Score has elements on top of each other

With Sibelius’s future in doubt, I’m trying to get the best out of Cubase’s score editor. The main problem I have is shown in this image. I’ve added dynamics and articulations in the key editor as i went along, and now when I view the score editor, elements are on top of others (mainly dynamics on top of articulations). Optimize All doesn’t help, and if I manually move things, then it gets separated from the note, so Cubase plays the note back without the articulation or dynamic I just moved.

I did RTFM but couldn’t find anything to do with this.

Yes, it it sometimes difficult to isolate events when they are on top of one another… but the computer arrow keys can help navigate.
Then, to move the events, use the Hand tool instead of the regular Select tool. (in fact, although that is fine for the articulations, I have just discovered that even the Hand tool does really move VST Dynamic s events… and I’m pretty sure it shouldn’t :wink: ).
Anyways, you do have a certain leeway, so long as you don’t place the VST Dynamics event too far to the right.

Thanks Vic.

Aren’t Pizz and other articulations supposed to go above the bar not below it ? I always thought so. Not sure why Cubase doesn’t.

Good point… but that only happens when you insert them via the Key Editor… if you do so via the Score Editor, they get placed, vertically, where you clicked.

Ideal time for Steinberg to revamp the score tool I think. It sure seems to be devilishly difficult to get anything to actually look like a proper score without going through hoops. Seems all too often that things get overlapped, whereas in a score nothing is ever overlapped. I would say that if Steinberg could just follow that rule and make everything shuffle to the right rather than overlapping anything then this might be all that’s needed to make it much easier to use right out of the box.

Mike.

Yes I agree, it’s pretty basic stuff that needs doing.

I’ve put in a ticket to tech support already.

I often find that if you set the number of bars per staff to something low like 1 or 2, the elements appear in the correct places. Sight-reading musos (like myself!) would prefer to read 2 correctly spaced bars than 6 squishy ones, even though it might make the score a few pages longer. You can always set the bars-per-staff back to 4 for subsequent bars. Professional copyists will tell you that 4 is the maximum number of bars per staff, unless there’s a load of repeat bars (ie in drum parts.)

Another trick is to drag the LEFT-HAND staff edge all the way to the left (just keep going past the edge of the page, Cubase will only go so far). This overrides the default LH margin and gives you a bit more space to pay with. It’s not much, but it might help…!

As to pizz and other dynamics appearing below the note, this is quite often seen. It’s not technically correct, but can make reading a lot easier in some cases.