Transpose selected measures

• Oct 3, 2019 - 18:39

Hypothetical: Can I select measures 63-77 top staff meant for children's voices; transpose this to playback at appropriate range, THEN proceed to select meas 135-140 (end of piece) and do the same thing?

The real-time problem is that it appears that you can only do this one time for the whole staff without buggering up either side of the equation: 63-77 is fine, hit 'save', proceed to 135-140, implement same change, hit 'save', but now 63-77 has gone off the rails, wildly out of range to the extent that it is no longer audible.

Short of re-entering all the notes, or deleting the staff and then re-establishing it...how to proceed, for future use, cause don't want to do this again.


Comments

In reply to by mike320

Maybe I'm not being clear: this is only for playback. The score should not be affected at all. Using staff/part properties allows me to set the 'tessitura' so as not to conflict with other voices, however I don't know how to modify a selected group of measures without messing up another group. Or even if it can be done.

In reply to by lurohamey

Perhaps what you want to do is change instruments at each of these points. Version 3.3 might make this easier when it's released in the next few days because you will have a lot more flexibility at an instrument change. You can change "instrument" to the different voice, then at the end of the section change it back to the original instrument. You can repeat this at each section.

Starting in version 3.3, you can right click a measure in this section, choose staff/part properties and change the transposition in that dialog by the appropriate number of octaves. You will then need to select the measures and use ctrl+up/down arrows to move the notes back to the octave where they belong. Since you are talking abut children's voices, you may need to transpose the notes up an octave then move the actual notes back up an octave so they aren't written an octave too low. (I think I visualized this correctly in my mind).

It's not really clear how you would expect this to work - if the music is already written correctly, then transposing only a portion of the notes would make it either look or sound wrong, or both. While it's true 3.3 will allow you to create all three of those errors, I kind of doubt that's really what you mean.

If you attach your score and explain in more detail, wer can understand and assist better.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

Okay, the original problem was that the entire score contains only two children's choir sections: several measures at the beginning and another several at the end. That's it.
Playback of these sets of correctly inputted notes results in, as was pointed out, the "wrong" instrument--I suppose I could choose a piccolo or some high range instrument to mimic children's voices--but I chose to attempt a transposition. It worked great; everything stays the same on the page, but the 'choir oohs' are an octave high, just like a kid's voice.
That was fine until I tried to do the same thing with the last several bars; even if I saved my work, and then proceeded to do the exact same process I had done with the first appearance of the kiddies, going back to the top of the composition to commence playback the first section is now out of whack: it is as if they cannot be selected separately, transposed, and then played without one affecting the other.
That's why I remarked that it seemed that unless I deleted the entire staff, along with any modifications, then replaced it with a clean staff, re-entered all the notes, and then did the same thing, only this time selecting the entire staff, instead of two separate sections, I might get the result I was aiming for.

Maybe the trick is to change clefs.

In reply to by lurohamey

If you are just talking about octave displacement, then indeed, that's precisely what the octave clefs buy you, no transposition necessary. So that's almost certainly the way to go.

Although as mentioned, starting with 3.3 (to be released in a few days, also available as a "release candidate" already, just see the announcement in the Development forum) you will be able to change the transposition mid-score too, by adding an instrument change then using staff properties somewhere within the region. Actualy, you can even do that today with 3.2.3, just use the instrumnt change and the "Change Instrument" command in the right-click menu to switch betwen piccolo and flute the same way.

Again, if you attach your score, we can understand and assist better.

Hi Lurohamey,
To do that you need two steps: first change the way the measure are playbacked (but MuseScore will insist to transpose them automatically to keep the same playback), then transpose them to put them back where they are written and get the playback you want.

In reply to by frfancha

I understand there are different ways/approaches/tricks&tips, however the main question remains unanswered: why did the second selection of measures affect the first...imho, there are times when changes across staves are global, like time signatures; key changes, not. Makes sense from a compositional perspective, but my issue was very frustrating, especially since it was a fairly silly concept; could have just left out the first few bars altogether.
Gotta move on to other tasks, but thanks to everyone who pitched in. Ended up with clef change as the quickest fix.

In reply to by lurohamey

The answer to the question of why other measures went awry is that you did something to make that happen and I have no idea what that was. Perhaps if I knew the original and changed notes I could speculate, but that's the best that would happen. Unselected measures do not transpose themselves. If you have nothing selected and use transpose, everything will transpose.

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