Can't create cord of whole notes with....

• May 10, 2012 - 19:01

Using 1.2 on a Mac. I can't seem to create a cord using the |O| notation. When I try to place a 2nd one, it just moves
the original into that location.

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Screen Shot 2012-05-10 at 2.00.21 PM.png 81.71 KB

Comments

Note exactly sure what you mean here - are you saying you want to stack another note on top of the D in the bottom staff? Have you read the Handbook section on note or watched any of the tutorial videos? Should be as simple as hitting Shift while typing or clicking the note you want added.

In reply to by pschmitt52

Maybe I am misunderstanding what you mean by |O|. Your thread title says "whole notes", and your score is in 4/4, and your example shows a whole note being used (two of them - one in the first measure, tied to one in the second). So I took |O| to indicate a whole note (O) and for some reason reason you were showing the bar lines as well. But it sounds like you might actually be trying to place a *double whole note*, aka "breve" - a note that looks like a whole note but has bars on either side of it. That's takes eight beats in 4/4 time, so of course you can't place one in a measure. It will have to be split up into two measures with a tie, just as your example shows. You can only place a breve in a measure if the time signature is long enough to support it (eg, 4/2 time).

In reply to by Jojo-Schmitz

I don't have any difficulties doing so. As I said, you need to be in a time signature where breve are possible at all (eg, 4/2), but if you are, shift works with breves exactly the same way it works with other note values. Unless I am missing something here - if you have a specific example of a series of steps you can take in a 4/2 score that do not work as expected. But everything I have been trying works just fine.

In reply to by Jojo-Schmitz

No, it's definitely possible. You just have to add the note to both chords individually, then add the additional tie.

But at least now I understand the problem. It does happen to be the case that when creating a single note tied across the barline, you can sometimes enter it by selecting the total duration of the note and entering it that way; MuseScore will automatically stretch the note across the barline. And it is also true that this method only works with single notes, not chords. But tis isn't the normal way of creating ties - it only works in the special case where you are tying across a barline and where the total duration of the note happens to be a value you can select (doesn't work if, for example, the total value should be 2.5 beats, since there is no way to select 2.5 beats).

The normal way of creating ties is to create the note corresponding to then first part of the tie normally, then select the duration of the second part of the tie, then hit the "Tie" button (or keyboard shortcut). So in this case, you'd hit 7 for whole note, enter the first note, then hit the tie button/shortcut.

However, that method also doesn't work for chords, either. You have to create the chords individually and then tie them - eg, by selecting the first chord then hitting the tie button/shortcut, or by adding the ties individually as you add notes to both chords. There are a number of existing feature requests relating to these limitations in creating tied chords, so hopefully at some point they'll be addressed.

Meanwhile though, the way to create two whole note chords tied together is to create the chords separately, then select the first and hit the tie button/shortcut. Actually, it's usually simpler to create the first chord, copy and paste it to the next bar, then go back and select the first chord then hit "tie".

This took a minute to find because I like to place notes with the keyboard, and using the keyboard method the cursor moves to the second bar so you can't place a chord. If you move the cursor back, the effect is different as you can stack notes, but they don't all extend to the next bar.

Using the mouse, this is likely happening because placing a breve in 4/4 crosses the barline. The cross-bar tie seems to take precedence over making a chord. Try placing a semi-breve in 3/4 time to see the same effect.

Basically, MS (in 1.1 at least) just doesn't treat the note as tied when it comes to adding notes to a chord, whether or not it cross the barline.

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