Creating Piano Music
I'm confused about how to enter piano music. Marc Sabatella that chords have to be on the same stem, or otherwise use voices. However I have a measure with a 4/4 whole note + a quarter note line starting on beat 2. It would seem to be one voice - the piano, but they can't be on the same stem. How should this be done?
Comments
Read this: https://musescore.org/en/handbook/voices
A whole note occupies 4 beats in a measure. If there is a new note on a beat later than one if the whole note while the whole note is being held, it needs to be put in its own voice.
By definition, if they can't be on the same stem, they are different voices. Voice doesn't just refer to the sound used for playback within MuseScore; we use the term "voice" in the broader sense of the traditional musical definition - the same definition Bach used when he referred to a fugue as having three or four (or whatever) "voices" even though they are all played on the same instrument. The musical definition of "voice" is, an independent melody line. Your example has two independent melodic lines, that is why it needs two voices.