Adapt note range to tuning

• Jul 14, 2018 - 07:51

A lot of guitar music (especially baroque) uses a low D. This low D is shown red in the scores because they fall out of the 'standard' tuning range of a guitar (E-A-D-G-B-e). Is it possible to change this (= allow user to customize the range)?


Comments

As you know, baroque guitars have mostly a reentrant tuning. Eg, the second one (French baroque tuning, Robert de Visée and others) on the image below. But it's not a low D (ie a D2, fourth ledger line under the staff) , like we are accustomed in the case of contemporary classical or acoustic guitars.
baroque.jpg
As you know too, there is no single strings, but double strings which are call, courses. That means the total of strings is 11.
The fourth course (and fifth course, and sometimes, third course) are tuned, depending the country/composers, with the same pitch, or doubled with an octave.
There is no way in the program to distinguish on the same string/TAB line two differents pitches (eg a D4 and D3)
So, you have to do a choice, either D4 or D3
The simplest is to use the tuning of an actual guitar, ie E4/B3/G3/D3/A2 (and by removing the 6th string, E2 but not really necessary, since this string was added from the classical/romantic area, and so, unuseful for the baroque repertoire. Except if you do some arrangements for classical guitar)

For 6 string guitar with 'dropped D' tuning (see attachment)...
Right click on an empty spot on the staff, then change the pitch range to D2 in Staff Properties.
Pitch.png

See:
https://musescore.org/en/handbook/staff-properties

OR...

To disable out-of-range coloration of notes: From the menu, select Edit→Preferences... (Mac: MuseScore→Preferences...), click on the "Note Input" tab, and uncheck "Color notes outside of usable pitch range."
See:
https://musescore.org/en/handbook/note-input#coloring-of-notes-out-of-r…

Regards.

Attachment Size
Pitch.mscz 3.63 KB

In reply to by Jm6stringer

@jm6stringer
Thanks, but I cannot get this 'Edit Staff/Part properties' ... when right clicking on an empty spot of a stave I get 'Edit Stave/Part Properties' ... making the changes you propose there don't have any effect: the low D's are still shown red...
So, I'll go for your second suggestion. Thanks again!

In reply to by swastassijns

You wrote:
when right clicking on an empty spot of a stave I get 'Edit Stave/Part Properties' ....
Yes, but you cannot enter values in the pitch range boxes. You must use the Note Selection dialog by clicking on the icon.
See image below:

Pitch2.png

My second suggestion works, but it disables the out-of-range color for all instruments in the score.
Regards.

In reply to by swastassijns

The string data was not set up correctly. You had the lowest string set to E2 rather than D2, but fixing that does not fix the red notes problem. As a test I changed the bottom range to D1 and still had red notes. This seems to be some sort of bug I've not seen before.

In reply to by swastassijns

EDIT: in fact, the only removal of the text "Guitar" (setted as text style 'instrument change" in Inspector ) above the first measure fixes the question.
There is two channels "Guitar" in the mixer. You have misunderstood something/mistaken about instrument change, something like that.
Do you remember something about this?

In reply to by cadiz1

Ok, understood now (at least I can reproduce)
You done:
1) The start is (without change the pitch range in Staff Properties): 1Gabriel.mscz

2) You use the feature of mid-staff instrument change (don't know why exactly, by confusion, or attempt to find a solution maybe) by adding "Change instrument" on the second beat and other voice, from the Text palette (you edit for Guitar).
Hence the two channels in the mixer: 2Gabriel.mscz

3) Considering the unexpected result, you edit now the pitch range (D2 instead E2) in Staff properties.
But always without the result expected: 3Gabriel.mscz

As said previously, the deletion of the Instrument change text solves now the problem.

In reply to by cadiz1

If you do a mid-staff instrument change, only the original instrument in the staff can be modified in staff properties, even if you change back to the same as the first instrument. I have run into this before but did not remember it.

In reply to by Jm6stringer

Thanks for this! I was trying to create a 5-String Violin instrument, and was just about to give up when I stumbled across your post. Maybe tag this with "Creating Instruments", "Creating voices" or something like that for those of us who were wanting to do that? I'm hoping that since I changed the name of the instrument it will show up as an option to choose if I do a new score ... Darn, just checked, doesn't appear to have saved. Do you know if there's any way to create a custom instrument? I'd love to not have to mess around with changing it every time I write something for my 5-string.

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