. And then press delete.
In reply to With MuseScore 0.9.6, when by [DELETED] 5
I've seen references to shif/drag for lyrics but I can't get it to work.
I double click on an existing lyric syllable. There is a blue box around the syllable, with a vertical blue cursor on the right of the syllable.
So I hold down shift, click on the syllable, and drag the cursor to the right. Nothing happens.
Then I place the cursor on the vertical cursor inside the blue box, hold down shift, click on the cursor, and drag my cursor to the right. Nothing happens.
Then I place my cursor on the rightmost border of the blue box, hold down shift, and click. The blue box disappears, my cursor is replaced by the four arrows cursor, and if I move it to the right, it just moves the whole page.
What should I be doing to drag select a whole line of lyrics?
In reply to I've seen references to by Scrivener
Do not select a lyric.
Place the pointer in a margin away from everything. Then hold shift and drag. A box will appear.
In reply to Do not by xavierjazz
Thanks, but I still can't quite get it.
I place the pointer in a margin away from everything, ok.
I hold shift and drag the pointer. A box appears. I stretch the box over a line of lyrics.
Then what?
If I let go of the mouse click, the box disappears.
If I hold the mouse down so the box stays and surrounds the lyrics, and keeping the mouse held down I hit delete, nothing happens. If I keep the mouse held down and press control-delete, nothing happens. If I press shift-control-delete, nothing happens. What, please, is the sequence I need to press? I couldn't find this explained in the handbook; did I miss it? Thanks for any enlightenment.
OK,Thanks, I think I've got it. Here's a fuller description in case anyone else is struggling with this.
Put your pointer in a margin, hold down shift, and click and drag to the right. A box will appear. With a little practice you can position the box over a line of lyrics.
You'll notice the lyrics in the box turn blue. Now let go of shift and the mouse. The box will disappear, but the lyrics that were in it will still be blue.
Now if you hit delete, the blue lyrics will disappear.
I couldn't find this described in the handbook. Did I miss it? If it's not there, it should be. It's easy once you figure it out, but it's not at all obvious or intuitive if you've never done it before. In fact, it's quite confusing that it doesn't act like deleting measures, where you surround the measures with a box that stays there until you hit control-delete.
In reply to OK, I think I've got it. by Scrivener
When you shift-drag select a measure with notes and press delete the notes go away. Lyrics syllables work the same way. I am curious. Could you explain with more detail the difference between deleting lyrics and measures that is confusing to you?
In reply to When you shift-drag select a by David Bolton
What confused me is this:
To delete measures, you select the measures, either by clicking the pointer on the first rest or note of the first measure, then holding SHIIFT and clicking on last note or rest of the last measure, resulting in a box around the measures and the notes, but not the lyrics, turning blue; or by shift-dragging a box around the measures, with the same result. When you release the mouse, the box stays there; then you hit DELETE, and both the notes and the lyrics disappear.
To delete lyrics, you shift drag a box around the lyrics, which turn blue. You can't select lyrics by clicking on the first syllable and then the last one of the set you want to select. When you release the mouse, the box disappears. Then when you hit DELETE, the lyrics disappear.
So there are a couple of differences: you can select measures in two ways, but lyrics in only one way, and the selection box stays there until you delete in one case, but not in the other. Also, when you select just lyrics to delete, the fact that they are marked for deletion is signaled by their turning blue, but when you select measures to be deleted, the measures turn blue, signaling "these are going to be deleted," but the lyrics don't turn blue, even though they are going to be deleted too. (The lyrics do turn blue if you shift-drag around both measures and lyrics, but I usually don't bother to do that. And I know it wouldn't make sense for the lyrics not to be deleted when the measures are -- where would they go? -- but I still found the inconsistency of the signal "blue means to be deleted" confusing.)
These differences aren't a problem once you learn about them, but they can be confusing to new users who bring along the expectations formed from other applications, where usually you delete almost anything just by a click-drag selection and then hitting DELETE.
A worse problem, though, is that none of this seems to be explained in the Handbook. I couldn't even find an explanation of what shift drag was. I know what shift drag to select in other application (like MS-Word) is, but it doesn't work in the same way in Musescore and it's not intuitively obvious. I think the Handbook needs a section specifically describing the various ways of selecting various things.
Incidentally, in the course of figuring this out, I've come across four more possible bugs (MS 9.6 WXP):
1) As of right now, when I look at the on line Handbook in another tab (Firefox 3.6.4) and do any search at all in the search box, I get results but also the error message Validation error, please try again. If this error persists, please contact the site administrator.
2) In the situation where some of the lyrics on a line of the score have been deleted, but some remain -- that is, under one line of measures the lyrics have been deleted from the first few measures but there are some lyrics beginning in the middle and extending to the rightmost measure -- intermittently and frequently shift dragging to select those lyrics doesn't turn them blue, and hitting delete after that doesn't delete them. Shift dragging several times eventually turns the lyrics blue so they can be deleted.
3) Sometimes when you delete measures, the notes seem to remain on the screen, and new notes you input are superimposed over them. I suspect the old notes aren't "really" there, because if you save the score, then open it again, they are gone. What's needed is a way to refresh the screen (does MS 9.6 have this?)
4) Sometimes when you delete measures from the end of a piece and then play the piece from the beginning, the player goes on at the end to play the deleted notes too, even though they aren't visible.
I don't know if these are known problems. Should I copy this to the bug report forum?
In reply to What confused me is this: To by Scrivener
I just logged off and then back on again and didn't get the error message doing a search on "extender" in the Handbook. But when I did a search on "shift drag" I got the error message, and then got it on all subsequent searches, including "extender".
In reply to OK, I think I've got it. by Scrivener
Sometimes that does not work for me. When I follow your sequence, sometimes only the first syllable in the box turns blue. Maybe I am not getting the pointer close enough to the left edge of the sheet.
Aside: my guess is that the underlying data structures related to lyrics are not designed very well, and that that makes things hard for the user and probably for the programmer too. I expected lyrics to be treated as a separate line rather than be attached somehow to the staff for some instrument. But I don't have significant experience with lyrics to be anything like an expert.
In reply to Sometimes that does not work by Odie
Of course, there are often many ways to design the architecture of a piece of software, each with pros and cons. And even more ways to design a user interface.
However, I doubt you really expect lyrics to be a line of text in itself, detached from everything else. For instance, you surely expect lyric syllables to align under notes or, when a note moves around -- because something before it is changed to take more or less room or because a line break is inserted --, you surely expect the lyric under that note to move with the note, rather than having that 'line of text' remaining as it was.
So, lyrics have to be tied somehow to the chords, which they do. You also expect to be able to select lyrics separately, which IS possible via [Shift]+Drag around the group of syllables or via [Cltrl]+Click each syllable. So, the current user interface does allow both interactions.
Surely, it can be done differently, making some things easier. But, as surely, this would make other things harder.
Designing a music notation programme IS hard and interacting with it has to be expected to be somehow harder than using, say, a word processor: music notation is much more complex than a sequence of words, as it spans two dimensions (things are not only one after the other like words, but very often one below the other as well), because some kinds of elements are mixed with other kinds (for instance, ornaments/articulations and dynamics), because things are often small and thick. So, almost anything can always be improved, but habits developed for other kind of programmes have also to be adapted.
As a practical suggestion, often mouse operations become easier is the view is zoomed in somehow: as things are often smaller than in other contexts, zooming in helps by increasing precision.
Thanks,
M.