Please help! There's a "Color Ghost" in My Score!

• Jul 15, 2023 - 14:48

Please help!! There's a "Color Ghost" in my Score!

To help a choir learn a song with tricky inner parts for mezzo-soprano & baritone middle voices for women & men, I have entered some music into MuseScore to show the vocal parts first on 6 separate staffs (with a grand staff below for piano) -- as version 1 of the score, then combined into 4 vocal SATB staffs, with the mezzo-soprano part fluctuating between being an Alto 1 & Soprano 2, & the baritone part changing between being a Bass 1 & Tenor 2 -- as version 2 of the score.

Both versions 1 & 2 employ the use of colors, especially red for those middle voices, & occasionally purple for the high women & men voices with blue for the low women & men parts when I wish to emphasize either 3-part harmonies for the women or men or else 5-part harmonies when women & men sing together.

The final variation of the score, version 3 being created from version 2, is meant to further reduce the number of staffs by combining all women's parts onto a single treble staff & all men's parts onto a single bass staff. However -- and I've tried this several different ways -- when I combine the staffs in this final step, the color appearances or attributes are now behaving very WIERDLY! The lowest notes on either the treble or bass vocal staff will show up on the screen as red, even when Appearances is set to black or another color! At first, I tied to combine the v2 staffs to create v3 from a copy of v2 using the various colors. Then I tried removing all colors from a copy of v2, leaving ONLY basic black & no color whatsoever. Either way, I have lost control of the color Appearance settings. It doesn't even matter whether I enter the notes of a measure from scratch, use the Implode feature, or even try entering the whole measure newly in an entirely different end of the score by inserting brand new measures. No matter what, certain lower notes on either vocal staff end up appearing in red, instead of black or some other desired color.

Please, help me to remove any "hidden" references to color Appearances from version 3, so that every notation is simply in the default of basic black -- so that I can regain color Appearance control, setting the inner & outer voices to whatever color is actually desired for each note, phrase marking, etc.

(Once this issue is resolved in version 3 of the score, my final steps will include translating half of the English lyrics into another languages -- but I don't wish to proceed that far until after the color issue is resolved.)

I am attaching versions 2 & 3 of the score for your examination, so that you can help me to remove the red color from version 3, so that I can then continue with my project, further altering version 3.

THANKS so much for your help!!!

Nolan W. Cook


Comments

This is quite simple :-). But I have only the experience of MuS 3.6.2; in MuS 4 it should be similar.

First the explanation: Musescore colors notes that are outside the usable pitch range of an instrument or human voice. You can either extend the range yourself in the staff/part properties, or turn it off altogether in Preferences / Note Input. If you're sure the singers can sing the low bass too, then just turn it off. By the way, when you print out the score, the red coloring won't appear.

But handling self-colored notes and those that are supposed to show you that you are out of pitch range unfortunately interfere with each other in MuseScore. Minor bug!

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