How make arpeggio span two staves?

• Jan 7, 2017 - 11:03

I am trying to make an arpeggio symbol span both staves of a chord as shown here:
gliss_across_staves.PNG

If I select the whole chord and double-click the Arpeggio symbol Musescore adds two separate symbols, one for each stave.

I know I can just hide one of these and extend the other so that cosmetically it spans both staves, but I think that on playback the two arpeggios are sounding at the same time, which is not quite the correct effect.

I have tried entering all notes into the lower staff then moving some of them from one staff to the other as per https://musescore.org/en/handbook/cross-staff-beaming but that moves the whole chord.

Is there a way of moving the attachment of the top (or bottom) of the arpeggio so it truly covers all the notes in the chord?

Thanks


Comments

Unfortunately you must use something hidden to make this work.
First - enter the arpeggio the way you want it to look, then select all the notes and uncheck play in the inspector (F8) so they will be silent.

Next you either need to make another staff with the same instrument (recommended if there are a lot of these in the song) or in an unused voice in the lowest clef staff make an arpeggio that uses all the notes from both staffs. If I use another voice I usually just find an empty measure somewhere and put it on the same beat as it would be in the measure I'm working on. Make sure the entire chord for all staffs (usually 2 but could be 3 like an organ) is on the lowest staff with the arpeggio symbol on it. The reason I say to use the lowest staff is that it is easier to build a chord from bottom to top. Now make this work measure invisible by pressing V (at this point you need to make sure Show invisible is checked under the view menu). In the selection filter (F9) uncheck voice 1 and select the measure. You should now have only the voice with your arpeggio selected. Cut that measure. Select the first beat in voice 1 in the measure you want to place the arpeggio and paste it. Make this a habit, because MS will complain if there is a tuplet in the measure and you select the entire measure.

If you make an invisible staff, you will have to make it visible to add notes you want to hear of course, but you can put everything into voice 1 without the need to hide anything. You can even delete all but one staff and simply put the appropriate clef on the staff as needed for arpeggios.

I do the invisible voice option often mainly because I don't like invisible staffs.

In reply to by Kids Kirsch

3 1/2 years later this is still basically my preferred method for proper arpeggio playback. I've learned something to make this work a little better.

I only put the arpeggio on the invisible notes then make that visible and extend it up to look like it belongs in voice 1. When there are accidentals the arpeggio symbols start doing weird auto placements and you end up with extra space when you hide invisible items.

There's a trick I learned from a forum member regarding arpeggios and time-stretching, and it also applies to cross-staff or two voiced arpeggios, but it takes some calculation.

1) Make an arpeggio for both your F & G clef chords.
2) Hide one of them, the top one, and drag up the bottom one to fit
3) Looks fine, but as you said they don't sound right because they both trigger at the same instance rather than a continuous unfolding
4) Use the piano-roll editor. Find out the OnTime values for the Bass clef chord by right-clicking in the bass clef measure and opening the piano-roll editor. For a 4-tone chord of eighth notes I get the interval of 175 from the first note being 0 and the next being 175, next 350, then 525, so you want the next note, the first note of the treble clef chord to be 525+175, and then the next note of that one to be 525+175+175, etc. You have to right click into the treble clef, or whatever clef you want to be looking at and open the piano roll editor from there. Apparently it doesn't encompass both clefs in one window. One at a time click each note and then type in the numeral value for it in the OnTime form.

I hope this makes sense, I'm tired and might be a little unclear. This is definitely a work around, but it works and doesn't require some extra hidden staves or anything like that; plus, it's good to know these things anyways :)

In reply to by worldwideweary

Im able to use the piano roll editor to make the arpeggiation continuous on two chords, but when i add a new invisible tempo on the chord to extend it a little bit it shifts the timing on the arpeggio and i have to redo it in the editor. Is there a way in the piano roll editor to slow down the chord/extend it? Or do i need to plan that in advance before editing the arpeggio?

In reply to by worldwideweary

I don't care much how correctly the application plays the arpeggio, yet I have another problem with this solution. Whenever I try this, MuseScore changes the placing of my arpeggios and whole staves automatically and then the arpeggios still won't fit, be they two separate arpeggios one of which is lengthened or one visible and lengthened and one invisible.

In reply to by mike320

Thank you! Adding a single arpeggio line across both staves of a grand staff makes the staves jump apart—so I'd gotten into the habit of zooming in, adding one arpeggio per stave, then vertically aligning them and extending them to meet in the middle. 😄 This is much easier. (Maybe "Automatic Placement" on these should be disabled by default?)

I'm a relative newbie to MuseScore, though I've used other notation s/w before. (I'll never go back by the way. Wish I found MuseScore sooner!!) My solution to the continuous arpeggio problem (and everything I haven't yet found the "proper way" to do) is to brute-force it.

In the lower staff, I'd shorten the previous note a little (say a 32nd note) and place my lower arpeggiated chord there. Then, I the identical chord is immediately repeated, right where it should have been in the first place. Finally, I tie the 2 chords together with TIES. On playback, this should approximate the effect you need---effectively shifting the lower arpeggio a tiny bit ahead of the upper one, thereby yielding a pseudo-continuous arpeggio from bottom note to top note. (Attached: the chord in the red circle would have been a half note in length, but is cut short by 1-32nd to "make room" for the effect.)

In reply to by Jm6stringer

Sorry, my mind was racing among a few things and forgot the attachment!
I've circled the alterations that I made to simulate the effect (on playback) of an arpeggio across 2 chords. Doesn't look "good" or "natural" when printed, but gets the job done for me.
Alternately, I have also tried Grace Notes. Looks even worse!

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Image 1.jpg 60.23 KB

I believe if you put the arpeggio on the chord in the top staff and then double click the arpeggio, 3 or to little squares will pop up on the ends of the arpeggio and then you click the bottom square or dot thing and then once its selected you hold shift and then the down arrow key kind of like when you move something up or down to different staff and then it should expand down to the next staff where you want it and playback should work on it too. it must be done from top to bottom I believe though. I hope this makes sense.

In reply to by Jojo-Schmitz

No, it does play sequentially, because the lower arpeggio starts a 32nd before the upper one. If 32nd doesn't do it for you (I suppose, if you have a 5-note chord) then try 16th. That'll definitely separate the 2 arpeggios. Incidentally, I'm just about completing my composition so I'll share it in a few days. This is my first attempt with MuseScore, so I'm still climbing the learning curve.

In reply to by TySchriner

TySchriner> I believe if you put the arpeggio on the chord in the top staff and then double click the arpeggio, 3 or to little squares will pop up on the ends of the arpeggio and then you click the bottom square or dot thing and then once its selected you hold shift and then the down arrow key kind of like when you move something up or down to different staff and then it should expand down to the next staff where you want it and playback should work on it too. it must be done from top to bottom I believe though...

Yikes, just to extend an arpeggio? Does it have to be a full moon, too—and do you have to stand on one foot and do celebrity impressions? I've run into things like this in software that wasn't particularly intuitive. 😄

For what it's worth: In Sibelius, you just dragged one end of the arpeggio and it went wherever you wanted—and if you changed the system spacing later, the arpeggio adjusted itself accordingly. 😏

In reply to by Andy Fielding

FWIW, pressing Shift+down (which is really all the the above is saying) is actually far easier than needing to drag. And Shift+arrow is also how other similar adjustments are made, such as changing the anchor points of lines (as opposed to merely fine-tuning their length visually). But indeed, we've gradually been changing the behavior of drag for lines to make the default change anchors, and presumably someday it will happen for arpeggios too.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

Watching this discussion over time brings up a question for me. Do most of you use MuseScore to create a score that LOOKS GOOD or SOUNDS GOOD ON PLAYBACK? (Electronically, I mean.) This discussion is heavily centred on how to make a 2-stave arpeggio look proper (drag or Shift/Up-Arrow), but I don't think this helps how it plays back. To me, MuseScore's powerful attraction is it allows me to "trick" it into playing back a piece the way I'd play it myself ... it yields that "human touch." I'm a somewhat new user, but I've learned quickly how to make a piece sound "un-mechanical" with adjustments in tempo, duration, loudness, etc., which you can apply to as finite as a single note! And this is so addictive! It also takes a lot more time though---partly because I'm learning as I go. (The 2 scores that I've saved in my account took 3 & 5 weeks respectively, and I did so much tweaking, trial-and-error and versioning.)

Anyway, I've presented my solution to this arpeggio problem a while ago ("nimbears", Sep 2, 2021.) This is an important "problem" in my mind because, heck, that IS how you're supposed to play an arpeggio, on the piano at least ... the bottom stave first and then the top stave. I'd appreciate hearing if you folks find it unacceptable (as it really does NOT look attractive), but I can only say it sure plays back the way I think arpeggios are to be played. Thanks in advance!

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Yesteryear.jpg 48.27 KB

In reply to by Jojo-Schmitz

Personally I beg to differ, because I've found MuseScore's playback capability and flexibility heads and shoulders above what I've been using for over 10 years--Finale PrintMusic. It is THE reason I switched to MuseScore. So don't sell this fantastic software short. There's a lot more than meets the eye :)

In reply to by nimbears

You wrote:
I'd appreciate hearing if you folks find it unacceptable (as it really does NOT look attractive), but I can only say it sure plays back the way I think arpeggios are to be played.

Your picture generates no sound, so please attach the MuseScore .mscz file and someone here can show you how to get good playback along with proper (attractive) notation.

In reply to by Jm6stringer

Here's my score on the MuseScore site, titled "Yesteryear".
https://musescore.com/user/38102135/scores/7094178

The picture I showed before is the arpeggio from p.2, Bar #9. What I did was to place the chord in the base stave a 32nd note ahead of the chord in the treble stave. Fine-tuning the playback speed of the arpeggios let me achieve a smooth progression from the bottom note (A2) to the top note (E4) on playback.

In reply to by nimbears

It's possible to get the playback correct without resorting to hacking the notation like this. Probably the best is to use the Piano Roll Editor (right-click the measure to access it) to change the time position of the note. Hmm, I feel like a plugin could probably automate that. Another trick is to turn off the playback for both chords, then add the full chord on a single staff (either in another voice, or a separate staff) for the sake of playback and make that invisible.

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