Grand staff with single voice
I have a cello score with quite a few notes that are well into treble clef. Rather than having everything bass clef with lots of ledger lines, I would like to put this on a grand staff (bass and treble). But when I do so, I get rests in the treble clef (none in the bass clef), and the beams don't join between bass notes and treble notes -- I presume most of this is because it has split the music into 2 voices. Also some of the beams do really weird things like joining notes in the bass clef that are a measure apart and separated by treble clef notes. I really only want 1 voice, I would like for a series of 16 notes that goes from bass to treble to share a common beam, and I don't want any rests unless there really isn't any note there. Is there a way to do this?
Comments
Why not just add a tenor or treble clef for the high notes? Surely less confusing for the player and less wasteful of space than having two staves. Just click on a note then click on the appropriate clef in the pallet to insert it before the selected note. You can do the same to return to bass clef by adding a bass clef from the pallet in the same way. See https://musescore.org/en/handbook/3/clefs#mid-measure-clef for more details.
In reply to Why not just add a tenor or… by SteveBlower
I could do that, but there are quite a few places where it would need to change back and forth. And no, it wouldn't be less confusing for the player, since I am the player; I'm an old piano player, new cello player, so reading bass clef and treble clef together comes natural. It's a short piece so I'm not worried about space.
In reply to I could do that, but there… by BobSundquist
Most cellists I know (and pianists and bassoonists for that matter) are quite used to clef changes. But each to their own.
If you really want two staves you can add a staff from the Edit>Instruments menu. Make sure you don't add a linked staff. They are used when you want two representations of the same notes - typically standard notation plus TAB for guitar parts. You want an unlinked staff.
See https://musescore.org/en/handbook/3/create-new-score#add-staff for more details.
If you have a single voice swapping frequently between staves you may also want to look at cross staff notation https://musescore.org/en/handbook/3/cross-staff-notation
If you want to do it this way, here is one suggestion:
Create a new score with piano as the instrument.
Right-click, Stave/Part Properties, Change Instrument to Violoncello.
Change the top stave to Treble Clef.
Right-click on a rest in the Treble Stave, Select >All Similar Elements in Same Stave, press V to make them invisible.
Now enter all your notes in the Bass stave and use Cross-Staff notation to put notes into the Treble stave.
You may need to adjust some beams by dragging them up or down.