8va only for first voice

• Jan 26, 2017 - 11:54

Hello,

Is there a possibility to use the 8va (one octave higher) command only for one voice of the bar? So the first voice should be played one octave higher, but the second voice as it is notated.
Thanks in advance.


Comments

No. For hairpins this had been requested, see #58031: Dynamics/hairpin range for Voice, but those to have settings for staff/part/system already, so voice would just be an additional option, whereas for ottavas it'd need to be a whole new separate Feature.
Another similar issue is #15513: Pedal markings under grand staff can only be attached to notes in staff attached to/#118676: Pedal Markings Should Go at Bottom of Grand Staff

Maybe we should add that (voice/)staff/part/system feature to all spanners, just with different defaults (part for pedal, staff for dynamic and ottava, system for voltas, voice for slurs, maybe disable it for spanners where it doesn't make sense, like slurs and voltas)

You could fake it though, for playback: add additional notes in the other octave amd make them invisible, while making the visible ones silent, adjust stem/beam.
ottava-voice.png

Attachment Size
ottava-voice.mscz 5.07 KB

The 8va being applied to a single voice is unheard of in written music and difficult to notate on an actual music score, though I now how I would do it if I felt there was no other way. I would implement the workaround the way Jojo described. So to have the option of applying an 8va to a voice is not a very good use of programmers time, unless it is part of changing the behavior of all lines such as (de)crescendos which are obviously applied to a single voice at times in written music.

I do like Jojo's idea of setting the default notes the individual spanners are applied to. I do think that the default of applying it to a part would be better for dynamics since in 2 staff music (like piano) it is more common to have the dynamics apply to the entire instrument rather than one staff. With the changes in selecting items in 2.1 (even 2.0.3), making these apply to a single staff is much simplified over previous versions.

The only problem with (de)crescendos is that they are all in voice 1, this situation would need to be addressed (an may already be in 3.0) before it is possible to apply it to a single voice. A way to make it easier for MS to place these lines into a specific voice is to implement their entering in the same manner as slurs. With slurs, you can click the first note then ctrl-click the last note, enter the slur (press S or double click slur) and it will be drawn between those 2 notes and be entered in the voice of those 2 notes if they are the same. This is not possible with most other items in the "Lines" palette. Trills are an example of lines that need to be able to be applied to a singe voice, but cannot be.

In reply to by mike320

A way to make it easier for MS to place these lines into a specific voice is to implement their entering in the same manner as slurs. With slurs, you can click the first note then ctrl-click the last note
I believe this is also possible for hairpins. Using > <

In reply to by [DELETED] 5

You are correct, you can force them into the selected voice, but a hairpin affects both voices. If you put a crescendo in 1 voice and a decrescendo in the other you get no effect on playback. This is of course because they are limited to being applied to part, staff or system, not voice. The same is true of dynamics. This may be a far easier task in 3.0 since there is so much groundwork laid for the new voices, but it would be a very nice feature to have them applied to voices starting in 2.1.

In reply to by mike320

I've transcribed a number of piano pieces in recent months where the octava clearly only applies to a single voice .. usually in cases where the range is extreme just for a bar or two and the engraver/composer has not wanted to create extra staves.

Over the years I've encountered other pieces where there is one voice written above the stave, and 8va applies only to the voice in the lower reaches of the stave or below.

The piece I'm working on now has an interesting markup for to explicitly indicate this: musescore octavo.jpg

In reply to by Jojo-Schmitz

That's sometimes the case, but more often than not, both staves have multiple voices, so pushing notes up just muddies the page. It's also frequently the case that the central area of the keyboard has repeated figurations that you don't want to push around for the sake of accommodating varying 8va figures.

In reply to by memeweaver

That's a case where you have to decide if you want it to look right or play right. Ottavas on only some notes of a staff are not common. It would be nice to have them supported in MuseScore but I can see a lot of things that are more important to improve before getting to an unusual case like this..

In reply to by mike320

in lute music transcriebed for guitar it was quite commeon to write the low notes out of the range of a normal guitar with 8va bassa, so 1. on a guitar with extra strings or a lute you can play them original 2. it is easy to read 3. if you play standard guitar you have the information that those notes were intended to be played lower (for example in the edition of bachs works from bruger etc)

In reply to by wolfgan

I'm not saying this shouldn't be put on the todo list for some day down the road. With all of the work being done on version 4 and improvements still needed from version 3 it shouldn't be set at the top of the list. BTW, I have recently seen scores where this is notated and it would have been nice to not need workarounds for the notation.

“Frankly, ladies and gentlemen, I would, at this point, try to err on the side of not confusing-the-heck out of the [all too human!] performer!”   Why not just pull that voice to a separate stave, clearly marked as such, and upon that stave very clearly(!) show exactly what notes you want that performer to produce?

If what you have in mind is “a music-scoring edge case,” then go ahead and present it as such ... “to remove all doubt(!) in the mind of your intrepid performer(s).”   (Say what you mean ... mean what you say ...)

JM2CW™ ...

In reply to by xavierjazz

When there are 2 non-crossing lines of music with the volume for one above the line with all the stems pointing up and all the others below and pointing down it is extremely obvious which voice is which. I'm not the one writing the music like this, I'm transcribing it. There are already enough lines of music in many of these scores, I don't need to add any more. When I write original music I usually write each part on its own line, though it is very normal to write 2 horn parts on a line in every type of music, and there's no rule that says they have to play the same dynamics.

In reply to by Jojo-Schmitz

Context is everything. If the other voices can be comfortably adjusted by an octave on the stave without requiring an 8va marking then you can assume that they are not meant to be affected.

It's often only a small number of notes moving around outside the normal tessitura of the melody that are being called out.

In reply to by AndreasKågedal

Which makes a score very messy when only part of a measure in a single line requires an extra stave. Musescore brings along too much baggage in such cases, as you now have to manage the display for an extra stave for the entire score.

If it can be accomplished clearly on a printed page, then it should be realisable in a digital score.

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