Pizzicato for violins

• Apr 29, 2021 - 02:25

Hi There
How do I create pizzicato violin ( strings generally) notes ?


Comments

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

Mark the note to be pizzicato and use the Text palette - as Marc says.
You can select a whole run of notes and use the Text palette with "pizz".

At the end of the section you might wish to explicitly use the Text palette again with "arco".

I'm not sure if it's possible to mark just one note for pizzicato. If you don't cancel the marking with arco you may be surprised.

Actually just put the pizz. mark on the first note of the section to be played, and the arco mark on the first note which follows the pizzicato section.

Hope this helps.

In reply to by dave2020X

There is additional notation for the snap pizzicato, otherwise known as the Bartók pizzicato. This is shown in the articulation section.

See https://youtu.be/OUe9c0m32fc for an explanation and demonstration.

However, since this requires preparation on a real stringed instrument, it only applies if there has already been a pizz. marking for the section.

The circle with the little line on it is shown in MuseScore's articulation palette. I'm not sure if it generates a different sound within a pizzicato context - that might be a refinement too far.

Another notation for pizzicato is a + sign over a note, but again it might only apply if the section in question is already in pizzicato mode.

There are other variants of pizzicato - see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pizzicato

As with the snap pizzicato, at present I don't think MuseScore exploits these additional subtleties.

In reply to by dave2020X

The standard usage of the term is to apply to all notes until canceled by "arco". So in order to be understood by humans or by MuseScore, you need to add the arco where you want it to return to bowed, regardless of how long the pizz passage is (one note or a thousand). There could be some special cases where based on the content and maybe use of brackets or other syntax, you could make clear to a human player you want it to apply to one note only, but you'd still need the explicit arco (perhaps invisible, in that case) for MuseScore. That would apply to snap pizzicato as well.

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