tweaking note position

• Feb 23, 2011 - 03:47

greetings,

i have a section with two voices on one staff (treble clef). the top voice temporarily goes below the bottom voice. the bottom voice plays a D and the top voice plays a Bb a third below the D. i have the top voice stems pointing up and the bottom voice stems pointing down. this looks weird when the voices cross, but i would like to keep the stem directions. to complicate things, the D is tied.

basically, my question is: is it possible to nudge one of the notes a little bit to the left or right in the same way that you can drag a rest in a voice up or down?

thank you,
ryan


Comments

Double click the note to enter Edit mode, use cursor keys to nudge it. It will look like only the head is moving, but when you exit edit mode, the stem will follow.

In reply to by ubergeekian

If they are truly in different voices, then using the arrow keys in Edit mode will move only that note. Using the Chord offset in the Inspector is usually faster though. I am guessing you are trying to drag the note. This works also, but depending on whether you hold Shift or not, it either moves everything or just the note (btw, whether Shift causes it to be just the note or all notes changes recently, be sure to update to the latest version).

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

Wow. Wonderfully fast reply. The note I want to shift is a crotchet in Voice 2: it's green in each screenshot. As entered it get confused either with the quaver above it in Voice 1
stemup.png
or with the quaver below it in Voice 3
stemdown.png
I would like to displace the crotchet to the right. When I select just it in question (right-click -> Edit Element) and give a few ctrl-rightarrows (to exaggerate the effect) the note I have selected moves, and so do the notes in Voice 1 and 2, as well as the matching note in the part above..
nudged.png
Any further advice you can give would be very useful. It's a Handel recorder sonata, by the way.

In reply to by ubergeekian

It's easier to help given an actual score rather than just a picture., And do be sure to update to the latest version (currently 3.3.4) so we're on the same page as far as the actual shortcuts. I'm guessing you are on an older version and you might need Shift to get it to only move the note, but as I said, that changed recently.

BTW, there is a different more automatic solution in this case: consider combining the quavers into one voice, the crotchet in another. Then MuseScore will separate them for you. I'd go with voice 1 (stems up) for the outer notes, voice 2 (stem down) for the inner, then the heads can still overlap.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

Thanks. I'm on 3.2.3 (Linux) and will do an upgrade. I agree about combining the quavers, but I'm trying to get it to look as much as possible like the paper version. Similar issues occur in a couple of other places where the notes above and below are different, and combination wouldn't be an option.
I've tried shift-arrow and that also stretches the whole bar rather than just moving the quaver. However, following mike320's advice I have found that selecting the quaver, opening the inspector and increasing the x-offset of the chord by one space just just what I need.
success.png
Many thanks, all.

Do you still have an unanswered question? Please log in first to post your question.