Oftentimes you have a passage in one instrument that you want to try to move or double with other instruments. In general the passage does not start at beat 1 so it’s not easy to simply copy & paste because you want to preserve the time position.
So the fastest way I see is to repeatedly used the copy/move to staff up/below, which is cumbersome if you are working with many instruments. Imagine the case “I want to check how does this sound if I double these viola notes with the clarinet” and moving the notes all the way from strings to woodwinds, one stave at a time.
Don’t get me wrong, this solution is reasonably fast, but it has it’s drawbacks. The main problem is undoing the thing (you have to undo every move you did, one by one, or go to History and good luck if you DID another doubling before the one you are undoing, that you want to preserve).
Instrument filters are a possible workaround but it’s not super comfortable to create them, and you end up with a billion useless filters if you don’t remember to clean them up.
Do you have a better way to do this? What do you think about a new feature “Paste special → Paste at the same time position”? I see that this has came here in the past (Paste at same position) and I think it’s a very common use case for composers.
Try invoking the carat at the insert position. Arrow down to paste staff while still in Input mode and then paste.
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You can also Alt+click at positions within a bar, without going into note entry mode and positioning the caret.
When you are in Input mode in the middle of a measure and move up/down to an empty measure, the caret ends up at the beginning of the measure, so it won’t insert your copied notes at the same time position.
That is incorrect. It absolutely maintains the rhythmic position.
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That’s imprecise if you are copying something that doesn’t start at a specific beat (e.g. copy something that starts at the 2nd sixteenth of a bar). It may work if you’re copying to the next staff, but when the destination is far you don’t have the visual reference.
But you can move the caret with the arrow keys.
Sure, it depends on your use case. You can also adjust the rhythmic grid, which controls the positions that will accept an Alt+click.
Or you can click something into a bar and then use Alt+arrow to reposition it.
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Then I’m not getting you, can you detail the steps? What I am doing:
- Enter Input Mode at some note in the middle of a measure
- Select some notes with Shift-Right and Copy them
- Press Up into a empty measure (goes to the beginning of the measure)
- Paste (pastes at the beginning of the measure)
If I do this, the caret does remain in place.
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I have never witnessed that behavior.
Ah, I like that, it solves nicely the imprecision of Alt+click. Thank you!
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Ohh I just realized what’s happening, I had the snap grid too coarse and was “rounding” to the beginning of the measure.
Now I also like your solution a lot! Thank you!
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Interesting. I never use large values there so that would explain it.
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