Proposed "Jazz Big Band" template
I would like to contribute a jazz big band template for the next release, and am looking for feedback. I know there have been other similar templates posted, but the ones I recall seeing were created prior to 1.1, so they don't take advantage of any of the new jazz features in 1.1.
The version I am posting here contains the basic big band instrumentation of 5 saxes, 4 trumpets, 4 trombones, guitar, piano, bass, drums. Although obviously different charts might have different needs, there is no question in my mind that this is the right basic instrumentation for a template. But there are a number of choices I made in putting the template together that could be revisited if people thought it a good idea:
- I created the piano as two instruments (RH and LH), so that the "hide empty staves" option works in the extracted part. This has some unfortunate side effects in terms of display of brackets and barlines in certain cases, but I'm hopeful those bugs will be fixed, and in any event, they are not as problematic as the inability to use hide empty staves in the piano part.
- For my own purposes I like to work with a score that has additional staves for each of the rhythm section instruments, that I use to enter a part for playback. I mute the regular staves that contain whatever combination of notes and slashes I wish to appear in the rhythm section parts, and I then generate a "print score" from this score as a part containing all but the playback staves. This system works pretty well for me, but I'm guessing most people would rather not deal with that, and the template should just contain the regular staves, and if you want to add a playback staff, you can do so yourself.
- I use the same chord style as the Jazz Lead Sheet template, which uses "ma" and "mi" as the abbreviations for major and minor. Any choice I make here is going to not be what some would prefer, but my read is, ma/mi really is becoming more universal in published big band charts, if not so much in fakebooks.
- Because MuseScore does not currently allow for separate page layout settings for score versus parts, my template has to make a choice, and I went with settings that are good for the score. Before extracting parts, you'll need to change the page settings (uncheck landscape, increase scaling value). The alternatives - default page layout settings that are optimized for part generation - result in scores that are harder to work with. Unless someone has any better ideas.
- Getting the spacings to allow one to add staff text, system text, tempo text, rehearsal marks, and chord symbols with no collisions is impossible. Especially when one considers that things will look different in the parts versus the score. I tried to make compromises that work as well as possible in the generated parts most of the time. I find I have to do very little cleanup in the generated parts, and I am happy about that. But if you have specific ideas for improvement, let me know.
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
| Jazz Big Band.mscz | 3.72 KB |
Comments
Oh yeah, I totally forgot to mention what I did for the drum set. I customized that to use keyboard shortcuts as follows:
A - hi hat (v2, x-head, downstem, just below staff)
B - bass drum (v2, regular head, downstem, bottom space)
C - ride cymbal (v1, x-head, upstem, top line)
D - snare drum (v1, regular head, upstem, second to top space)
E - hi tom (v1, regular head, upstem, top space)
F - accent (v3, regular head, upstem, just above staff) - to be used in conjunction with slashes
G - slash (v2, slash head, downstem, middle line) - to be used in conjunction with accents
You have to mark the slashes stemless manually, and you will likely need to adjust the vertical position of rests, but aside from that, this scheme seems to work pretty well. I tend to use keyboard entry almost exclusively, using the arrow keys to change a ride into a crash or a high tom into a low, etc.
In reply to Oh yeah, I totally forgot to by Marc Sabatella
Regarding the piano has two instruments. You will also loose cross staff beaming, not sure it's a concern but just to let you know. If you stick with two instruments for piano, could you do a summary of bugs you encountered?
In reply to Regarding the piano has two by [DELETED] 5
Good point on the beaming, although that's not very often a concern in big band charts. The piano is most often just one staff of information, with the second staff needed just to indicate particular bass lines or two-handed chord voicings. There is rarely any intricate stuff between the hands, and for charts that require it, you could always add the second staff.
The bugs that concern me include these:
#9746: left winged repeats display incorrectly when extended through staves at start of system
#6107: Multi-staff barlines break with hide empty staves.
#12089: Spacer on bottom visible staff of system with hidden staves should act as a system spacer
#9550: Hide empty staves not respecting chords and lyrics (not sure about this one)
#4617: System text on hidden staves should show on next available staff (ditto)
Nice work Marc :)
In reply to Nice work Marc :) by ChurchOrganist
Great.
This is great. I'm using MS 1.2 and the big band template seems to be there by default. I also downloaded the plugins for exploding and imploding. Now I just need to figure out the best way to work. What I'd want to do is write a big band score starting with a condensed concert pitch score with one staff containing as1, as2, ts1 and ts2, one staff with bs, one staff with tr1-4 and maybe two staves for trombones. Then I'd write the block chord passages on one staff for the whole section. Maybe writing the whole composition ready like this. Then I'd explode the block chords to each individual instrument staff.
I'd like to use this full score template of yours during the whole process. I could write the whole sax section of say one 8 bar sequence on the as1 staff, then explode it, then maybe continue with next 8 bars.
All this I can do, but meanwhile it would be nice if one would be able to hide and implode staves, while one writes all instruments on one staff, so that the view would be like a condensed score while the staves still would be there. Haven't figured out that yet.
In reply to This is great. I'm using MS by jotti
If I'm understanding correctly, the "hide empty staves" option under general style settings might help witht that, except that initially, all you staves would be empty so it would he'd everything. So you might have to prefill the staves you plan n using with something - perhaps slashes using the slash plugin. Another option would be to use a separate score to enter the notes that format, then copy then to the main score before exploding.
Btw, the one other thing you'll eventually run into is that when you go to generate parts, you will of course need to scale everything up in size, and unfortunately, some of the text you enter won't scale automatically in 1.2 (looks like that is already fixed for 2.0). What I do is save a temporary copy of my score, chane the orientation and space settings in layout / page settings, then right click a text element that didn't automatically resize, text properties, up the size, and click the box to apply to all similar elements. Unfortunately you have to do this a handful of times to get all the different types of text to scale, and some, like the text in voltas, you have to do one at a time. But a few minutes spent doing that means when you generate the parts, they will look very good right off the bat.
In reply to If I'm understanding by Marc Sabatella
That's how I'll most probably work. I just opened an old unfinished arrangement of mine, which looked like this:
The five saxes are there on two staves, named Alto sax. Of course I could have named them something else.
Then I started a new score using your full score template. From the upper staff I copied everything into As1 and As2 in the full score, using concert pitch in both scores. Then I exploded it using the plugin. This nicely left the unisono (first 6 notes) in both parts, then split the following notes nicely to As1 and As2. Then I copied from the lower staff to Ts1, Ts2 and Bs and exploded it. Copying from bass cleff to treble cleff made the notes appear way below, but when viewing in transposing pitch, everything looked fine! Here:
If I would work further on the full score and later want to continue in the condensed score, I'd probably work through a 3rd help file. From the full score I'd copy As1 and As2 into two staves, implode them into one staff and copy it further into the condensed score. Knowing these routines is essential for me to be able to work, not getting disturbed by the mere thought of that hazzling with both full score and condensed score would be somehow inconvenient.