Hi, it occurred to me multiple times … Yes, you can press enter and see a small orange note (but it is an additional step) and yes, you can switch on the colors to differentiate between voices … but then some clicking (or a shortcut) is needed and even with colors on it can be sometimes confusing to tell which voice is which.
Idea: when a single note is selected you’d have in the status bar a small field displaying things like V1↑, or V2↓.
It would be quite unobtrusive and it would take just a tiny bit of space.
Yes, we’ve considered this in the past, and it’s something we may well add in future. I would also like to add a read-out of the instrument on which the current item is selected, too.
On a related note, I’d love to have the colors be user selectable, or at least have the option of V1 being black. If V1 was just black, I would probably leave Voice Colors on all the time as any color would only be displayed when I had multiple voices.
I also agree with Fred, default black color for up-stem V1 would be great. And If not customization - then at least a some visual guide telling which color corresponds to which voice …
Some additional observations regarding voice color mode:
If for some reason (maybe because of XML import) you have just down stem V1 notes in an instrument then all these notes are blue - the same color as upper stem V1 notes in other instruments. You may encounter unexpected things - see my post Redirecting...
I’d prefer the colors to be consistent also in this rare case - for example down stem V1 to be always red (or user defined)
For 2 staff instruments you have lots of colors (for example 4 colors for just two voices in both staves). Not ideal I think, but I understand it’s probably because you want to distinguish possible cross staff notes. But what about using same colors for both staves and in case of cross staff notes - they could have, say yellowish edges? What do you think?
hpta, voice colours are assigned in the order that the voices are created. They’re also assigned per instrument, not per staff.
This means that Upstem Voice 1 on a Piano top staff will never be the same colour as Upstem Voice 1 on the bottom staff.
This is logical - it means that if you cross-staff some notes from one stave to the other, you can still identify which stave the voice originated on.
This is what I get here. All that’s relevant is the order in which voices are created.
If you start with Downstem Voice 1, then add an Upstem Voice 1, then add a Downstem Voice 2, DV1 will be blue, UV1 will be red and DV2 will be green.
If you happen to start with Downstem Voice 1, then add another Downstem Voice (DV2) then add Upstem Voice1, DV1 will be blue, DV2 will be red and UV1 will be green.
Thank you Leo for this, you know, just excellent product support you provide here
The suggestion about piano staves - I was just writing what came to mind. The reason why i’d prefer same colors for both piano staves is because I use f.lux (software for reducing blue light) and the thing is that for example orange and red then looks basically the same. So that’s why I’d prefer fewer colors in general. (But don’t give much weight to it, I can live with the current design quite easily)
It makes sense for all the voices of a multi-staff instrument to be different, when you have cross-staff notes. There is no other way to tell which notes are cross-staff, if you forget exactly how you created the score.
But I suppose if there were user-assignable colours, you could have two voices the same colour, if that didn’t confuse you.
The thing I don’t like about the current colours is that the brightness is uneven. In particular voice 3 is a lot brighter than 1 2 and 4. Voice 6 has the same problem if you use several voices on each staff of a keyboard instrument. (And 13 is near invisible, if anybody ever gets to need it!)
I’m almost tempted to just use voices 1 2 7 and 4 rather than 1 2 3 and 4 to make it easier on the eyes.
There could be another way to tell which notes are cross-staff - maybe as I suggested - a yellowish (or differently colored) edge of cross-staff notes and info in status bar: (as Daniel wrote) instrument info + voice info. Perhaps like this: piano staff1 V1↑
I was thinking about being able to see at a glance what the voices are in this sort of example, not identifying individual notes by selecting them.
When we get the ability to assign different playback to individual voices this might get even more interesting, for example organ music where different voices on a grand staff correspond to different divisions of the instrument…
There are also people with visual impairment that see colors differently (or some colors not at all) or need high contrast, so just color coding stuff without alternative means of indication is generally a bit problematic for accessability.
The issue of how navigation works in Write mode when using the arrow keys has been well rehearsed here and it is definitely something that we will be addressing in a future version.
