How to Merge Voices

• Aug 5, 2018 - 18:18

I imported a monophonic score from a standard MIDI file. In one section of the music, MuseScore has interpreted the monophonic line as two voices playing.

How can I merge the two voices so that they show as one, with stems going in the correct direction for a one-voice score? The menu's 'Edit>Exchange' voices function seems to swap, but not merge voices.

With many thanks in advance.


Comments

In reply to by Shoichi

I wish there was some way to configure "implode" so it would be much more aggressive than what it is right now. I attached here a score with two examples -- one for drums and the other for guitar -- where cleaning up some imported midi is really challenging because Musescore cannot implode the voices.

Attachment Size
Implode Test.mscz 27.37 KB

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

If you're importing from MIDI, and editing the result, then the default understanding - as for all editing - should be that the human is in charge. And sometimes, when editing music, the human will not keep the strict timing during each and every step of the editing process. Especially when the two different 'voices' are entirely due to the fact that occasionally one or two notes of the base are held for longer than the other notes.

If this isn't something that MuseScore can support, that is a shame - because it greatly hinders this functionality, due to relatively minor nuances in the MIDI file which replicate the way the music is actually played.

In reply to by fletch02_zoo

Yes, it's a bit strange that it doesn't implode when there are rests in voice 1.
If you only have one instrument / one staff, then use 'Explode' first and then 'Implode', possibly even twice.
But be careful: if there are several instruments in the score, you have to insert an additional empty line directly below. You can delete this again afterwards.
I don't know why, but at least in MuS 3.6.2 it works then.

If MuseScore interpreted it as two voices, most likely it is not as monophonic as you might think - eg, two sequential notes may have overlapped slightly, or notes of a chord might have been struck or released not quite simultaneously. So that might interfere with the ability to combine them. Best to quanitize the MIDI file before trying to import.

If that doesn't help, then please attach the MIDI file so we can assist better.

In reply to by mathieuconan

Those posts are from 1.x and earlier and this one was started before version 3 was released. Starting in version 3, you can select a staff wtih multiple voices, implode and all rhythms that can be combined into a chord will be, all rhythms that cannot, like when one voice has a half note and the other two quarter notes, will be left in two voices for you to deal with manually if you don't like the results.

Edit: Actually in version 2 you could combine rhythms into a single voice using implode, it actually wasn't as smart as I described in version 3.

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