Changing shared note heads to offset heads
Is there any way to separate shared note heads in a way which will allow auto positioning to move other elements to appropriate positions?
The scenario is this. I have notes in unison in different voices (and of different lengths so I cannot move them into a single voice). I want to make it clear that both notes are played on separate strings so do not want the heads to be shared but they are merging automatically.
I have tried changing the offset manually but that moves the note head relative to everything else which means I have to manually adjust everything following it. I would like to move one of the note heads to the right and have all the notation to the right of it move by the same amount.
The only documentation I have been able to find is for merging note heads which are not automatically shared, not the opposite.
Comments
I just tried a couple of easy examples on my system.
1. Using quarter notes in one voice and half notes in the other: The noteheads don't merge. This is true so log as one notepad is "white" and the other is "black".
2. Using eighths and quarters they do merge. But the flags/beams at the end of the eighth note stems and/or the eighth rests that appear make it abundantly clear that they are of different value.
So in what combination do you have a problem? I can't come up with an example.
In reply to I just tried a couple of easy by azumbrunn
Thanks for the reply azumbrunn.
I've now achieved what I wanted (as described in my reply to mike320).
Had this been a single note head, sharing it would not have been a problem but as mentioned below, it was in a chord and since all the heads were vertically adjacent, judging where the stems ended was difficult.
I'm not sure if this is what you want, but if you select the note to be moved and bring up the inspector (F8) the third group of numbers from the top has "Chord" in bold. If you change the horizontal offset under this it moves the note head as well as any stem and flag connected to it. If you run out of room to move a note then put an unnecessary accidental indicating if it is sharp, flat or natural on the note you are not moving that is in the way and press V with the accidental selected to make it invisible. This will give you room for the moved note if needed and your spacer hidden.
I would probably use the 2 voices like you did and have the text "Sul D" above the music and "Sul G" below the music or other appropriate strings for the notes. I wouldn't worry about moving the note head. In my opinion, that would be sufficient to let the musician(s) know what you want.
In reply to I'm not sure if this is what by mike320
Thank you mike320. This got me going in the right direction.
In the end it took the inclusion of an accidental and making sure I chose the note I wanted to be on the left and moving it to the left. Choosing the note I wanted on the right and moving it to the right, even with an accidental in the space between it and the next note, did not help. For some reason moving elements to the left seems to have an effect on the auto spacing of other elements but moving them to the right does not.
Had this just been one note on two strings I may have opted for the text but as it is a chord on 4 strings, I was keen to offset the notes for the sake of readability. For the same reason it was very difficult to judge whether which stem was on each note. It could equally have been two quavers above a crotchet or one quaver above two crochets rather than two quavers and two crotchets.
The layout is now exactly as I wanted it.
Glad you got this case sorted. In general, it *should* be as easy as using the Inspector to change the *Chord* offset as described above - no need to mess with dummy accidentals or anything like that. If you continue to have issues in the future, please attach the score you are having trouble with.
In reply to Glad you got this case by Marc Sabatella
Here is a very quick example I made up of the measures getting too crowded to move notes left and right. I realize I could do other things to fix this, but this seemed to be the best solution to the original posters situation. BTW I hid the redundant natural signs and have invisible turned off.
In reply to Here is a very quick example by mike320
Ah yes, in crowded situations moving the chord won't be enough. FWIW, the "right" way to allocate extra space is using the segment leading and trailing space in the Inspector, but the hidden accidentals should be reasonably safe. Normally, one should avoid workarounds like that as they are likely to give the wrong results should the layout of the score change in the future (due to further edits, or a new version of MsueScore, etc). But again, this particular workaround is not that likely to cause problems.