bad rests

• Nov 19, 2016 - 22:42

Can't figure out how rests are handled. I attached an example but it seems to occur a lot. I moved the rests a little to make them more visible.

In keyboard writing 1 voice might change from triad to one note to a 3rd and so on while on the same staff another voice is just a one note melody. This is pretty common even in Mozart but you can't expect Musescore to figure it all out. It would be nice if we could suspend it's rule following and just stick in or delete whatever we wanted.
John


Comments

It seems you've forgotten the attachment.

To my memory though, Mozart didn't commonly create invalid measures in his writings. I'm suspecting there's a misunderstanding between you and the software.

In reply to by John Gessner

You'll have to try and use as few voices as possible. Every voice produces their own rests--because sometimes one voice is silent while the other sounds. As soon as that happens the rests will be vertically shifted so the player can see which voice they apply to.

In your last measure you have some notes rather randomly assigned to the second voice, some to the first. If you re-enter those notes all in voice 1 (which is no problem at all) the funny looking rests all disappear.

In the first measure you do need two voices in the right hand: the line c-e-g-rest-d in voice one, the rest of the measure in voice two. I find three voices however and again randomly assigned (the firs two notes in the above line are in second. Then you needed the third voice for the G. Now there is no note in the first voice on beat one, hence the quarter rest between the systems.

The eighth rest at the end of that measure needs to be there as the melody is interrupted between the dotted half and the quaver at the end. You may try and move it up and down to see where it is most clearly associated with the first voice.

So what you want to do is
1. Whenever possible use one voice only. Always use voice 1 first.
2. If you need to use two voices think linearly: Enter the top voice in voice 1 for the whole measure or for an even longer stretch, then go back and enter voice 2. Same thinking goes for voices 3 and 4.
3. Even so you will sometimes get rests you don't want. You can delete rests in voices 2 - 4, but not in voice 1. You can set any rest in any voice invisible--often the better choice even for voices 2 - 4.
4. If more than one voice have the same rest at the same location your score will show two rests on top of each other. Set one of them invisible (the one with the higher number) and the other will automatically move into correct position.

Also remember: When you enter notes in Musescore you displace rests that are already in the score, normally whole measure rests. Musescore will always make sure all required rests are in the score and every measure has all the beats it needs.

In other words when you enter a rest you change the notation of the rest that is already there. You have a 4/4 measure with a whole measure rest in it. Now you enter a quarter rest. What happens is you substitute two quarter rests and a half rest for the whole measure rest. When you enter notes you substitute a note for (part of) the rest that was there before.

In reply to by azumbrunn

"still nopt sure what I'm doing wrong"

You had nothing do wrong. It's simply a MIDI file import, with this kind of inconvenients, and work for re-configurate the voices. One way eg would be to choice only 1 voice (or 2, you may try this, according to the wished or better result) in the Midi import panel, tab "Max. voices", with a little dropdown list.
So, choose 2 voices (or 1) and click on "Apply".
This is not a magic recipe but it can help.

In reply to by John Gessner

For the record, MIDI input will often produce this the file will often contain instances where notes overlap - one note is played slightly before the previous one is released - and the only want to notate this accurately is to use multiple voices. If this file was the result of playing something live into a sequencer and recording it, you would be advised to quantize it - especially the note lengths - before exporting to MIDI, to avoid that sort of problem. But yes, also check out the import panel that appears at the bottom of the screen when importing a MIDI file - it gives some options to try to control how MuseScore handles this. There are quite a few options worth playing with, actually.

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