Writing Artificial Harmonics Properly

• May 17, 2020 - 06:16

I am trying to transpose the violin part of a violin and piano rendition of Czardas Monti to the cello and improve upon the notation of the piece. One of the improvements I am trying to make is adding artificial harmonics to a selection of notes that was previously notated with a clef change. I tried following the advice of a few different support forums, namely this one: https://musescore.org/en/node/276694, but I found that they didn't quite work. Following a user on the forum's advice, I added the artificial harmonics as chords, changed their noteheads to diamonds, and put them on voice channel 3.

Now, before I get to the issue, I would like to note that the stem directions of the notes in this sequence are supposed to look like this: Proper Artificial Harmonic Sequence.PNG
but my attempt looks like this: My Attempt at Artificial Harmonics.PNG .
All of my stems are up, and the voice channels' notes' beams are intermingled. I wish to make these beams disappear and the stem directions follow the original notes' direction.

Using the selection filter and inspector, I tried to do this by making the elements of voice channel three invisible. That fixed the stem direction problem somewhat but left the beams in place, and I could not figure out how to delete the beams. I also tried the stemless option to no avail. After about an hour of fiddling with these tools, I couldn't figure it out.
Could someone help me with this? Note: I am a beginner using Musescore.


Comments

Hi,
In the attached example two different ways of notating artificial harmonics. The first one (divided in 3 steps) is to achieve the original notation of the passage, as found in the Ricordi edition here[1].
The final example ('How I would notate it') looks like what you want to achieve, am I right? Here you simply write both notes in the same voice and then change the noteheads of the higher notes.

Btw, the diamond noteheads (I'm using Bravura font but a similar problem is with Emmentaler) look to me slightly too small, but haven't found a solution to it.

[1] https://imslp.org/wiki/Cs%C3%A1rd%C3%A1s_(Monti%2C_Vittorio)

In reply to by graphos

The way I attempted to notate my artificial harmonics was similar to your method, only differing in the fact that I switched the artificial harmonics to voice channel 3 after adding them to the normal notes in in voice channel 1. I tested your way, and the result is still the same: the artificial harmonics' and normal notes' beams don't overlap; they separate into a confusing mess. And, the stems are all pointed up.
Highlighted My Attempt at Artificial Harmonics 2.0_LI.jpg

In reply to by destructavin

Hi, if I understand you correctly you don't need to notate the passage in separate voices. Simply write the chords in voice 1 (the default voice), then select the upper notes and change their noteheads. This is what I did in my last example. If you upload your file here I can have a look.

In reply to by destructavin

Hi, as I suspected the problem is that you have used different voices while you should write the harmonics using only one voice*. In Musescore one voice can have any number of notes at the same time. That means you should write in the same voice both notes at a distance of a fourth, and then change the notehead of the higher note. I rewrote bar 70, see attached file.

*it depends which kind of notation of the harmonics you want. You can write them as separate voices or as a dyad, the latter more common nowadays. See the example I posted previously in this thread.

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