Stem direction in choral work

• Oct 1, 2020 - 17:20

I am completely new (as of yesterday) to MuseScore. I initially wrote a melody line on a treble clef and decided later to add alto harmony and lyrics. Since I intend the work to be 4 part SATB harmony I copied the two part melody from my treble clef to a new closed SATB score (example attached). I'm trying to figure out how to get the stems for the alto notes to point downwards, as currently both the Soprano and Alto stems point up. Is there any way to do this?

(my apologies for the newb question - I've perused the forum and done a few searches but couldn't find anything)

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Screen Shot 2020-10-01 at 10.45.30 AM.png 9.59 KB

Comments

• Oct 1, 2020 - 18:19

It's difficult to tell with a picture, but it looks like you entered all of the notes as chords. If this is the case you need the soprano to be in voice 1 and alto in voice 2 and the stems will automatically be pointed in the correct directions. Since I don't know how far along in the song you are, I'm not sure what the best method of doing this is, restarting or using my little trick.

My little trick, add an empty staff below the one you are showing. Select the entire staff and use tools Explode. Select both staves the use tools Implode and the lower notes will be stem down. You can then delete the staff you added.

You may need to read about voices (not singing voices) at https://musescore.org/en/handbook/voices

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