how to set up sung response and separate verse

• Jan 30, 2017 - 21:38

In the Lectionary Psalms and Gospel Acclamation's we use at church there is a sung response by all and then a separate verse for the cantor which is a separate system from the sung response. Is it possible to create this arrangement in musescore?


Comments

In reply to by Don9of11

I believe the most efficient way to do this is to put all 5 stave in a score. In the Style|General... menu check "Hide staves" and uncheck "Don't hide staves in first system." You will then want to enter your own line breaks to force correct formatting. If a line carries over to the next you can try to "shrink" it with the { key. (MS calls this remove stretch).

In reply to by Don9of11

Well, same thing, actually, you just need 4 or 5 instruments.
Cantor, Piano or Organ, Soprano+Alto, Tenor+Bass

Probably best to start with one of the closed score SATB + Piano/organ template and a the cantor, or just use the SA or TB staff for that, enter all the notrs, place system breaks properly, hide empty staves

In reply to by Jojo-Schmitz

Okay, thank you. I had achieved similar results on my own but I can see from your example were I can make improvements. How did you do your triplet in the second measure. I read through the documentation on how to do a triplet and my results are different.

In reply to by Jojo-Schmitz

Okay, thank you. I had achieved similar results on my own but I can see from your example were I can make improvements. How did you do your triplet in the second measure. I read through the documentation on how to do a triplet and my results are different.

Attachment Size
Gospel_Acclamation.mscz 12.42 KB

Guess it's time for me to chime in here.

A good start is to load up the Liturgical Unmetrical with Organ template which was designed for this very purpose.

Incidentally I recognise the Alleluia - from one of Kevin Mayhew's editions by the look of it :)

I would be wary of removing stems. The original plainchant neumes have specific groupings which indicate the underlying rhythm of the chant which is lost be simply using stemles notes.

The other thing is - work in 8th note time signatures - you don't have to worry about triplets, but can simply use beaming to indicate the note groupings - for chant I usually use 30/8 which gives a decent length before you run out of notes in the bar.

Then start laying out the chant in 8th notes. When you get to a bar in the original use the split measure tool on the Edit>Measure menu to force the end of the bar, and delete the bar with the rest(s) that appears. Then continue.

If you run out of space in a bar then go into the next and use the Join Bars tool to join them together.

Most important is to remember that single notes in chant are always eighth notes unless they have a dot in the neumes in which case they are a quarter note.

Here is an example of an Alleluia I have written based on Psalm Tone V - I hope it helps you to see how this is tackled.......

https://musescore.com/churchorganist/scores/112703

If not, feel free to explore my scores which contain a lot of transcribed and arranged chant.

HTH

In reply to by ChurchOrganist

Thank you for your input ChurchOrganist and everyone else who has been helping. I think I have this figured out. In my second effort (see attached) I believe my verse could fit on one line but it's wrapping and I think its because the text on the breve's is in the middle and not at the beginning. I thought when you added text to a note it always started at the beginning of the note.

Attachment Size
Gospel_Acclamation_2.mscz 13.18 KB

In reply to by Don9of11

If by "text" you mean lyrics, no, the standard is for them to be centered if it is a single syllable word. And that is essentially what you have created here. If you want all lyrics left-aligned, right click a lyric, Text Style, and change the alignment. Or, if you want it just for the chant phrases that are currently centering, use Text Properties instead of Text Style to apply the changes to just the selected lyric. I tried it for the chants in the second and third systems, but that didn't save enough space to make them fit on a single line. I then selected both measures and reduced stretch one notch (see Layout menu, or use shortcut "{") and now they fit.

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