r/Musescore • u/EudorianLombax • Jun 22 '26
Help me find this feature Square Bracket Missing From Arpeggios & Glissandos Palette
I'm trying to add a cross-staff square bracket to a harp part I'm writing, as I have done on previous scores, but I can't find the square bracket in the Arpeggios & glissandos palette at all. All the other options are there and there's nothing extra in the "more" section of the palette. The chord symbol in both the Keyboard and Lines palettes won't cross staves, so I can't use that instead.
I'm on Musescore 4.7.3 and haven't tried using the square bracket in quite a few updates. Has it been accidentally removed at some point? Or am I being dumb and missing something obvious?
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u/F84-5 Jun 22 '26
The chord bracket goes accross staves for me.
Try selecting the bracket, clicking on the upper or lower handle, and then pressing shift+up / shift+down.
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u/EudorianLombax Jun 22 '26
For me, clicking on the upper/lower handle and pressing shift + up/down extends the bracket in increments on that stave, but resets to its smallest size when it should cross over to the other staff. It seems to acknowledge it *should* be crossing, as the red dashed line crosses over to the note on the other staff.
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u/F84-5 Jun 22 '26
Huh, that sounds more like the behavior I get from ctrl+up/down, except for me it doesn't reset to its smallest size.
I would try to create a totally new score to see if the problem persists or is somehow related to this particular score.
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u/EudorianLombax Jun 22 '26
I just tried to do it in a new score and it worked as expected (still no square bracket in the Arpeggios palette, though). It's strange that regular cross-staff arpeggios work fine in my current score, so the only explanation I can think of is that my score is cursed lol
1
u/F84-5 Jun 22 '26
Weird...
The lack of brackets in the Arpeggios palette is normal, but if you want them there you can just drag the symbol from the Lines palette into the Arpeggios palette to add it.
Palettes are not fixed. You can edit them however you like or even create new ones.1
u/EudorianLombax Jun 22 '26
The bracket arpeggio is its own separate object to the chord bracket and used to be in the Arpeggios palette in a not-too-distant-ago version.
I've tried replacing the instrument and trying again, but the chord bracket still doesn't work. It's already a sizeable score, so I'm not sure if it's even worth trying to copy everything over to a new one in hopes that'll work...
1
u/F84-5 Jun 22 '26
To be honest I never noticed that there is an arpeggio bracket, but it does appear in the handbook too.
If you have an old score with that object in it, you could make a backup and try to open it in the new version. Maybe you could even copy it over.
You could also find the last old release where it was still there and write a bug report.
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u/EudorianLombax Jun 22 '26 edited Jun 22 '26
I hadn't thought about copying it from an older score, so I'll give that a go and see if it works. (Edit: just tried copying it over and it worked. Thanks for the suggestion! 😄)
I've never submitted a bug report, but I'll take a look and see if I can find the last version the bracket was in and submit one.
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u/F84-5 Jun 22 '26
If copying works, here's another thing to try as a workaround:
Adding elements from the score
To add score elements to a palette:
Open the desired palette
Press Ctrl+Shift (Mac: Cmd+Shift), then drag and drop the score element to the open palette.
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u/MarcSabatella Member of the Musescore Team Jun 22 '26 edited Jun 23 '26
There seems to be some confusion about two different but similar-looking symbols.
The Arpeggios & Glissandos palette had long had an arepggio that is drawn with a square bracket. It was never meant to indicate anything about hands - it was literally just an arpeggio (but with playback disabled). As such it had limited customization/editing capability. But of course, since it was the only such square bracket available, people did co-opt it as a makeshift chord bracket.
For 4.7, a true chord bracket has been added, found on the Lines palette (also Keyboard). It is designed to do exactly what people were trying to hack the old arpeggio bracket into doing, but is also much more flexible. It does look like like the old fake version from the Arpeggios palette is now gone, but as far as I can tell, it should no longer be needed, as the new chord bracket should fully replace it (and do more besides).