Time signature display
Is it possible to generally hide time signatures via 'Stave properties → Show time signature', but unhide single particular time signatures at the same time?
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I don't think so. I guess you could try to fake it by adding the time signature using the Symbols palette. Or do the reverse - show them generally, hide specific ones. Curious what the use cse is?
Hi Marc, thanks for your interest. Faking the time signature with the help of the symbols palette was the best solution indeed. I am currently transcribing a rhythmically free piece without time signatures. However, two of nine movements do have a continuous time signature. That's why ;-)
In reply to Hi Marc, thanks for your by jschwalm
Good information, thanks! We are considering a feature in which staff properties can change over the course of a piece, such as to allow transposition to change, or perhaps number of staff lines or staff type (standard versus percussion). Not sure how this would work, but hopefully once implemented it would also allow the "Show time signature" or other properties to vary as well.
In reply to Good information, thanks! We by Marc Sabatella
Here's one way it could work that might not involve too many changes to the MSCX format and would also solve a whole number of other issues and feature requests at the same time...
I'm calling it "linked measures" (but that might not be the best name).
Create a new "Master View" in addition to the existing "Page View" and "Continuous View". In Master View all of the parts are written out in full on separate staves (as they are now). In the other views there might be fewer staves than in Master View, and each measure is simply a link to a measure from a part in Master View.
It's hard to explain, but if you look at the diagram in the attached PDF hopefully it will all become clear. The idea is that when you reach the change from standard to percussion staff you haven't really changed staff type, instead you just change which staff from "Master View" is being displayed.
In reply to Here's one way it could work by shoogle
That's a clever idea! To some extent, you can already do this via Hide Empty Staves, but you need to jump through some hoops to get the changes to happen mid-system.
I'm not sure it's really easier for the user than other possible designs, though. I was imagining allowing the current "Instrument" text used to change instruments to also allow you to specifiy a new set of staff properties.
In reply to That's a clever idea! To by Marc Sabatella
I agree that it would be difficult to get this idea across to the average user, but you wouldn't need to necessary because you could hide all of this from the user with a relatively simple algorithm. Your only instruction to the user would be: "Write every part on a separate staff in Master View. They will then be automatically condensed for you in Page View."
The algorithm would simply be:
1. Show a staff for each part.
2. If a part is empty in this system then hide its staff.
3. If a part stops in this system and the part above or below starts then combine the parts on one staff and put the name of the new part above the staff.
This would probably cover 99% of use cases without any user input at all!
Advanced users could manually override this default behaviour and do fancy things like combine parts into separate voices. But this would be incredibly easy once you realise that the trick is to stop thinking of this as sheet music and instead think of it as being like a spreadsheet. How many people are familiar with music notation software? Not many. But I would guess that most people with a computer have experience with spreadsheets, and "Voice1=Part1,Voice2=Part2" is about as simple a spreadsheet formula as you could possibly ask for.
So to summarise, with this method you achieve:
1) Mid-system instrument and staff type changes.
2) Combined parts on a single staff using voices.
3) Independent Mixer control by part instead of by staff (a highly desirable feature!).
4) Minimal changes to the MSCX filetype (and hopefully the MuseScore code itself!).
5) All of this completely hidden from the average user.
In reply to Good information, thanks! We by Marc Sabatella
This system would (hopefully) require minimum changes to the MSCX format because "Master View" is essentially the same as the current "Continuous View". The extra information that would need to be stored to map from Master View into the other views would be quite small, just the link Staff1Measure1=Part1, Staff1Measure2=Part2, etc.
Another advantage of this method is that you would retain independent Mixer controls for all of the parts as written in "Master View", even though they have been condensed onto fewer staves in the normal views.
It gets even better when you consider what you could do with voices!
Using this method you could retain independent mixer control for each part, while combining the parts into separate voices on the same staff. (See PDF).
Staff1Measure1(Voice1=Part1,Voice2=Part2), Staff1Measure2(Voice1=Part1,Voice2=Part2), etc.