Cross staff notation results in inconsistent note-to-track distribution in exported MIDI

• Jul 31, 2021 - 06:53

MuseScore assigns each clef to individual track in exported MIDI. However, when using cross staff notation it fails to do that properly and notes can end up all over the place. I've had it happen with Lizst's Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2. The Prestissimo part can end up all bunched up on a single track, or be weirdly split between two tracks. It seems to be consistently inconsistent (as far as I remember, it will put notes to same tracks for the same sheet on repeated exports, yet changing the sheet may affect it). I also had it happen on my own sheets with cross-staff notation, so the problem isn't isolated to that specific sheet.

Attachments: a score for test, the MIDI MuseScore makes, screenshots of midi editor with bug clearly visible and test score opened in MuseScore.
Expected results: measure 1 - all notes on blue track, measure 2 and 3 - each track has it's own notes.
Observed results: measure 1 - correct, measure 2 - all notes clumped up on the same track, like in measure 1, measure 3 - correct

Attachment Size
cross-staff_test.mid 421 bytes
cross-staff_test.mscz 13.17 KB
Screenshot_176.png 38.62 KB
Screenshot_177.png 47.27 KB

Comments

According to the example provided, your expectations may not be well founded according to how the program is intended to execute. The whole rest of voice-1 exists still for the lower staff, and if you were to traverse the cross-staffed notes e.g. via right arrow pressing, they probably would show being of the same track rather than skipping every other note.. As to their ending up all over the place, maybe someone can help with that if you provide some examples. Hope it gets straightened.out for you.

Looking just at the screenshots you've provided the MIDI export is exactly what I would expect for that score.
Measures 1 and 2 belonging to the same track, measure 3 seperately.

The thing you seem to be wrongly assuming about cross-staffed notes is that they change the staff they belong to. They don't. Cross staffing a note only changes the visual appearance in notation, but not the actual anchoring of a note.
If you want to move a note to a different staff, use cut and paste instead.

In reply to by jeetee

As a reference, a definition given by the Finale user manual:
"A cross-staff note is one that “belongs” to one staff, but that, for notational efficiency (for example, to eliminate the need for ledger lines) is written in another staff, often with a different clef—its stem is stretched from the original staff to the “target” staff."

Similarly there is this LilyPond example that clearly shows cross-staff notes are still entered on their source staff and stay there whilst the other staff remains empty.

The notes you use in cross-staff are saved according to where they belong, not where they appear.

There will be no point in saving this technique as a midi file. Because the notes in the midi file are displayed in whichever staff they were written. //In piano roll editor or event editor

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