Allocate separate instruments to each notation line of a mult-line instrumennt - e.g. organ

• Nov 26, 2013 - 11:59

Organ sheet music is usually notated on three notation lines - i.e. for the upper manual, the lower manual and the pedal manual. Each manual can be set to completely different sounds according to the registration used. For a pop-organ, this is even more extreme. E.g. trumpet on the upper, strings on the lower and bass guitar on the pedals.

The three manuals of the organ are notated with a curly bracket up front saying that this part of the score "is all one instrument", namely an "organ".

Now if you try to reallocate an instrument of the MuseScore synthesizer to one of the notation lines, the allocation automatically goes to all three notation lines - i.e. upper, lower, pedal - at the same time.

This in however not what is needed. One ought to have the option of allocating a separate instrument to each notation line within the three bracketed lines, i.e trumpet, strings, bass guitar.

This necessity seems to be organ, e-piano and keyboard specific. (Split keyboard.) For a traditional mechanical piano one would probably never want to do this.


Comments

You can create yourself an organ that can do this. Just create a score with 3 organs, delete the 2nd and 3rd staff from the 1st organ, the 1st and 3rd staff from the 2nd organ and the 1st and 2nd staff from the 3rd organ. Then connect the 3 remaining staves with a curly bracket again and, voila, you can assign a different instrument to each staff.
Once done, save it the templates folder so you can pick that in the create new score wizzard next time.

Attachment Size
Organ.mscz 1.63 KB

In reply to by Jojo-Schmitz

Thanks a lot for your fast proposal.

I had already thought of notating my organ score as three separate instruments - i.e. any instruments - and applying a couple of cosmetics to "make it look right" as a work-around. Your solution certainly has the advantage of looking really perfect.

However, I came to the conclusion, that a work-around like this might cause considerable trouble in cases where staff grouping is actually needed. That's why I put in a feature request.

The first example I thought of, was when I want to write a chord or series of semi-quavers spanning across the bass and treble staff. In the mean time I have found out that you apparently cannot do this properly at the moment, but when it's fixed ... :)

There are probably other operations that span a group and need to stay groupy. Although at the moment, to be quite honest, I do not really see what operations these would be.

In reply to by simono

In that case you certainly want to have a look at the nightly builds, to see what 2.0 will bring you.
There create a score with an organ, add a staff text and see what the staff-text properties can do for you, in respect to switching to different sounds.
You can have something similar in 1.3, to a lesser extent and only for a very limited set of instruments, violins and trumpets.

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