Lyric Location / Lyric Clarity in Score
Hello there, Musescore community!
I wanted to ask this in the support forum before going over to feature requests, just in case I'm stupid and can't figure out what I'm trying to do!
So, here I am writing an SATB song, and I get to a men-only part. It would be nice to be able to do one of two things.
1. Erase/hide the treble clef line for this section of the song so than only the bass clef and the lyrics show.
2. This is what I'd prefer. Just leave the treble clef as rests and add lyrics for the bass/tenor line. I can do this already, but the lyrics go BELOW the staff, making it messy and hard to read. I had the bass clef notes on the top staff at first and had rests on the bottom staff so the lyrics would be in between, but when you always read music with bass clef on the bottom, it messes with your eyes, and our pianist just couldn't get used to it, understandably. Mostly, I'd just like to be able to move the lyrics around! Right now you can only move lyrics around one word at a time, unless I'm mistaken, which is messy and incredibly tedious. You can lasso select around multiple words, but can't move them. I've tried selecting and then going to "text properties" from the right-click menu, changing the y offset, but the setting just goes back to what it was.
That's what I came here for. I just want to know if I missed anything before I head to the feature request board. Musescore is a great piece of software, but the UI is so clunky and unforgiving that it becomes a nightmare to use at times.
Thanks in advance for your help!
-greyspot
Comments
Solved!
Wow, don't I feel silly. Hasn't even been five minutes since my post. Thank you, search function!
Here's what I found, for the sake of others.
1. Lasso select your text. (Shift, mouse drag)
2. Hold Control and drag your lyrics.
I tried about everything except holding control. This should be documented in the handbook. It would have saved me a lot of trouble!
In reply to WOOOHOOO by greyspot_
Actually, there are a couple of other ways, too, that are often better. One is to select one syllable, right click, then click "Select->All Similar Elements" (this can also be accessed via a keyboard shortcut). You can then ctrl-drag to move them together. Or, you can right click a lyric, select Text Properties, and make your change there, and enable the 'apply to all elements of the same type" option. Except that this generally doesn't seem to work with lyrics as it does with other text elements). You might also try messing with Style->Edit Text Style and changing the defaults in the Lyric styles. It might be necessary to reload the document to see your changes.
As to your first question, just enable Style->Edit General Style->Score->Hide empty staves.
In reply to Actually, there are a couple by Marc Sabatella
Very cool. Thanks for the reply!
But, doesn't the 'hide empty staves' option hide all of them that are empty? I only want to hide a page worth of them, then go back to normal. The empty bars in the middle of the score would be hidden too, right? That's no good :)
In reply to Neat! by greyspot_
Well, it won't hide random empty bars in the middle of a line just lines that are completely empty. I hadn't realized you that would happen in other places and you wouldn't want the staff hidden in those lines. In which case, just enter some sort of dummy markings there to keep them from disappearing - I think an invisible note does the trick, or something like that.
In reply to Well, it won't hide random by Marc Sabatella
Very handy information! Thanks for the reply.
Oops :D