Export Symphonic file with each voice per MIDI file

• Feb 21, 2022 - 13:48

I've spent several days notating a 143 measure symphony into Musescore. I mention this because after a quick search the answers (albeit old) seem to suggest that I 'just' recreate the score!!

Here is an excerpt from an answer I found:

David Bolton • Nov 21, 2009 - 19:20
Basically you need each voice on its own instrument staff.

The following steps require selection features that are not available in 0.9.5 or earlier.

Create a new score with one staff for each voice
Copy the treble staff from your old score and paste onto the soprano staff of the old score
Right click on one of the voice 2 notes and choose Select > More...
Mark the checkboxes for staff and voice and press OK
Press Del to remove the voice 2 notes
Copy the treble staff from your old score and paste onto the alto staff of the new score
Select all the measures of the alto staff
Edit > Voices > Exchange 1-2
Right click on one of the voice 2 notes and choose Select > More...
Mark the checkboxes for staff and voice and press OK
Press Del to remove the voice 2 notes
Continue as above for the tenor and bass parts. Then save as MIDI.

I used the standard Symphony Template, it has a few multi parts, eg French Horns 1&2 and 3&4 sharing two staves. I have used Voice 1 and Voice 2 to separate the instruments.

See attached image.

This all seems to work fine however when I export to MIDI, I end up with both voices merged on only 2 MIDI tracks, not 4.

What is the setting to split the Voices into separate MIDI tracks?

Thanks

Attachment Size
Screenshot 2022-02-21 134403.png 51.78 KB

Comments

Luckily we're no longer 2009...

But in essence the end goal of that answer is true; MuseScore associates MIDI channels with instruments, so if you wish to use a different channel for a different instrument, you'll indeed need to add that instrument as a separate MuseScore Instrument.

The steps to do so however are far from rewriting your entire score:

  1. Edit > Instruments and add the extra instruments
  2. Select one combined instrument (Click first note/rest, Shift+End)
  3. In the Selection Filter (F6), uncheck voice 1
  4. Cut
  5. Recheck voice 1 in the selection filter
  6. Paste on new instrument
  7. Tools > Voices > Exchange Voice 1-2
    Optional: Reselect voice 2 to remove the rests now remaining in the target staff.

In reply to by jeetee

Thanks jeetee - I had a look at the Parts menu... really doesn't make much intuitive sense.

Since I used the out of the box Orchestral template I would have expected that Horns 1&2 etc would be pre-'Parted'.. there's 26 instruments with 50+ staves and 60+ Voices..

I guess this is the pitfall of using free software!

In reply to by osbornej76

It's the pitfall of having multiple real instruments notated within one MuseScore instrument indeed.
Some of those types of instruments have been already accommodated with multiple channels (such as the "Men" and "Women" instruments).
I'm not sure how much of this instrument/staff model will change in MS4; but perhaps it could be worth to update multi-instrument templates with multiple channels as well, so that a simple staff text can be used to assigned voices to channels.

In reply to by osbornej76

You wrote:
I had a look at the Parts menu... really doesn't make much intuitive sense.

Intuitive to whom?
That's precisely why handbooks exist!
See:
https://musescore.org/en/handbook/3/parts#Customize_parts
and especially:
https://musescore.org/en/handbook/3/parts#Select_voices_for_an_instrume…

So...
One can select an individual voice, even an individual staff of a multi-staff instrument (like organ or piano) to comprise a "part" file.
Also, if desired, more than a single instrument can be included in a "part" -- e.g., a "part" strictly with the brass instruments.
Once all the individual 'Parts' files are customized to one's liking, export of each one to MIDI is trivial.

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