What is the logic to adding notes to chords or stacking thirds ABOVE the initial note?

• Nov 19, 2017 - 17:00

This is developed form a previous discussion: https://musescore.org/en/node/265489

I still don't understand the logic of the added note being above the original note rather than below. This is the same logic when adding a note to make or extend chords, where the notes are added above.

When I write I generally write the melody note first, then add the support notes. The melody being on top, it seems far more effective to have the added notes lower.


Comments

Accompaniment is generally chord progressions of some sort while melody is generally a line of single notes. The example that led to this discussion is actually a bit odd, because rarely do you see two lines of music maintain major and minor thirds (the result of using alt-3 to add a note) over an extended period of time. The lower line usually varies more to add texture to the song. There is nothing wrong with doing this. I would never question how a master such as Handel wrote his music. The OP didn't say what song he was transcribing, but my experience with Handel is that this is not his norm.

With this in mind, adding a chord to a melody is generally not what one wants to do. Also, the melody often uses notes not included in the chords of the harmony. Melody also tends to have more passing tones than the harmony does, though at times the harmony will follow the melody in rhythm. The melody is very often the highest note as well, since higher notes tend to stand out more than lower notes. Having said all of this, it is not at all unheard of to add chords below the melody. In Piano and Guitar music this is often done through the use of different voices in MuseScore (and other notation software). In larger ensembles, this is usually done by adding the harmony notes to the other instruments depending on how many notes the instruments are capable of playing at once. Since chords are generally based upon the root (lowest note in the chord), it makes more sense to build the chords from the bottom up, no matter how many notes are in the chord. Of course there is an abundance of exceptions to all that I have said, particularly inverted chords, but even these can be called by a different name and often are in music that includes chord progressions.

MuseScore does allow defining intervals below the selected note. I have chosen alt-shift-# to indicate the note is added below in contrast to alt-# for the note to be added above the note. I realize this key combination is not ideal for all keyboards and platforms. Apparently in earlier versions there were a different set of predefined shortcuts that caused problems on some platforms so they were eliminated. My shortuct definitions work well on my Windows 10 - QWERTY keyboard.

In reply to by mike320

Piano music, unless 2 or less voice constantly has chords occurring in the music.

The logic of "up" works in the bass for me because I generally write the bottom note first. So in a way I am seeing one part of the logic. In the treble however I usually write the melody note first and then add in the other voices. In that case it is not as effective.

Thanks for responding.

As I said in the other thread, you can add note an interval above or below. Check Note > Add Interval and remap the shortcut if you prefer to have shortcuts for note below.

Anonymous
Nov 21, 2017 - 16:29

In reply to by [DELETED] 5

This thread's helped me greatly for intervals, but what single notes (not to hijack the thread)?
The Handbook says (under Note Input), "When you enter a note using the keyboard, MuseScore places it closest to the previous note entered (above or below)"; mostly this seems to be above. Is there a one-entry way to get it to go an octave below where it normally would be placed, or do you have to use the Ctrl+down-arrow to it?

Thanks.

In reply to by Anonymous

It remains true that when entering notes sequentially, MuseScore chooses the closest octave. When bui,ding a chord, however, it always chooses the nterval above. As I explained previously on this thread, this was due to popular request; older versions of MsueScore did in fact add chord tones based on closest octave. And I do recognize that for some uses cases, it might make sense to have a command to add the note below instead of above. It sounds like maybe you happen to encounter this use case more often than the other sue that others find more common. Anyhow, again, for now, if you prefer entering your chords top down, then Ctrl+Down does indeed remain the way to do it until an a good alternative is proposed, designed, and implemented.

I follow you, as I often transcribe folk music with lot of fifth of the tonality added below the melody.
Such as lot of g if in C major e.g.
Adding them is always [shift] [g] followed by [ctrl] [-]
Not a very big problem, but indeed avoiding all these [ctrl] [-] would be nice.

A few observations that may help clarify things.

First, as to the general question of whether people are more likely to want to add notes above or below: that's like asking if people are more likely to prefer chicken or pork for dinner. Some may almost always prefer one, some may almost always prefer the other, but for many people, it's just going to depend. Yes, there are situations - such as ones in which one is creating new music on the fly - where one is likely to first put down the melody note and then think about adding harmony notes, and those harmony notes are likely in certain context (eg, jazz) to be below the melody. On the other hand, same situation but change jazz to folk, and suddenly harmonies above the melody become more common. Or, change from creating new music on the fly to simply copying an existing piece of sheet music, and suddenly it becomes a lot more common for people to think bottom up, because that's almost invariably how we spell chord. Consider, if I ask you to list the notes of a C major triad, chances are good you'll say "C E G", not "G E C".

So anyhow, there can be no denying that both uses are common and are worth supporting.

Now, one to thinking about why Shift+letter works the way it does. You may or may not recall that 1.3 worked differently: instead of always adding above, it tried to picked the closest pitch, so if you had a C and pressed Shift+E it added above, but Shift+A added below. There were complaints that this felt inconsistent, so a choice was made, and for better or for worse the people involved in that discussion seemed to have a preference for going with adding above.

The story with Alt+number is a bit different. Back in 1.3, Alt+number added an interval above, Shift+number added an interval below. Unfortunately, Shift+number shortcuts created a conflict on French AZERTY keyboards, because numbers already require Shift to access. So the conflict was resolved by undefining the Shift+number shortcuts for interval below, leaving it up to the use to define his own if he wanted.

In hindsight, probably someone should have noticed that this left us with two different ways of adding notes above and none of adding notes below, and eventually someone did, but for whatever reason, it just didn't seem worth changing behaviors that by then people had become accustomed to.

It's all definitely worth revisiting for a future release, but hopefully this provides some insight into why things are how they are.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

"First, as to the general question of whether people are more likely to want to add notes above or below: that's like asking if people are more likely to prefer chicken or pork for dinner. ".

Hahahahahahahaha .....

haha ...

ha..

As to: "Now, one to thinking about why Shift+letter works the way it does. You may or may not recall that 1.3 worked differently: instead of always adding above, it tried to picked the closest pitch, so if you had a C and pressed Shift+E it added above, but Shift+A added below. There were complaints that this felt inconsistent, so a choice was made, and for better or for worse the people involved in that discussion seemed to have a preference for going with adding above.", yes I remember. At least sometimes it was right so I tend to think that is the most democratic.

In reply to by xavierjazz

For some added mirth...

As Marc has already mentioned:
Back in 1.3, Alt+number added an interval above, Shift+number added an interval below.

In those days I remember Jojo stating something like:
"Alt+number refers to Above (interval)
I guess that kinda works...

whereas I, on the other hand, preferred my shortcut set to the exact opposite:
Shift+number for Soprano (i.e. 'higher')

and now, get this... wait a minute....here it comes....:
Alt+number for Alto (i.e. 'lower')

Thank goodness for preferences! ...and for the people who make all this possible!

Regards.

Right now, suddenly... for dinner, I'm in the mood for a nice hamburger... ;-)

In reply to by xavierjazz

Thanks for the clarification :-). Keep on it, I think you have a great point and believe we can and should do better here.

I guess one question to me is, do we reserve a whole new set of shortcuts for "add note below" or do we have a preference that toggles which way the existing shortcut works. I tend to prefer separate commands but we're kind of short on shortcuts. Ctrl+Shift+letter is currently available - it's reserved for non-existent (as of 2.1 anyhow) "insert" command.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

By toggle, do you mean something like Press a shortcut and all following shift+notename will be added below until the shortcut is pressed again? If so, I think that is an excellent idea. The letters A-G are already so loaded down with shortcuts (particularly B) that the toggle idea as I present it would prevent conflicts with other shortcuts.

On the subject of these shortcuts, There are shortcuts for each note called "insert note x" with ctrl+shift+notename (A-G) as the predefined shortcuts. I can't figure out what, if anything, they do.

In reply to by mike320

Ctrl+Shift+letter shortcuts currently do nothing, but are "reserved" for future use in possible new "insert note x" commands. I guess that's a placeholder for some sort of hypothetical insert mode, but personally I think it's the wrong way to solve that problem. I'd be happier seeing Ctrl+Shift+letter used for adding notes below (or switching those with the existing Shift+letter shortcuts for adding notes above). A toggle works too, but I do worry it would make the behavior seem a bit unpredictable. On the other hand, no reason it couldn't be both. That is, separate shortcuts for add above and add below, but then also a command that simply swaps out the shortcuts. Maybe that's overkill, but whatever, it occurred to me, so I thought I'd put it out there :-)

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

<< separate shortcuts for add above and add below, but then also a command that simply swaps out the shortcuts >>

That would really be excellent!
I vote for this.
The current setting resulting from the command swapping between the two must appear in the preferences window of course.

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