Four notes in a staff is just too little.
Four notes in a staff is just too little. A pianist can play at least five notes with one hand, more if arpeggio is used. It is a must for any good music notation programme to be able to have unlimited (well, perhaps 20 is enough, but not four) notes on one staff.
Comments
MuseScore can easily handle 20 or more notes on one staff. Look at the instructions for chords on the note entry page.
The four voices per staff refers to independent lines of music happening at different times. I don't think you will find and example of music that requires more than four voices per staff.
So far, I've never had a problem of not being able to place enough notes in a single staff. Multiple notes for chords can be entered using the [shift] key. Voices are only needed if you have four notes of different durations going on at the same time. While this is possible, I suppose, it's not likely to occur very often for more than 5 notes, unless your writing for polydactyl pianists :-).
I think better additions would be to have the ability to adjust the number of staffs on which piano music can be written. For example Rachmanninoff's Prelude Op. 3 No. 2 is mostly written using 2 staffs, but for the final 17 measures, it changes to 4 staffs--2 for the left and 2 for the right hand, this would increase the number of voices available to 8. Also the interpretation of damper and sustanuto markings would be a big help in this direction.
In reply to Four voices? by MDMilford
It is already possible to have more than two staffs for piano. See attached.
Look at the instrument list (Create > Instruments...) to see how I did it. I also used the style setting (Style > Edit Style) to hide empty staves
In reply to It is already possible to by David Bolton
Hey, that's pretty cool.
In reply to It is already possible to by David Bolton
I find one important benefit of this method - it allows independent control of each staff. In the default grand staff, there is only one mixer control for both staffs, so I can't mute one staff or change the relative loudness of the left and right hand during playback, to hear how the voices interact. Now I can! Even set the piano with 4 hands to stereo!
Sibelius playback control gives 2 sliders for each staff, but they are ganged together (so it's useless for what I need). Now is it possible to give an option so the grand staff will default with mixer controls for each staff?
In reply to Cool! by newsong4life
For ensemble work one slider for each instrument is probably better than one slider for each staff. I would be okay with per-staff or even per-voice volume control as long as it was obscured somewhat.
In reply to For ensemble work one slider by David Bolton
David, agreed with you. That was why I was thinking of an "option", so users can choose when they first set up the staff. (Or better yet, can be switched on or off upon user request.) Whichever approach we take, please remember that when using MIDI import, we have far less options, as the staff is set up automatically (at least for now).
In fact, for now, it appears that for MIDI import of piano, it creates only a treble clef for me. Is that expected behavior?
I see. Sorry for mistaking four voices as four notes.