Two notes same pitch

• Dec 26, 2018 - 23:17

What is the music theory and practical effect of two notes of the same pitch played together.

This is from a musescore file that I downloaded.

There appears to be only one part. I do not know how to enter two identical notes in the same place in one part.

Attachment Size
Identical Notes.png 6.43 KB

Comments

I'm going to guess that's harp or guitar (-like) music. To notate it using the keyboard, press the note G, then G again followed by ctrl+down arrow to move the octave back down on the second note, the G again to put the note in the top octave.

Doing this on those instruments makes the sound different than just playing a single note. Of course it could be three flutes and flute 2 & 3 play the bottom note and Flute 1 plays the top note. This simply makes it clear who plays what notes.

In reply to by Wayne Burrows

On a keyboard this notation is mostly unnecessary since you can only press a key once at any time. There are instruments that allow different strings to play the same note at the same time. If your example is what you are seeing in your file, then it is probably a condensed score.

I suspect there will be an instrumentation in the original file you have and it would be up to you to determine which instruments play which notes, or there is a parts file that would clarify this. If there is no instrumentation listed, then there is something missing from the score to make it make sense.

In reply to by Wayne Burrows

As mike320 says, this is a condensed score, also known as a short score. The Entry of the Gladiators was written for military band so there will be lots of doubling by different instruments - the duplicate notes are there to suggest it.

If you want to write something similar, one way would be to sketch your basic ideas as a piano score (without any duplicate notes) and then come back and orchestrate it.

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