Writing Artificial Harmonics Properly
I am trying to transpose the violin part of a violin and piano rendition of Czardas Monti to the cello and improve upon the notation of the piece. One of the improvements I am trying to make is adding artificial harmonics to a selection of notes that was previously notated with a clef change. I tried following the advice of a few different support forums, namely this one: https://musescore.org/en/node/276694, but I found that they didn't quite work. Following a user on the forum's advice, I added the artificial harmonics as chords, changed their noteheads to diamonds, and put them on voice channel 3.
Now, before I get to the issue, I would like to note that the stem directions of the notes in this sequence are supposed to look like this: 
but my attempt looks like this: 
All of my stems are up, and the voice channels' notes' beams are intermingled. I wish to make these beams disappear and the stem directions follow the original notes' direction.
Using the selection filter and inspector, I tried to do this by making the elements of voice channel three invisible. That fixed the stem direction problem somewhat but left the beams in place, and I could not figure out how to delete the beams. I also tried the stemless option to no avail. After about an hour of fiddling with these tools, I couldn't figure it out.
Could someone help me with this? Note: I am a beginner using Musescore.
Comments
Hi,
In the attached example two different ways of notating artificial harmonics. The first one (divided in 3 steps) is to achieve the original notation of the passage, as found in the Ricordi edition here[1].
The final example ('How I would notate it') looks like what you want to achieve, am I right? Here you simply write both notes in the same voice and then change the noteheads of the higher notes.
Btw, the diamond noteheads (I'm using Bravura font but a similar problem is with Emmentaler) look to me slightly too small, but haven't found a solution to it.
[1] https://imslp.org/wiki/Cs%C3%A1rd%C3%A1s_(Monti%2C_Vittorio)
In reply to Hi, In the attached example… by graphos
The way I attempted to notate my artificial harmonics was similar to your method, only differing in the fact that I switched the artificial harmonics to voice channel 3 after adding them to the normal notes in in voice channel 1. I tested your way, and the result is still the same: the artificial harmonics' and normal notes' beams don't overlap; they separate into a confusing mess. And, the stems are all pointed up.
![Highlighted My Attempt at Artificial Harmonics 2.0_LI.jpg]( "Highlighted My Attempt at Artificial Harmonics 2.0_LI.jpg")
In reply to The way I attempted to… by destructavin
Hi, if I understand you correctly you don't need to notate the passage in separate voices. Simply write the chords in voice 1 (the default voice), then select the upper notes and change their noteheads. This is what I did in my last example. If you upload your file here I can have a look.
In reply to Hi, if I understand you… by graphos
I have attached the Musescore file for Czardas Monti. Thank you for taking the time to look over it.
In reply to I have attached the… by destructavin
Hi, as I suspected the problem is that you have used different voices while you should write the harmonics using only one voice*. In Musescore one voice can have any number of notes at the same time. That means you should write in the same voice both notes at a distance of a fourth, and then change the notehead of the higher note. I rewrote bar 70, see attached file.
*it depends which kind of notation of the harmonics you want. You can write them as separate voices or as a dyad, the latter more common nowadays. See the example I posted previously in this thread.
In reply to Hi, as I suspected the… by graphos
Thank you so much for your help, your fix worked for me.
In reply to Thank you so much for your… by destructavin
We now have musehub so we could actually notate it with the harmonic symbols & add the 8va symbol