Piano Pedal does not span correct duration without left-hand notes

[joshuaboniface]

Issue type

UX/Interaction bug (incorrect behaviour)

Description with steps to reproduce

By convention piano pedals sit below the grand staff. However, in MuseScore 4 if the left hand is tacet (full bar rests), pedal markings added to a subsection of the bar (selected via the right hand) will both (a) duplicate on both hands, and (b) have an incorrect end point on the left hand.

1. Create a Piano score with right hand notes and no left-hand notes.
2. Attempt to add a pedal marking to a subsection of the bar.
3. Observe how duplicates are added and the left-hand pedal spans the entire bar.

Note that it is also not possible to either move the right hand pedal marking to the left hand staff (moving it keeps it linked to the right hand staff and just adds space), nor to cut and paste it into the left hand staff (this silently fails, I presume because there's nothing to link it to). Related to that last issue, pasting pedal markings from the left hand of a later section fail for the same reason.

Supporting files, videos and screenshots

What is the latest version of MuseScore Studio where this issue is present?

4.3.3

Regression

I was unable to check

Operating system

Debian 12 (AppImage)

Additional context

I realized after writing all this up, that this can be made to work by simply deleting the right hand pedal marking and then moving the end of the left hand pedal marking to the (rough) position of the right-hand notes:

Even though the end of the pedal marking is snapped to the end of the bar, playback seems to be correct.

However that said, I still believe this is a UX issue. If a section of the grand staff is selected, and a pedal added, then:

1. It should only be added once, below the entire grand staff, and:
2. This pedal mark should span the correct duration.
3. When failing to paste the pedal markings, it should indicate why it fails (or, just work).

Checklist

• [X] This report follows the guidelines for reporting bugs and issues
• [X] I have verified that this issue has not been logged before, by searching the issue tracker for similar issues
• [X] I have attached all requested files and information to this report
• [X] I have attempted to identify the root problem as concisely as possible, and have used minimal reproducible examples where possible

[oktophonie]

In 4.4, you can move the endpoints of the pedal marking to exactly the right place you want (rather than eyeballing it) via the anchors feature; however, it should be a lot easier to get the result you want without having to do that effort, so you make good points about all the interactions.

To me, it does make sense for pedal markings to go to the bottom stave automatically in most circumstances (regardless of the stave on which the selection was made, though the range of that selection should determine the range of the marking); I wouldn't want to completely remove the ability to put one on a specific stave, but perhaps that could be supported via the Ctrl modifier (as we do for some other items).

As a more general point, I think we are missing an important interaction, which is 'move to stave above/below' (while preserving the correct rhythmic start/end positions). This would be very useful for spanners of all kinds.

[oktophonie]

Also: in 4.4, adding a pedal mark to this selection: will actually give this: It's still silly for there to be two of them, but it does at least mean it's fairly easy to get one in the right position straight away; the only other thing you need to do is delete the duplicate one on the upper stave.

We'll look into making the behaviour of pedal markings better, in something like the manner described above, in 4.5. Besides that, there's already a feature request to allow more granular selections to be made using the new anchors system, which would provide another way to achieve this result (you could select five 8th notes' worth of the LH stave directly and apply the marking to that).