Two hands on one staff in long piece
I am working on a harpsichord suite by Christophe Moyreau. Mostly it uses the grand staff, as is normal in keyboard music. However, one section uses only one staff, indicating notes for the right hand with upward-pointing stems and those for the left with downward-pointing ones; see the attachment for a sample. (Note the absence of a bracket at the left of the sample; this is not a grand staff, but two separate systems.)
I set up the piece by specifying harpsichord as the instrument, with treble and bass clefs. Is it possible (perhaps by inserting a section break) to change the instrument to use only one staff for just this portion of the piece and reproduce the original layout?
Perhaps I should ask if this layout is even permitted under modern engraving conventions. The section is long (~100 measures). Using a grand staff would result in all measures being empty in one hand or the other, which I think would look strange.
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Comments
You can make use of the "hide empty staves" option, which will hide an empty stave from a system. Best to only turn that option on after having entered your notes, or you'll have no place left to enter them ;-)
In reply to You can make use of the … by jeetee
This works as long as you make all rests in the empty staff invisible (easy to do).
In reply to This works as long as you… by redux02
You don't have to mark full measure rests invisible for "hide empty staves" to work.
See also: https://musescore.org/en/handbook/cross-staff-notation
In reply to See: https://musescore.org… by Shoichi
I don't think this will allow the hiding of the 2nd staff as "empty", will it? As cross-staff notated notes still actually "belong" to their original staff? (haven't tested this out)
In reply to I don't think this will… by jeetee
You are correct; staff is not seen as empty.
In reply to See: https://musescore.org… by Shoichi
See the screen shot. I entered all the notes in the upper staff and then moved those for left hand down using the cross-staff feature. a) Are you suggesting that this would look more familiar/acceptable to modern players than the original? b) The third beat looks better than the first two because I manually moved some stems to the left and fixed the stem heights. That will be a lot of work if I do the whole piece this way.
Too late...
See the third screen shot. This reproduces the original and was easy to do with the hide empty staves option. I spaced the notes a little further apart than in the original, and I think it's as legible (if not more so) as my attempt using cross-staff notation. It might be unfamiliar at first to people nowadays but with just a little practice I think they will have no trouble.
In reply to See the third screen shot. … by redux02
Two items: I discovered Format / Style / Score / Hide empty staves within system as well as the option to right-click on an empty area of a staff and choose Staff/Part properties. If I understand correctly, the first option applies to the entire score while the second lets you control specific staves. In my case, I have only one instrument in the piece (harpsichord), so either would probably work. Is that right?
Problem: is it not possible to turn this option off once you've set it, using 3.6? I entered part of the piece that needs only one staff, then skipped ahead to the point where I need to go back to using both staves because I wanted to see how that would work. I made sure that both options mentioned above were set to display empty staves, but I still don't see them even after restarting MuseScore. In the attached file, the third page, m. 17, is where I need notes in both hands to begin again (so the grand staff should appear starting on this page, even though the first two measures will have nothing in the bottom staff). Does the fact that I put in section breaks perhaps cause problems?
Also, jeetee commented in response to my original post: "Best to only turn that option on after having entered your notes, or you'll have no place left to enter them ;-)." I thought he was referring to starting a new score, since all measures are empty to begin with, but maybe he meant that you need to enter the whole piece first?
In reply to Two items: I discovered… by redux02
'Hide empty staves" in Format / Style / Score affects all (empty) staves, or at least all that are at the default "Auto" setting for "Hide when empty" in Staff/Part Properties. Settings "Hide when empty" to Always or Never does what it says for that particular staff regardless of the style setting. So yes, for a single instrument, no real difference.
But sure you can turn it off. In your example, you have the top staff set to auto, but the bottom set to always. You'll need to set that back to auto also.
And yes, the point is, you need to enter all notes before turning this option, or staves start disappearing before you have a chance to enter notes onto them. It's not impossible to enter notes onto hidden staves - keyboard shortcuts will still navigate to them - but not worth the effort compared to simply being patient with the hiding.
In reply to 'Hide empty staves" in… by Marc Sabatella
Got it, thank you!! And, BTW, I did consult the handbook before posting the above. Might be good to add this info (unless I missed it somehow).
In reply to Got it, thank you!! And,… by redux02
If you have ideas for improvements, feel free to go in and make them - it's all open source!