Pickup Bars with two voices

• Jun 20, 2023 - 16:00

I am currently trying to put a piano arrangement of the song "On Jordan's Stormy Banks I Stand" into musescore for ease of reading (the staves were too far apart.) However, I have run into a problem. It is in 4/4 time and begins with a 1/8 note pickup up bar. At the end of the line is a bar that presumably has a value of 7/8 because voice one has a dotted half note and an eighth note. I managed to do this relatively easily by changing the length of the measure. However, voice two in the same bar has two half notes. How would I be able to input this so it looks right (i.e. not tying a dotted quarter note to an eighth note in the next measure in voice two)? This seems like a weird setup for a piece anyway but it would be helpful to find a way to replicated it.


Comments

If you are doing it "for ease of reading" then a score which has different number of beats in voice 1 and voice 2 is surely not going to be easy to read.

If you really want it to look so weird you could perhaps notate voice with a half and a dotted quarter, change the notehead of the dotted quarter to an open head (looking like a half) using "Override visual duration" in the properties panel and make the dot invisible. But stand by to pick up the pieces after the inevitable car crash during rehearsal when voice 2 plays 8/8 while voice 1 plays 7/8.

It is always possible that my sheet music just doesn't show the voice one rest for some reason. I tried it and it sound better with the rest anyway. This is still an interesting topic though, and I would like to know if there is an answer.

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