How to correct linked tablature staff without affecting linked standard staff?

• Dec 26, 2022 - 17:51

Musescore tablature issue.png [Would be good to have a Forum section called "How To..."]

In my classical guitar score, I created a linked tablature staff off an existing standard staff. It worked mostly well except that I'm using 3 voices on the single standard staff and it's making the tablature staff show incorrect fingerings. Specifically, there are instances when two voices are using the same note. MuseScore's tablature interpretation thinks that means there should be two separate fingerings (see attached image).

Question
How can I use auto-generation of the tablature but also separately edit the tablature without affecting the linked standard staff? Is there a way to "unlink" after generating the tablature so that you don't lose the bulk of the auto-generated tab, i.e., have to start from scratch?

Attachment Size
Musescore tablature issue.png 120.48 KB

Comments

In reply to by Jojo-Schmitz

It works in the red marks areas only because there isn't another place to play that note. Low "G#" on a standard tuned classical guitar can happen only in one place--4th fret of the low "E" string. In other places where you can play the same note in more than one place, MuseScore tries to add another fingering elsewhere. That's not what I want. I understand what linked staves are all about; in this instance, I want to edit only the incorrect linked passages.

For instance, in the first circled section of my attached image, the low "A" (open 5th string on guitar) is only played by the single open string. There is no "other string" I want to play it on--it's a single note but is used by two voices in the score. The composer has an implied second voice ("implied polyphony") that I wanted to capture in the score. I'm thinking MuseScore doesn't allow that right now.

It might be helpful to see this additional attached image of the original score where you can see it's only one note being played but used by more than one voice.

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Musescore tablature issue 2.png 166.21 KB

In reply to by Jojo-Schmitz

Thanks, JoJo,
I think we're unfortunately misunderstanding each other. I don't want to change how the notes are played just to get MuseScore to work; I'd like it the other way round. Maybe in a future release they can add this ability so I'll add this to the requested features list for MuseScore.

In reply to by SteveBlower

No, it wasn't the standard staff I wanted to correct -- it was exactly the tablature staff as I explained above. The help file you linked to answered my question here :
"Remove duplicate fret marks
In certain cases, a shared notehead, when pasted to a tablature staff, may result in two separate fret marks on adjacent strings. To correct this, make any extraneous tablature notes invisible by selecting them and using the keyboard shortcut V (or by unchecking the "visible" option in the Inspector)."
(Emphasis mine)

"two separate fret marks on adjacent strings" was exactly the issue I was trying to solve.

In reply to by SteveBlower

The article you pointed to had the section that I copied verbatim in my last reply. I'll try to clarify for the sake of anyone that runs into a similar problem.

The problem is that when you have a standard staff and a linked TAB staff, notes are "echoed" from one to the other--that is the link. In cases where you have more than one voice on the standard staff and the voices happen to have the same note at the same time (unison), the TAB staff interprets that as TWO FINGERINGS, when in reality, they are the same note, just conceptually different as different voices. In actual practice they are just the same note.
The linked TAB staff does not let you delete that "extraneous" fret marker (as the article you linked to calls it). You have to "hide" it as per the article:

Remove duplicate fret marks

["duplicate fret marks" is precisely the problem; MS adds an extra fret mark]

"In certain cases, a shared notehead, when pasted to a tablature staff, may result in two separate fret marks on adjacent strings. To correct this, make any extraneous tablature notes invisible by selecting them and using the keyboard shortcut V (or by unchecking the "visible" option in the Inspector)."

[again, "two separate fret marks" on adjacent strings is exactly the problem I was experiencing]

I included the two images from the linked article. I was getting the first result but I wanted the second: combined noteheads in standard staff with only one fret mark in the TAB.

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shared_notes_2_0.png 7.16 KB
shared_notes_3_0.png 6.73 KB

In reply to by SteveBlower

Ah, OK, I see. That's because when you try to "correct" the TAB's extra fret marking, it alters the linked standard staff in an incorrect way because of the link. The only way around it is the way the article says--to hide the extra fret marking. When you print or publish it doesn't show up and it properly shows the linked standard staff.

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