Possible to change staff types mid-score
I've made a guitar arrangement notated in just treble clef on page one.
I've duplicated this on page two and now want the notation oa page to to display as a single Guitar tablature staff. (So, on facing pages, page one is treble clef and page 2 is the same thing but written in tablature only.)
Is there a way to do this in MuseScore?
Thanks!
scorster
Comments
An additional Instrument and hide empty staves?
Yes but you have to manually maintain it.
Write you music for the guitar.
Append the same number of measures to the end of the score.
Put a page break and a system break from the breaks and spacers palette in the last measure of the guitar music.
Rather than adding a linked staff for the tablature, add an instrument like Guitar (Tablature) then copy from the guitar to the tablature on the second page. Note that at this point there may be extra pages.
In Format->Style check "Hide empty staves" and uncheck the option directly below it that starts "Don't hide..." so the tablature will not appear on the first page at all.
You should now have two pages, the first with notes, the second with tablature.
In reply to Yes but you have to manually… by mike320
Hi Mike,
Thanks for your informative reply.
I’m wondering if the steps I took are equivalent of what you described:
• I created a guitar instrument score with notation in treble cleff only.
• I opened the Instruments dialog by pressing i
• There in the Instruments dialog I added an Guitar(tablature) instrument. This placed an unlinked tablature staff at the bottom of every system on Pages 1 and 2.
• Next I added measures to Page 2 so its number of measures equaled (atually exceeded) the number of measures on Page 1
• To populate the tablarure on Page 2 I copied all of Page 1’s treble clef measures and pasted them to at the first tablature measure on Page 2.
Result, as expected:
Page 1 has notes only in the treble clef only and empty tablature staves
Page 2 has notes only in the tablature staves only and empty treble clef staves
• To rid both pages of empty staves I hid the m by choosing Format>Style>Score and checking “Hide emptry staves within systems”. (Not the prefect name, but it did what I expected.)
Expected result: MuseScore removed all empty staves from display. Thus page 1 is now just treble clef notation. And Page 2 is just tablature—and the tablature, since unlinked, must be updated manually to match any changes in the treble clef, and visa versa.
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So I’m wondering if this is equavalent to the instructions you provided? The result is automatically about 98% what I expected which is impressive and reveal the type of flexibility I was hoping for.
But ouch! That’s a lot of work AND there are at least eight issues I was unable to resolve. For instance:
• there’s a tablature staff beneath the first system in the score, and I can’t resolve. Thinking that some stay object left the staff unempty I selecting all the tab measures and deleting the contents. But that made no difference.
• deleteing any protion of the contents of a Tablature measure causes the hidden treble clef staff to appear across the system, and this sometimes is not undoable. And sometimes the system turns into a treble clef.
• there’s no meter at the start of the tablature section on page 2 and I don’t see a property to force it to show
• Streching or unstreching a measure show the treble clef on that system
• adding text objects to the first system show the treble clef on that system
• I can’t add fingering object to the tablature
Perhaps I wandered into an area of many incompatible inconsistencies.
I was hoping for a simple solution, like inserting a Staff Type Change* (the S in a rectangle) at the start of Page 2. But I don’t see any option in the Inspector to change to select or configure a tablature staff. Is there any such option?
I tried inserting the Change Instrument object from the Text palette, but it seems ineffectal.
I will see about posting an example score.
Thanks!
scorster
* NOTE: I recall that Sibelius 2 had that sort of feature back in the day. And it was magical. There’s be a staff change boundary object that the user could drag left or right. Dragging to the object leftward revealed more of the new instrument/staff type. Dragging it rightward revealed less of the new instrument/staff type.
In reply to Hi Mike, I’m wondering if… by scorster
Your steps are almost identical to what I suggested except you missed the step where I said to remove the check from "Don't hide empty staves in the first system" (I abbreviated the phrase too much). This will hide the tablature under the first staff.
You also didn't put a system break along with the page break at the end of page 1 from what I see. You will need to reenter the time signature and open staff properties (right click, choose staff/part properties) for the tablature and check "Show time signature". The system break will prevent the courtesy time signature at the end of the guitar.
Info that's good to know:
If you make an entire tablature system (the only visible instrument) empty, it will become hidden and the first staff (guitar in this case) will be visible by default.
To show fingerings in the tablature, you need to right click it and choose Staff/part properties, then click Advanced style properties and check the Show fingering option in the Fret Marks tab.
Adding text to the first staff unhides it, that is makes it not empty. You need to add staff text only to the staves you want to see. Things like system text and tempos don't unhide staff 1. They are not assigned to an individual staff.
I don't understand what you did with adjusting the stretch that caused a guitar measure to show unless you have system breaks and forced an empty measure on a system by itself. This is explained by MuseScore showing the first instrument if all of them are empty.