How do I merge 2 instruments into 1 and display them on 2 clefs, like regular sheet music?
I am trying to make sheet music out of a MIDI file. This file has two instruments, one for each hand, to be played in software like Synthesia. When opening in Musescore, each instrument gets its own single clef.
I would like this music to look like sheet music usually does - a bass and treble clef, with right hand occupying the treble and left hand the bass.
How could I achieve that, if possible, in Musescore?
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Comments
It's easier to help if you post the actual file rather than a picture of it. As it is, it looks like you simply need to connect the barlines and change the clef, no? Click and drag a barline to extend them all, use the palette to change the clef. Although it looks to me like many of the bottom staff's notes are way too high to be comfortably written in bass clef - I think MuseScore made the right call here in putting it in treble.
Depending on the results desired, you might instead find it useful to add a new piano instrument simply copy/paste the current music to them. Depends on how much independent control over the staves you want to retain.
In reply to It's easier to help if you… by Marc Sabatella
Thank you for your reply. I was able to achieve most of what I wanted, now that you've given me the keywords to search the manual. Still, I don't understand how to copy/paste music to a new instrument.
Let's start with a more simple example.
Here, I have two instruments, one for left, one for right hand. I managed to get the clefs to display properly, but I want the left hand notes to go into the treble clef, when appropriate, not stay on their bass clef.
As I understand, that won't happen unless I merge instruments, pasting one instrument's music into the other. But when I try to cut-paste notes from one instrument to another, it pushes that instrument's notes forward, so they're consequent, not combined in time.
I have attached the music file. And a mockup image of what I want to achieve.
In reply to Thank you for your reply. I… by x79217842666
A possible way to get a closer-to-what-you-want starting point is to implode the staves, then use "Split staff" command on the top staff (in the right-click context menu for that staff).
In reply to A possible way to get a… by jeetee
Thank you! I've tried imploding, but it doesn't fully work.
The notes on the bottom staff (Hch.) are split into two voices. The long notes at the beginning of a bar and short notes are on two different voices. I tried following the manual, but musescore won't let me move them all to one voice.
As you can see in the first attached file, those green notes are in voice 2. Nothing can be done to make them become voice 1, I tried.
When I Implode, they are left un-imploded, as shown in the second attached file. And when second instrument is removed, they're lost.
I do not understand how to make them also get moved to the first instrument, when I use the implode function.
In reply to Thank you for your reply. I… by x79217842666
To copy and paste the contents of one staff to another, simply select the contents of the source (eg, click the first measure, then Ctrl+Shift+End to select to the end), then Ctrl+C to copy, then select the first measure of the destination, Ctrl+V to paste.
In reply to Thank you for your reply. I… by x79217842666
To achieve cross-staff notation as you are showing here, you do indeed need to have a single instrument of two staves, not two separate instruments of one staff each. It wasn't clear from your original post that you were interested in that. So yes, definitely add a new piano and copy the contents in, then you can use the cross-notation notation feature as described in the Handbook eg, Ctrl+Shift+Up/Down).
Normally when you import a MIDI file that contains piano music, MuseScore does a good job of figuring out which tracks should be combined and which should not. But every MIDi file is different in terms of how it uses tracks, channels, and program changes, so sometimes you do need to fix this manually. If you attach the MIDI file itself, we can take a look and possibly advise better.
In reply to To achieve cross-staff… by Marc Sabatella
Thank you, now it works. I created a new instrument and copied two instruments into one without any issues.
Could you explain, why couldn't I copy one notes to the other instrument, but could copy both instruments into a new instrument?
In reply to Thank you, now it works… by x79217842666
I don’t know what you mean by “copy one notes to the other instrument”, but if you describe more precisely - step by step - what you tried to do, what you expected to happen, and what happened instead, we can understand and assist better.
In reply to I don’t know what you mean… by Marc Sabatella
I selected all notes from the instrument #2 (bottom one) by clicking first note, CTRL+SHIFT+END, CTRL+C, and pasted them to instrument #1, by selecting first bar, and CTRL+V. Only notes of the voice#1 were inserted. I expected all notes from instrument #2 to be pasted to instrument #1.
It seemed like only Voice #1 of instrument #2 was pasted. And it seemed like there is no way to make all notes a single voice. I tried selecting all notes and changing voice (clicking voice number, or CTRL+SHIFT+1-4) but it didn't work.
In reply to I selected all notes from… by x79217842666
My guess is you had previously turned off voice 2 in View / Selection Filter. Because certainly when I follow your steps with the score you attached, it works as expected - as it has the thousands of other times I've done this :-). Of course, copy/paste replaces the contents of the destination; it's not a merge facility (for that see Tools / Implode). So if it wasn't the filter, maybe somehow you were fooled into thinking it was the bottom staff voice 2 notes that were lost, rather than top staff notes?
The main reason multiple voices are thing is to show rhythms that can't be represented in a single voice. That is, standard music notation has no other way to specify that you want a quarter note and an eighth note at the same time. That requires multiple voices. Implode will merge what it can, as will changing voice via the toolbar buttons / shortcuts - so it work if the rhythms match. But in cases where standard music notation doesn't allow for it, there's nothing MuseScore can do about that. In your example there simply no way to represent any of those measures using a single voice - they all have a long note that needs to continue sounding while other notes move. That's the very definition of multiple voices.
In reply to My guess is you had… by Marc Sabatella
Here's an explanation in a video https://files.fm/u/wxq9w3x82#/
From what I understand now, copy/paste is supposed to replace notes, but when copying from 2 instruments into 1 instrument, it will merge all copied notes and then replace. So I should have selected and copied notes from both instruments, and then pasting them into single instrument would result in them being merged into this instrument?
As for Implosion, I do understand different voices for simultaneously sounding notes, but I don't understand why it leaves the notes behind then? Why not implode notes from all voices, but only from one voice, as shown in the video?
And also why, if, as you say, you need 2 voices for notes with overlapping durations, it allows for notations such as I have shown in the screenshot, where one note cotinues to sound while a new note is pressed, but both are in the same voice? What would prevent this notation to be used in the example I show in the video? In terms of the MIDI file, I know for sure it's an identical situation (in the same instrument, one note is held for a long time, while another note is held only until the next note is played). But it's converted to note sheets differently, why?
In reply to Here's an explanation in a… by x79217842666
It's usually better to attach a score rather than video. In your score, the 'Hch.' staff has 3 voices total and the 'Hrp.' staff has 2 voices total (from what I could see in the video).
My attachment below shows only the first 4 measures. (I didn't want to copy the whole score from the video).
At around 50 seconds into your video, you started messing with changing voices in the first measure of the 'Hch. staff' which resulted in creating a 3rd voice in that measure. Here's a screenshot from the video:
![HCH_3voices.png]( "HCH_3voices.png")
![HCH_missing_notes.png]( "HCH_missing_notes.png")
Then you did an implode and found some missing notes:
So, without messing around and changing voices beforehand, open this file, select everything then use the Implode tool: Opening_measures.mscz
All the notes get imploded.
In reply to It's usually better to… by Jm6stringer
Thank you for trying to help me. I have attached the score. Opening the file, selecting all, and imploding, makes the notes I talk about in the video not get imploded, hence I made the video to demonstrate, because everywhere I read, including your post, it says they should, but they do not.
In reply to I have attached the score… by x79217842666
Selecting all then imploding probably isn't what you want. Implode either combines voices, or it it combines staves - the real world situations for which the facility was designed don't ever include cases where there would be both at once. And I can see that your score is an example of such a case either. If this is designed to be placed on piano, you want to keep two staves, you just want to combine the voices within each. So you'd implode each staff separately. The usual reason for imploding separate staves is to take a four-staff choral score - SATB on separate staves - and turn it into a two-staff score, with SA imploded onto on staff, TB on the other.
In reply to Here's an explanation in a… by x79217842666
You wrote:
I know for sure it's an identical situation (in the same instrument, one note is held for a long time, while another note is held only until the next note is played). But it's converted to note sheets differently, why?
MIDI doesn't care how a score "looks".
Your image:
2021-11-04 17_53_52-MuseScore 3_ Heroes_II_Grasslands.png would "look" weird to a human player:
Consider this:
![Clarity.png]( "Clarity.png")
Both phrases "sound" the same, but "look" different. (Play the attachment.)
In reply to You wrote: I know for sure… by Jm6stringer
So what you mean, is that with same voice, I have to add notes for quarters after halves, I cannot have a full note and then a quarter note in the same bar, but with different voices, I can combine full and quarter notes in the same bar, and it's an appropriate notation?
In reply to So what you mean, is that… by x79217842666
You wrote...
I cannot have a full note and then a quarter note in the same bar...
With a time signature of, say, 5/4, you can have a full (whole) note and then a quarter note in the same bar (and in the same voice). But they get played sequentially -- which means the whole note stops after 4 beats and only then the quarter note is played for a single beat. So five beats total for the bar (4 + 1 = 5). Both notes in the same voice.
With a time signature of 4/4, you can have a full (whole) note and then a quarter note in the same bar, but 4 total beats in the bar does not allow for sequential note play. Because while the whole note is sounding, the quarter note must be notated to play somewhere within the 4 beats of the bar. A second voice is needed to precisely show where within the 4/4 bar that quarter note gets played. So, for example, if the quarter starts on beat 3, it is notated in a second voice, played on beat 3 with rests filling the silent beats of that voice (beats 1, 2, and 4 are silent in this case).
,
...with different voices, I can combine full and quarter notes in the same bar, and it's an appropriate notation?
Yes, but only when you need notes of different durations within a single staff, played simultaneously.
In contrast, for sequential playback - first one note plays and ends, then the next note plays and ends, etc. a single voice is used.
Also, notes of the same durations played simultaneously are normally attached to the same stem, same voice (as chords).
P.S. If you rely on MIDI conversions...
MIDI is a set of instructions to a machine (a music synthesizer) basically specifying on/off times for a sequence of musical notes. Concepts like "half note", "measure" or "bar", "volta", "voices", etc. are more important for human understanding of musical notation. That's why conversion from MIDI into standard notation is tricky. I have seen virtually unusable, poorly quantized conversions with ties all over the place and crazy note durations specifying a level of timing precision incomprehensible to a human. (Playback of such scores by MuseScore's synthesizer was flawless, however.)
In reply to You wrote... You wrote... I… by Jm6stringer
Thank you for your reply. I understand better now. And I know that MIDI can specify any length of a note, and when making music like this (OST for a computer game), they might not care that a note duration is like 571ms, while another note is 250 ms and another is 400ms, while it's a complete mess to accurately transcribe that to a music sheet.
In reply to Here's an explanation in a… by x79217842666
Copy and paste all replaces notes. Voice 1 of the source replaces voice 1 of the destination, voice 2 of the source replaces voice two of the destination. The only apparent merge that happens is if the source only has voice 1, but the destination has voices 1 & 2. But it’s still no different - voice 1 of the source still replaces voice 1 of the destination. Voice 2 in the destination is left alone since the source didn’t have anything to replace it with. Just kind of common sense, no special complicated rules to remember.
Implode leaves the original notes alone because some people at some time mentioned reasons they wanted that, and it was harmless since you can always delete them yourself.
I don’t understand “Why not implode notes from all voices, but only from one voice, as shown in the video?”. Video or not, I just don’t understand the sentence. Implode combines things - either multiple voices within a single staves, or multiple staves each assumed to contain a single voice. You can do either operation in either order depending on the results you want.
As mentioned, videos are seldom as useful as a simple list of steps we can follow for ourselves using a score you attach.
In reply to Copy and paste all replaces… by Marc Sabatella
I have attached a score. Implode combines things, but for some reason not all things, and that's why I have recorded a video. But I have also attached a score.
Thank you for still trying to help me. I understand I might not make the best sense with my wording, because I'm new to sheet music, music in general, and musescore. I still am trying my best to explain things.
So here is the attached file again.
Now, I want to add ALL notes in the Hch. instrument into the Hrp. instrument, so I could then delete Hch. instrument and be left with 1 instrument having notes from both instruments.
Or, stated differently, I want to move all notes from both instruments into the Hrp. instrument.
I do Ctrl+A, and then Tools->Implode, and I expect all notes to be moved. But the half notes at the beginning of the bars in the Hch. instrument are NOT moved to the Hrp. instrument.
I do Ctrl+A, and then Tools->Implode agian, and nothing happens.
I manually select all notes in the Hrp. instrument via Shift+Ctrl+End, and some of the half notes in the Hch. instrument, and do Tools->Implode, and nothing happens.
Why? And how do I get those half notes to move from Hrp. to the Hch. instrument?
In reply to I have attached a score… by x79217842666
You current score has only two staves, so no implode should be needed just to copy this to a single instrument. It should be as simple as Ctrl+A to select all, Ctrl+C to copy, add the new staff, select the first measure of its top staff, then Ctrl+V to paste. if you additionally want to mess with imploding to merge voices within a staff, you can certainly do so.
Realsitically, though, I think you have unreasonable expectations here. It's extremely unlikely ou'll be able to get readable notation out of this by importing the MIDI file and then editing. it's almost certainly going to be far simpler to take a step back, think about what is actually being played, work out the rhythms for yourself, and then enter the notes normally, without the extra complication of first importing something and then trying to correct all the things that result that are accurate but unreadable. That would require really advanced experience both with music notation and with MuseScore in particular. Unless you're already an expert in both matter,s it's going to be far easier to just enter the notes yourself in a readable way.
In reply to Here's an explanation in a… by x79217842666
Your screenshot does show a way of “hacking” standard notation to allow some limited types of overlap using only a single voice. It’s possible indeed but completely unreadable. Not recommended at all unless you’re absolutely desperate (eg, trying to write five independent voices in a single measure when MuseScore supports only 4 - which is likely to be unplayable). But in general, in the vast majority of cases, multiple voices are the far simpler way to notate this - simpler to enter, simpler to edit and work with, simpler to read.
In reply to Your screenshot does show a… by Marc Sabatella
Yes I understand now, it's a legal notation but a bad practice because it is hard to read. This was what musescore extracted from a MIDI file, but from my understanding, I must then manually edit it to be more human-readable. Or can I just tell Musescore to not use this notation but rather use multiple voices?