Entering sheet music from my beginning keyboard book.

• Feb 26, 2015 - 22:19

Hey,

I am teaching myself Keyboard and because I have no way of knowing how closely I am playing the notes to their intended duration I am entering each song as I do that lesson into MuseScore. MuseScore already sounds better. :-(

However, I see sections in grey (I have Yamaha Musikschule Lernen mit Spass FunKEY book but I guess learning books for playing piano and keyboard all do that) that are meant for the teacher to accompany me playing the lesson.

Example: Good Night, Ladies (Merrily We Roll Along) I entered the left hand and right hand staves but I'm unsure how to enter the Teacher's staves as it is twice as long as the student's staves and meant to be played only once while the student's is meant to be repeated once.

What would be the technical term for the Teacher's part be called?

Thanks.


Comments

If I understand correctly, you have a song scored for two pianos - student + teacher. Each piano part uses treble and bass clefs.
I'm guessing one would call the teacher's part the accompaniment. ;-)
That's what lots of lesson books do - they let the student play the main melody, backed by the teacher.

The easiest way to score this in MuseScore would be to create 2 instruments (pianos) with the number of measures equal to the teacher's part. After all, it is the teacher's part which has no repeat and is the longest. Then just copy/paste the student's repeated part, instead of using the repeat signs. (Nowadays, copy/paste is a simple enough task on a computer, as opposed to actually inking musical notes out on paper.)

Later, if you wish to generate parts, you can save the student part as a separate file, then enter the repeat signs and delete the redundant measures.
Please note that MuseScore 2 links the generated parts, so whatever you do to a part gets propagated to the entire score. That's why you should save the student file separately from the score, and *then* do the repeat/delete action. Otherwise, the teacher's part will lose its second half.

BTW: For an easy way to learn the piece, you can take any generated part and export it from MuseScore as a midi file. You can save the midi on an SD card, put it in your Casio keyboard and play along. This way, you can change the tempo to what you're comfortable with, play along with the teacher, isolate left hand/right hand of the student's part, etc.
Plus, you won't have to spend time mastering the Jack audio w/ MuseScore learning curve.
This way, you'll have more time for practicing...

Regards.

In reply to by Jm6stringer

Thanks for that. I thought they'd use an Italian word for accompaniment.

Instruments is nice. These notations is coming back to me now.

The MuseScore <-> midi cable connection isn't bad to learn. And the Jack Server business well that's a couple of months off but I am interested in learning the basics and general midi. So I'm learning the build process and basics of MuseScore now and this summer use that knowledge to spit out the midi the keyboard is sending as a midi learning aid.

For actual keyboard learning what I plan to do is have the teacher's score play back on computer and I playback on the keyboard. And before I try to learn a piece enter it into MuseScore 1st. Ever since I got MuseScore so I can hear the proper timing I've been making better sounding practice as I'm not rushing the playback on notes trying to get my fingers in place for the next notes.

Ciao

In reply to by Jm6stringer

Additional possible experiments:

1) enter both parts in the score, as Jim5stringer explained above
2) use the menu command "View | Mixer" to bring up the mixer and mute either part: the pupil's part to hear only the teacher's part and use it as an accompaniment or the teacher's part if you want to use the playback of your part alone as a guide.

Also, the Play Panel (menu command "View | Play panel") can be used for:

A) slow down the tempo to ease the practice without modifying the value in the score each time (remember to bring it back to 100% at some point!)

B) Turn a metronome beat on/off

C) Turn the lead-in count (the "conductor baton" icon) on/off to be alerted right before the piece is going to start.

Happy practising!

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