Horizontal offset of note heads?

• Apr 17, 2015 - 04:36

How do you create the offset note heads that appears in "Reunion"?

For example, In measure 13, on the third beat, in the top staff, there are several dotted quarter notes in voice 1. Sounding simultaneous to them but appearing shifted slightly to the right is a quarter note in voice 2.

How is that placement created?


Comments

In 1.3 (actually, I think I originally created this for 1.2), I had to do a lot of manual adjusting of notes. But with the greatly improved layout algorithms in 2.0, that's almost never necessary any more. In particular, you don't have to do anything at all to get what you see in measure 13 - it happens automatically by default. Just enter the notes, MuseScore takes care of the layout in most cases.

The only place where I would have still needed a manual adjustment using MuseScore 2.0 is measure 7, where the half note on beat 2 in voice 4 should be offset relative to the quarter in voice 2 (voice 1 has a dottred half one beat 1). To offset a note, simply click it then use the "Horizontal offset" control under the "Chord" section of the Inspector. But I think that's literally the only place. In general, pretty much all two-voice cases should work automatically; only a few three or four voice cases might not.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

Why not upgrade?

Because v1.3 still has the appropriate performance of gracenotes... before the beat... and I have a lot of scores that use grace notes.

I inquired about the change in v2 and got a very long pedantic lecture asserting that the real problem was that I didn't understand the term "acciaccatura" (even though I was using in the way the v1.3 uses it).

Further, the sense of the discussion was that because one distant historical period performed grace notes on the beat MuseScore would now perform ALL grace note on the beat, even though the majority of all music today expect grace notes to be performed before the beat and NO option to do otherwise was being considered or would be offered.

I know you're going to say "MuseScore isn't primarily intended for playback" because that is what I always get when I cite a playback problem, but it IS used for playback and reality is that scores I made in v1.3 don't play the same anymore in v2.

That is why I still use v1.3

In reply to by robert.holmen.7

Hmm, I don't think you got a lecture saying you don't "understand" the term - just pointing out that there are mutiple correct interpretations. It's not just one ancient interpretation that puts them on the beat - this is common today as well. It's just not the *only* way that is common today. I don't think there is any objective basis for a claim that "the majorty of all music today expect grace notes to be performed before the beat".

Anyhow, you're right that I will observe that the primary purpose of MuseScore is not playback :-). You will literally spend many more hours creating scores in 1.3 than you would in 2.0, because you will be spending much more time correcting these layout problems and dealing with the many many other problems that have been fixed, and not being able to take advantage of the other enormous improvements in 2.0. If that is really worth it to you, I guess that's OK, but it really seems like cutting off your nose to spite your face, as the saying goes.

That said, if the 1.3 style of grace playback is really that important to you for some reason, you'd still be better off taking advantage of the enormous improvements in 2.0 to create your score and produce the printed version, then export to MusicXML and import into 1.3 for the playback - even though the playback engine in 1.3 is inferior and won't sound as good overall.

In reply to by robert.holmen.7

It isn't that hard to correct the grace notes playback in 2.0 if you like it the old way. It's a bit hacky, but it works well enough if you really want the playback:

1. Open the Pianoroll editor
2. Select the main note and change its OnTime and Len to the default values (0 and 950) - this causes the main note to be played on the beat.
3. Select each grace notes and subtract (last grace note's OnTime + Len) from each of their OnTimes. So if you have two grace notes with (0, 162) and (162, 162), subtract 324 from their OnTimes: (-324, 162) and (-162, 162).

Seems like this could be automated easily enough, and the user could specify it with a flag on the main note. Perhaps it'll be in the next release. Until then, use this trick.

Do you still have an unanswered question? Please log in first to post your question.