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Topic: Global Changes (Read 6533 times) previous topic - next topic

Global Changes

After spending a good bit of time working on an arrangment with 16 staves, I found myself wishing for the ability to make some changes on a global basis. For example...a key change. In almost every case, when you make a key change, it's a global change. Think of the time saving and workload reduction if you could make your key change and have it apply on a global basis. Same for time signitures, Do it once, click on "global change" and it's changed for every staff or system. I also had a case where because of range, it was necessary to transpose a section down a third. It was necessay to do it 16 times. With a global command, once would have done it.
Thoughts?
Yes, I have placed it on the wish list.

Re: Global Changes

Reply #1 –
I, too find myself doing a lot of repetitive stuff over many staves (sometimes up to 12 or so) and I still believe a macro facility would be of great use.
The problem with macroing, though, is that NWC is not always consistent in where it places you on the next staff.
However, a "do this last action to every staff" command could be smart enough to find what was last changed (perhaps changing a bar to a double bar, changing key, adding a master repeat open) and perform that on every staff.

Andrew

Re: Global Changes

Reply #2 –
I like this idea too.
An efficient way to implement this feature could be a dedicated check mark in each specialized insertion window.
For some notations like time signature, bar lines, special endings, the "global change" option could be the default.
On other option could be a "global change" icon that you would have to press before applying a series of changes you
want to apply globally.

Re: Global Changes

Reply #3 –
An alternative would be to allow multiple selection of
staves. This would work for tools like transposing, staff line
auditing etc. Things like key changes and time signatures
are individual items. Multiple staff select could possibly
work for these only if they were all in the same column.

Re: Global Changes

Reply #4 –
These are all great thoughts. Personally, the how part of making global changes is immaterial. I'd just like the option available in some form. It seems to me the reason we got these boxes (read that CPU) in the first place was to make repetitive operations easy. In other words, let's let the code do it.
 

Re: Global Changes

Reply #5 –
I love all these ideas. I just added my vote for that in the
Wish List.

Re: Global Changes

Reply #6 –
Second the motion on the selection of more than one staff. I put in a wish list item for being allowed to select, say, the sax section for a least a vertical note to be able to make articulation changes to all 5 at once. For situations like that (and instruments are always doubling parts), if you can select the staves you want and make the changes to just one (I know, that's what you guys said), then I'd be a happy camper. The reason is that the real playing articulation and the midi playback articulation are not exactly compatible.

Re: Global Changes

Reply #7 –
Third the motion on selection of more than one staff.
It would make copy and paste much easier, when you
have a section of music that's repeated, sometimes
with minor changes. Having to select the same large
chunk of score N times, once for each stave (and try
to remember the location where each piece of staff
begins and ends), is a pain.

Re: Global Changes

Reply #8 –
I agree with Steve. We should have a way of "globally" selecting the same measures of music in different staves, as is common in sequencers. Perhaps a score overview that would allow us to select certain measures of the entire score as blocks, and then copy and paste them, would be very helpful.

Re: Global Changes

Reply #9 –
Hear hear! (or is that "Here here"?)
I think we could just select the bars on our staff just like normal, and then Edit | Copy Block (Ctrl-Shift-C?)
to copy ALL staves. Then we go to wherever we want, Paste Block (Ctrl-Shift-V). I think using normal Paste for pasting a block may become confusing. (Open to argument, here).
Lastly, would it make any sense to only copy and paste the staves in a view? I think that could become extremely confusing, but then again, imagine you've set a drum beat which is all sorted out using repeats, and then you copy and paste the block. On the other hand, pasting a block changes the length of the piece, so all parts probably need doctoring anyway.
On the other hand... :-)

Andrew

Re: Global Changes

Reply #10 –
Multiple select removes the need for multiple cut and paste
modes. It also resolves the second part of your response.
You do not necessarily want to operate on all staves at once.

You want a quick way to multiple select all staves, because that
would be the most common action. The standard Ctrl-A is
already taken. Select the top, shift select the bottom would
be workable.