The meaning of “cut and paste” is less obvious for a music editing program than it is for something like a word processor in which the letters and words go in a simple linear order. Accordingly, Rosegarden's notation editor offers several different types of paste operation, as well as separate Edit → Cut (Ctrl+X) and Edit → Cut and Copy (Ctrl+Shift+X) functions. Cut and close means that when you “cut” a segment the space left by the segment disappears from the track by moving forward all the events later in the track.

The types of paste operation are:

Restricted

Requires an existing gap (containing nothing but rests) of enough duration to completely contain the clipboard's contents. The contents are pasted into the gap. If there is no gap long enough, the paste is not carried out.

This is the default paste type. The shortcut for this operation is Ctrl+V .

Simple

Erases enough events to make a gap long enough to paste into, and then pastes into that. The pasted events therefore completely replace any existing ones in the time covered by the paste.

Open and Paste

The opposite of Cut and Close. Makes room for the paste by moving all of the subsequent events further towards the end of the composition.

Note Overlay

Carries out a paste in the way that it would happen if you entered each of the notes in the clipboard yourself using the notation editor: if there are other notes overlapping with them, the new or existing notes will be split into ties appropriately.

Matrix Overlay

Carries out a paste in the way that it would happen if you entered each of the notes in the clipboard yourself using the matrix editor: the notes presently in the way of the paste will be ignored, allowing the new notes to overlap arbitrarily with them.

All of these take effect at the current position of the insert cursor on the current staff. You can choose all the paste varieties through Edit → Paste… (Ctrl+Shift+V). You can also change the default paste type in this dialog.