musescore / musescore/MuseScore

Easier input of melismas for notes, which already have a slur above them

Open
#17,753 1 comment 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

Nobody has claimed this yet.

community feature request lyrics needs design
Dominant language
C++
Stars
15.1k
Forks
3.3k
Avg merge
2d 2h
Merged PRs (30d)
91

Description

Your idea

My proposal:

When entering lyrics, a single "_" should be enough in order
to complete a melisma for a group of notes,
which already have a slur above them.

Explanation:

In order to achieve this

image

the user currently has to type:

Ah, _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ooh. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

even though the length of the melisma is already defined by the slur.

I think, in this case the user should only be required to type

Ah,_ ooh._

In fact: Why not simply hit "space" to complete the underline and jump to the next note after the slur.

This would also make it extremely easy to prepare a text for copy and past,
since the user does no longer need to count the notes under a slur.

Instead of "Lord,. .I sa----cri-fice." you could just type
"Lord, I sa-cri-fice." in order to get:

image

All the user would have to care about is where to split words into syllables using "-"
and all the rest is decided by slurs...

PS: Experts of old music could also benefit from such behavior by using hidden slurs.
And: Slurs could get a setting in the inspector to toggle their smart behavior on or off,
in case a user wants to use a slur for phrasing only, or if several slurs overlap.

Problem to be solved
  • speed up input of melismas for slurred notes
  • simplify the preparation of text for copy and paste
Prior art

No response

Additional context

In my workflow I enter slurs right after note input.
Later, when I come back to enter the lyrics, the slurs will serve as a reminder
of where and how long the melismas are.

For notes under a slur I think:

  • inputting melismas note by note should still be possible, but rather an "expert-mode"
  • and "auto-complete", as described above, the normal case.

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

No files, tests, or entry points are named in the issue. Start by tracing lyric input and slur handling in MuseScore, then confirm the proposed single-underscore or space behavior, including overlapping slurs and the inspector toggle, with note-by-note input still available.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
cpp
Domain
desktop
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
35/100

Get new issues in your inbox

A short digest of beginner-friendly GitHub issues.