Guitar Notation

• Jan 2, 2017 - 23:18

I recently had a need to prepare some additions to an existing score (not created in MuseScore) and, therefore, needed to follow the notation conventions in the exiting score.
The notation in question is for acoustic guitar. I do not play guitar and I am, therefore, not familiar with the notation conventions and was simply trying to mimic the notation.
The sample score I have uploaded, when printed (thus ignoring hidden rests), matches what I need exactly but it took a great deal of trial and error to achieve. Basically, the notes have both UP and DOWN stems but with 2 differences from the approach with which I am familiar to create a single note for 2 voices in a single staff where both voices have the same note. Those 2 difference are:
1 - UP and DOWN stems are BOTH on the RIGHT side of the note head
2 - DOWN stems have no tail(s) regardless of the duration of the note. (So, 1/8 notes, 16ths etc have tails on the UP stems but not on the DOWN stems.
To achieve this notation I had to create a 2nd and a 3rd voice, place a 2nd note below the voice 1 note, switch to an UP stem, double click the stem and drag the handle below the note, then move the not up till it was the same note as the voice 1 note. Sometimes the 2 or 3rd voice note automatically disappeared (or aligned exactly) with the voice 1 note and sometimes a 2nd note at the same pitch was displayed and I had to hide that note head.
The reason for the 3rd voice was due to placing a 1/4 note below an 1/8 note in the 2nd voice (to achieve a stem with no tail) and this resulted in rests being entered for voice 2 to fill the bar. It was now necessary to add a 3rd voice to place other notes correctly below the voice 1 notes.
I did try to create the required notation by adding a SLIDE IN or SLIDE OUT line from the ARPEGGIOS and GLISSANDI palette, double click, grab the handle and re-align to precisely vertical. This worked although it was challenging to get exactly vertical, plus, whenever I move the (re-aligned) line anywhere else it disappeared.
Unfortunately, I only discovered later that I could take the same approach with the horizontal line from the LINES palette and it could be successfully re-positioned.

Is there an easier way to achieve this?

If not, might I suggest a future feature to add a VERTICAL line and re-position it at user discretion.

Alternatively, a more sophisticated enhancement to STEMS FUNCTIONALITY might allow for stems to be UP, DOWN, LEFT or RIGHT as well as WITH or WITHOUT tails (regardless of note value) and allow for 2 stems on a single note head. In addition, the WITH or WITHOUT tails functionality, as well as apparently illogical STEM POSITIONS should only be allowed on SECONDARY stems.

Attachment Size
Sample Guitar Notation.mscz 26.09 KB

Comments

I don't understand why the stems need to be that way. Do you happen to have an image of part of the original score?

I suppose if you really must have stems such as you describe then you can achieve this as follows:

Left-click on a note
Open Inspector
Change Stem direction to "Up"

Right-click on a stem
Select ->All Similar Elements in Stave
In Inspector, change Vertical offset to 2.50sp

Double-click on each stem and do [Ctrl][UpArrow], [Ctrl][UpArrow], [UpArrow], [UpArrow], [UpArrow], [UpArrow], [UpArrow]

In reply to by underquark

Neither do I but I don't play guitar. One assumption I made was that, possibly, it was indicating a "strumming" of the strings, rather than plucking individual strings, but perhaps there is another, more standard, way of indicating that.

The procedure you suggest achieves the same thing as I did by double clicking on a stem and then grabbing the handle to extend the stem as required, but it doesn't deal with needing a DOWN stem WITHOUT a tail below an 1/8th note that already has an UP stem WITH a tail.

Jpeg of a portion of the original score is uploaded

Do you still have an unanswered question? Please log in first to post your question.