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Hello,
i use MS Pro a lot since about 1 year and it really works great most of the time.
Normaly i use annotations only for some little changes like dynamic, articulation or additional text.
But today i had to do more. Almost a complete line has to be replaced with new notes.

What i did:
  • placed a white rectangle over the original line
  • made an empty line with the stamp tool
  • added the notes with the stamp tool
  • draw the bars with the paint tool
This was not this easy, because often i activated the wrong element, even zoomed in to maximum. Also its not easy to pick an element from a different layer. Another thing was, that placing an element was not simple, because it was hidden under my finger.

One idea i had after was to use a notation app and just add a screenshot to my PDF.
Which would you suggest?


Are there any tricks how i can do changes like this more easy?
Thanks for your help.
Haven't really used the stamp tool because I don't use sheet music.

Having a play with it, the following springs to mind
1) you can't set a background colour to the stamp so you probably do have to blank out a rectangle
2) When adding notes to the lines, stamp the note where you roughly want it and use the nudge tool for precise positioning (press the left most icon on the menu bar and select "Show Nudge with Select Tool")
3) When drawing the vertical bars, change the line drawing pencil so that it is set to rectangle - this will allow you to get vertical lines. Again, you can nudge it into place.
4) As well as showing the nudge tool, you can also select "Show List"; this allows you to select items without positioning to them (eases fat fingers when items are close together)
5) The "List" dialog indicates there is a mechanism to group items - I haven't used it so not sure how it works.

I expect someone with more knowledge than I will provide further advice.

Geoff
I would write the whole page from scratch in MuseScore and replace it (via page order in the song editor).
Annotations and stamps are not convenient enough imho for editing sheet music.
I’m familiar with notation software, so would have used that method, like you say, it is probably a little to difficult to do this with stamps etc.

Other than itsme’s suggestion... you could just replace that system.

You probably already know how to do this, but the basic steps would be similar to this:
Work out the original document size of your PDF, create a new document in your notation app at that page size, input the notation on to one system, (you might need to delete instrument name, add correct measure numbering etc., so it matches the existing systems), set margins, scale/resize to match existing size (might have to do this a couple of times when constructing the composite), the notation software probably allows you to select an area and save as an image file, import to an image app with the original page. If it has layers, you could reduce the new section’s opacity so you can line it up with the existing system and check it matches (noteheads are about the same size etc.), margins align etc. then with opacity back at 100% (so you only see the replacement system), export as PDF page.
In a PDF app, replace this page with the original, save, replace in MS.

Of course if you don’t need it done neatly, I would handwrite the system on some manuscript paper, scan it (or use camera app), and use an image app as above to composite.

I would find it much easier and quicker using my computer to do this rather than any Android apps.
Thanks for all the suggestions.
I also think, that editing on a PC is much better, but i dont have the PC with me all the time.
But for a kind of quick and dirty solution i could use the steps from this topic.

Maybe there is a way to add the option to MSP to import an image as an overlay in a future release?
There may be a android app similar to GIMP that would help.
I may add support for that, but if I do, I would permanently write the image into the underlying file. It would get really messy if image files used for annotation purposes had to be maintained with the library and included in library backups and exported songs, so I'd rather make it something permanent. With PDFs, I may be able to embed the image as an annotation in the PDF itself so that it can be removed using an external editor, and in the future when I add support for editing existing PDF annotations in MobileSheetsPro, you would be able to move or delete the image if needed. With image files, it would always be permanently drawn into the image file itself.

Mike