2 voices - 1 silent, 1 invisible - is it possible?
Here's a little something I used to do in Sibelius that I'm having problems figuring out in Musescore.
When doing a large ensemble jazz chart, most of the rhythm players get parts with chord changes and a series of quarter note stemless slashes to indicate they should comp/walk/whatever along to these chords. I can notate that no problem.
The thing is I also want to have the sound of those instruments playing parts. It really helps make sure everything going on in the horns will mesh with the rhythm section before you embarrass yourself in front of the band at rehearsal.
In Sibelius this was done by writing out the part in as many voices as necessary, setting all of that invisible, and the just putting in slashes that were visible in voice 4. These slashes had to be silent but visible, the parts you actually hear had to be invisible.
My experiments so far have all fallen apart. I managed to get a bass line in, hide that, and slashes over top, but the slashes played notes that weren't there, and when I tried to reduce the velocity of those notes using Note Properties I reduced the volume of all notes, including my invisible ones.
Any ideas?
Comments
Hi Steve -
Try playing with Display -> Mixer and check Mute on the parts you don't want to hear. Then click the play button and see if you get what you want.
Fifist
select one note of the voice you want to make silent (or invisible), right click -> Select -> More... -> tick Samel Staff and Same Voice -> OK. Now right click one of them again and alter velocity (or toggle visibility)
I'd recomment setting velocity to 1 instead of 0, helps to get the cursor moving properly on playback and is silent enough (and the Slash Notation plugin does this too)
The Sash Notation Style plugin already marks the slashes it creates as silent, and does much more too, so if you use that (see Plugins menu at right of this page to install) then creating the notation is greatly simplified.
But as for creating a playback part, I don't recommend putting it in the same staff and making it invisible. It will still affect spacing, plus it's just a lot of work to set that up. Instead, I recommend a separate staff for playback only (one such staff for each instrument involved). You either remove these staves before printing, or create a "part" called "print score" that includes all but the playback staves.
In reply to The Sash Notation Style by Marc Sabatella
Alright Marc, I'm going to try Sash Notation Style. I also grabbed Explode/Implode at the same time (looks handy).
I think maybe I'll just write in simple parts for the rhythm section now, use staff text to indicate which parts are 'as written' and which parts are improvised (comp/walk/time), then when it's time to print make a new copy of the file, replace the improvised parts with slashes & call it a day.
How hard is it to write a plug-in? I could use one called drop that could take a 4- or 5-way closed voice chord and let you instantly convert to drop-2, drop-3, or drop-2&4. Might be handy to also convert open voicings to closed as well. Just an idea, while I've got your ear.
In reply to I'm gonna try it! by Steve Chatterton
see http://musescore.org/en/plugin-development
In reply to I'm gonna try it! by Steve Chatterton
I was a "real" programmer 20 years ago, but hadn't written a line of code this millenium before I started trying my hand a plugins. Seemed straightforward enough to someone like me who understands the basic principles of prgramming but had no specific experience with the language or the data strutures.
The plugin framework is undergoing significant changes for 2.0, so I kind of took myself outof the plugin writing business until 2.0 is solid enough to start writing for that. The frameword for 1.X is definitely very limited in terms of the ability to add and delete notes, but adding the series of silent, stemless, slash-headed quarter notes to a measure was straightforward enough. What you are descibing is conceptually similar enough to the Explode plugin that I suspect it would be pretty straightforward. You'll note the limitations of the plugin framework right away when you look at Explode, BTW - the need to explicitly copy the bit to be exploded to each output staff before running the plugin is one example. As is the fact that Implode won't handled ties. So you'll need to resort to similar kludges with your voicing plugin.
Ultimately, I could imagine a plguin that worked directly from the current chord symbol (not accessible in the 1.X framework, but may be for 2.0) and the melody line to completely generate the drop 2's for you, complete with passing diminished chords, color tones substitutions, avoidance of minor ninths, etc. Sammy-Nestico-in-a-box!
In reply to I was a "real" programmer 20 by Marc Sabatella
Sounds neat. I'd prefer radio buttons that gave you the choice between Sammy Nestico, Thad Jones & Bob Brookmeyer and another that gave you option between 4- & 5-way voicings.
I fiddled with Javascript a few years back, perhaps I'll take a stab at it when version 2 drops.