Hands, staves, voices, and how to notate
Hi guys!
I found a couple of original piano tunes I wrote as a teen some 30+ years ago, and I'd like to Muse them. But I'm running into various challenges about what is the right way to notate them and I'd value your input.
But I will start with this example from the first measure. See attachment.
The G that is currently stems up is supposed to be played with the left hand. I know how to do Cmd-Shift-Up (Mac) to flip it up to the treble staff even though it "belongs" with the bass staff with other left-hand content. But the C-E in the left hand last the whole measure. So should the G be a different Voice? If so, I know how to flip notes to another voice, but how do I add the additional notes to the existing measure in the first place?
Thanks in advance!
Dave
Comments
Attachment?
Sorry something went wrong with my original post. Here is the attachment.
In reply to Sorry something went wrong… by reggoboy
You really used a unique notation 30+ years ago.
Due to their locations in the measure I would put the C & E as a chord into voice 2 and the G in voice 1 and move it to the top staff. I'm curious if you're getting rid of the whole rest or if it serves some purpose that becomes apparent when you see the following measures. You will need to make the extra rests in voice 1 invisible. See https://musescore.org/en/handbook/voices and https://musescore.org/en/handbook/cross-staff-notation for further info.
In reply to You really used a unique… by mike320
Yes, well I was 17 and what can I say. I do, however, think that weird two-directional stem was not something I made up. But I digress, since that's not really what concerns me here :-) And that whole rest appears to be an error, unless I was viewing the "chord" as being part of the upper staff.
In reply to You really used a unique… by mike320
Thanks for the link about voices. I think the trick was I didn't realize I needed to select an existing note from voice 1, then enter input mode, then switch to voice 2, and then start entering data. A bit non-intuitive, but now I know :-)
You wrote:
The G that is currently stems up is supposed to be played with the left hand... even though it "belongs" with the bass staff with other left-hand content.
Bass clef does not strictly "belong" to left hand content (nor is treble clef strictly for right hand).
![Hands_and_staves.png]( "Hands_and_staves.png")
It is perfectly acceptable to employ a treble clef for both staves:
Regards.
In reply to You wrote:… by Jm6stringer
Nice job with that mockup, and thanks! Wanna do the whole thing?? ;-)
You're right, I should not rule out the use of two treble staves.
I took all your combined ideas and came up with a different approach, attached. As long as it's not too crowded, I find it more intuitive to see notes that are close together on the piano sit close together on the score, so I put both hands on the upper staff.
What do you think?
Now that I know how to do this, I might be able to tackle many of the other oddities in this song...
In reply to Nice job with that mockup,… by reggoboy
Nice to have figured that out :-), but no, I dobn't think that's a good idea here. Unless there is some special musical reason to out both hands on the same staff like this (eg, it's a three or four voice fugue, and the third voice is about to enter in the next measure), it's just going to cause confusion. Moving just the "G" to the top staff does make sense, as does notating it on the top staff in the first place using voice 2.
In reply to Nice to have figured that… by Marc Sabatella
Thanks for the reply.
But I don’t get why this is not a good idea. Is it because the C-E chord has no stem and so it’s not clear that’s played with the left hand? If so, I can see that point.
But in general, showing two-hand content on one staff by using up-down stems is a normal practice.
In reply to Thanks for the reply… by reggoboy
I would say that showing two hands on one staff is only normal in very specific musical situations. This just isn't one of them.
Reading music isn't necessarily about logically following rules, especially when sight-reading. It's at least as much about pattern recognition. And in order for that to work, it's important to notate things the way other similar things are notated. Your notation isn't wrong, it just isn't how most similar passages are notated.