Working with Musescore - 02

Getting further into Musescore with an easy Shelly Manne transcription, a rock arrangement called Flight For Freedom, from Oliver Nelson's record Skull Session. I like Manne's rock playing— it's a little different, with a great deep sound and pocket.  

These are things I had to figure out while making it, in the order they came up.  

I first had to make some adjustments to my template:  

Cleaning up palettes
Under the palettes tab, there are a number of things I don't need: clef, pitch, key signature, etc.

Click on the unwanted thing, hit the [...] options button, and select hide. 

Then click add palettes and select some things to add: grace notes, lines, whatever else you want.

Editing the drumset
I want to set up my template with every drum I'm likely to need, with a proper note head and hot key.

In note entry mode, at the bottom of the screen you should see a key to the drum set, with an edit drum set.  

Under edit drum set, you can just click an empty slot on the left side of the window, and give it a name, notehead, and line/space on the right side of the window. I don't care about playback, so I haven't figured out how to assign sounds. 

And of course you can modify existing entries by clicking on them, and changing them the same ways. 

Problem: it looks like I only get hotkeys for the letters A-G. I want more than that, we'll see if it's possible.

Here is the current state of the transcription: 

I really need to figure out how entering text works.
UPDATE: In fact, you just drag it where ever you want after typing it.

Pickup measure
The drums play a little three note lead in. Select the first measure > right click > select measure properties.

There are settings for nominal and actual measure duration. Reset the actual duration to the length of the pick up measure— three 8th notes in this case.
   

Muting drum sounds while entering music
I'm listening to the piece as I'm transcribing, I don't want to hear their crappy midi drum sounds while I'm doing that.

At the top of the screen hit edit > preferences > note input > uncheck play notes while editing. 

Flams
Select the note you want to embellish, go to the palettes tab > grace notes, click on the symbol for the type of grace note you want to add. For ruffs, click repeatedly for the number of grace notes you want. 

To move the grace notes to a different drum, select the note and use the up/down arrows.

Problem: on the palette they're pictured with a little slur attaching it to the note it embellishes, but they don't render that way in the score. You can add a slur by selecting a note and hitting the S key, but the slur is not scaled for a grace note, and was not attached to the note I wanted. You can move it, but it's a little weird.   

Articulations
Select the note you want, click appropriate articulation in the articulations palette. 

To remove, right click on the articulation and hit delete. There's got to be a better way of doing that. 

To remove all articulations in a measure or region, right click the articulation then select > similar in this range > then delete.  

Annoyance: I want some articulations to be positioned further above the beams than the default. You can change that in the articulations palette— right click on the symbol > select properties, change y axis: -.5 sp (for example) But: the position change shows in the palette, but not in the score. 

I also don't like the appearance of all of them— will need to get into the settings to correct that, if possible. 

Noteheads
The first cymbal hit is a swish cymbal (man, those A. Zildjian swishes sound bad). You can permanently add something to the drum set instrument following the directions above, or change the note head for a single note by selecting the note, then the properties tab > note > notehead > select the notehead you want. 

Line breaks
In Finale we set the number of measures for each line via a setting. Ctrl-M, I think. In Musescore, reminiscent of a word processor, you just hit enter where you want the line break to be. 

Double bars
Click on the measure you want, go to the barlines palette, click the appropriate thing. Easy. 

Ghost notes
Indicated by a parenthesis around the notehead. They're easy; select the note, then the properties tab > note > notehead parentheses.

Problem: since we often deal with groups of ghost notes, having open and close parentheses on every note will quickly clutter up the page. I need options for note + open parenthesis and note + close parenthesis. 

UPDATE: There are open and close parenthesis symbols hiding in the MASTER PALETTE (shift + f9 to view), under noteheads. Click on the thing you want in the master palette, and drag it to your working palette for your template. 

It's going pretty good. I need to get a handle on entering and positioning text, and get better just navigating the program and entering/working with notes. The modes are still a little obscure— “note entry” mode, and some other kind of mode. 

The way the music is scaled on the page bothers me. Copying the dimensions accurately from Finale to Musescore will be problematic, because they are entered in inches in Finale, and in staff spaces (mostly) in Musescore. Onward.