Instrument Change

• Oct 7, 2017 - 23:25

I am transcribing a score that I recently bought and the percussion part changes from Crash Cymbal to Xylophone. I know how to change the instrument, but because Crash Cymbal does not have pitched notes, and Musescore does not change the clef at an instrument change, I cannot type in the Xylophone part. Is there a way for me to do this, or a longer way around?

Attachment Size
IMG_3254 (1).JPG 2.57 MB

Comments

In reply to by Yeah Music Inc.

You can normally make some adjustments to the stretch and put in a line break between where the instrument change occurs so the page turns will remain the same. Of course the number of measures on the two lines will probably be different than the other instruments.

In reply to by Yeah Music Inc.

Open the attached score and see it has no notes in the Oboe and English horn that do not overlap. These instruments are for demonstration purposes only since there is an easier way to do it with 2 pitched instruments.

I have checked "Hide empty staves" and unchecked "Don't hide empty staves in first system." If you place a line break in the 9th measure you will see that the Oboe continues into the next system with a single measure on the line. If you select the first 9 measures and press the { key, the stretch will be decreased and the first oboe line will be in the first system along with the Contrabass. I suggest that you select entire sections of music to reduce the stretch, because if there are several lines involved, you may be able to press the { key fewer times and you will not have one or two measures that look crowded like you will get if you only select the measures you want on the previous line. The English horn on the first system is invisible. On the second system you will have the English horn in the first 4 measures with some oboe measures on it also. If you put a line break in the 13th measure, the second system will have only English horn and Contrabass with the Oboe invisible, the third system has returned to Oboe and Contrabass only. This is a very simplistic example, and you can reduce stretch as needed to make the measures line up properly. In your score, you will want to start at the top and work down to align the measures as you want them. One more thing to consider, you will likely have at least one empty measure at the instrument change. Use this to your advantage, because it doesn't matter which instrument displays it. Also enter some staff text to tell the musician he is changing instruments.

Attachment Size
instrument change.mscz 13.92 KB

In reply to by Yeah Music Inc.

FWIW, having page turns in the same place on all parts and score is normally a mistake - it leads to very poor and inconsistent spacing in most cases, plus different instruments might have different places where it convenient to turn pages. Better to optimize layout of each part separately. And it also manages to solve the problem at hand, besides being good practice in general.

Indeed, "always STAGGER the page-turns!" Different instruments naturally "consume" pages at different rates, depending on the complexity of their parts, and you really don't want the entire ensemble "turning the page to see what happens next" (so to speak) at exactly the same instant. (For one thing, this is certainly something that the audience will notice!)

When you need to designate "a particular point in musical time," simply use consistent rehearsal marks. Every player will then have "the same point to go to," on the set-of-pages that they have become familiar with.

In reply to by mrobinson

I am not transcribing this to play it, which my orchestra already is from the original score. Also, the page turn is in the score, not in each individual part. I will play around with the { method, because I did not know of this feature. Thank you all for your help, hopefully I will not need to bother you all again. Just one more off-topic question. Can Musescore developers see private scores? I posted this on Musescore privately, but it says it has 8 views.

In reply to by mike320

In this same score, I have found a problem. The harp part most of the time has only 1 staff (treble clef), but in one (possibly more in future parts of the score), it changes to 2 staves. When there is only 1, the bass clef does not show. Without selecting hide empty staves and putting an invisible note on any staves that don't have anything but I want to show, is there a way to do this?

Attachment Size
IMG_3409.JPG 2.8 MB

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