Generating Linked Staves Not Working as Expected

• Mar 20, 2022 - 22:12

When adding linked staves, selecting the type "standard," "percussion," or "tablature," does not actually change the output. It still creates 3 identical staves of the standard type.

Screenshots attached.


Comments

In reply to by Jm6stringer

I'm eventually attempting to create multiple tabs (different stringed instruments, for example) for the same melody line.

But perhaps you can explain what those selections shown in my screenshot are supposed to do.

When you select "custom percussion" or "custom tablature" in the dropdown, what is supposed to happen?
Screenshot_20220320-174144_Chrome.jpg
Right now, no matter what you select, all linked tabs display the exact same staff type as whatever the first one was.

In reply to by WoozleHarmonicas

You wrote:
I'm eventually attempting to create multiple tabs (different stringed instruments, for example) for the same melody line.

If you want different stringed instruments you must select different stringed instruments from the instruments list.
Your screenshot shows a single instrument, piano, which technically is a stringed instrument, but is not the type of stringed instrument for which Tablature (nor percussion) is designed.
Guitar, banjo, mandolin, and other fretted, stringed instruments, work with TAB.
See:
https://musescore.org/en/handbook/3/tablature#creation
and, for linked standard staff + Tab staff:
https://musescore.org/en/handbook/3/tablature#multiple-staves

I guess my expectation for what a linked staff should be is ultimately different that what MuseScore actually does.

As per the manual:
"Linked Staves: The staves are "mutually updating": i.e. any change you make to the notation in one staff is immediately applied to the other staff as well."

What's missing in this definition is that it only works within select instrument parts, and will not work at all on most instruments, and between different instruments.

As each staff type has all the information within itself to produce playback and notation, (instrument data, tab formatting, special notation, etc) and work perfectly well on their own, there should be no reason why a simple piano melody part could not be linked to a 6-string guitar tab, a 5-string banjo tab, a 4 string banjo tab, a regular staff transposed for an A clarinet, and other for a Bb clarinet, etc, and simply match the input from the master staff. It shouldn't matter what the tab is linked to.

Ex: Here's the melody line on the piano... and here is how that exact melody can be played on these 3 other instruments. If I edit notes in the melody, it would automatically be reflected in each other instrument.

In reply to by WoozleHarmonicas

And it does seem that this IS sort of possible, but again, within arbitrary instrument subsets.
Screen Shot 2022-03-20 at 8.11.35 PM.png
This is a classical guitar part, with a variety of other instrument tabs added along with some standard scores. However, I can't change the clefs on the standard staves. I can't change one to a standard treble clef, for example, or it changes all 3 standard staves.
Screen Shot 2022-03-20 at 8.14.28 PM.png

Selecting "custom standard" or "custom tablature" or "custom percussion" do nothing (at least in this case.)
They just revert to "standard" when you press OK, which is confirmed if you re-open the instruments window.

In reply to by WoozleHarmonicas

I guess with copy/paste there is not too much demand for a piano melody linked to other instruments so as to "automatically" provide a duplicate of that melody via linked staves to those other instruments.
Also consider that one can change the instrument sound in the mixer to hear how it would sound as another instrument without even messing with the score.

In reply to by Jm6stringer

I frequently have cases where automatic duplication to another instrument would be very useful. The examples I am thinking of are a part for clarinet in A with a duplicate for clarinet in Bb for players who only have the one more common instrument and euphonium bass clef non-transposing with a duplicate in treble clef transposing in Bb for players from the brass band tradition. Another, probably less common case where I have wished for this is to have duplicate parts for basset horn in F and for the more commonly available alto clarinet in Eb. Of course it can be done by adding the extra instruments and copy/pasting but having auto generated duplicates would simplify the score and simplify alterations.

Perhaps rather than making the linked stave facility work for these cases another "duplicate stave" facility could be added so that instrument A appears in the score but this can be used to generate parts for Instruments A, B, C etc.

Those custom options are used internally and them showing up in that dropdown in that dialog is a bug, which is fixed for MS4.

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