Linking two guitar staves to a single tab
I am writing a guitar part in three voices, which makes the single stave very cluttered. Two of the voices have the same stem direction, of course, which makes it difficult to tell which is which. The obvious solution is to move the bass voice onto a separate stave, but then it disappears from the linked tab. Is there a way (or a workaround) that I can link a single tab to both staves?
Comments
"I am writing a guitar part in three voices, which makes the single stave very cluttered."
Can you attach an image of some measures of your score? Or entire score in PDF ?
But if you do: Voice1 for melodic line, Voice 2 for intermediate voice, and Voice 4 for Bass line, it will be OK (certainly not cluttered, it's a very common situation in classical guitar)
EDIT: it's no clear: " which makes the single stave very cluttered". Are you talking of a standard staff or TAB staff?
In reply to "I am writing a guitar part… by cadiz1
I've attached a few bars as an example. I keep having to move beams and shorten stems of voice 2 notes because they are placed on top of the voice 3 notes by default and often obscure augmentation dots. There is often no room for rests, and it's also very difficult to tell which rests relate to which voice. It's not unusual for guitar parts to be written on a grand staff, which would instantly solve all these problems and make the score much more readable - but having to create an unlinked tab and enter the notes again manually without errors and inconsistencies would be a nightmare!
In reply to I've attached a few bars as… by rduerden
I should have clarified that it's the notation stave that is cluttered - the tab is fine because I'm using simplified format. Also, I'm not sure that using voice 4 instead of voice 3 will make any difference - the notation will still be cluttered
In reply to I should have clarified that… by rduerden
"I'm not sure that using voice 4 instead of voice 3 will make any difference"
Of course it's make a difference, since the notes in Voice 3 (by default) are oriented upwards, while those in Voice 4 are oriented downwards.
I'll take a look and suggest something.
In reply to "I'm not sure that using… by cadiz1
See the image below, with input step by step. Everything's running smoothly. As I said, with Voices 1, 2 and 4, I never had to change the direction of the stems. Everything falls into place automatically. The only editing required is at the level of two beams in Voice 2 (to avoid a collision with the Bass voice notes). But, frankly, as I said, this is a very common situation in guitar. I've typed several hundred classical guitar scores (I was a teacher and performer) :)
In reply to I've attached a few bars as… by rduerden
For an unlinked stave you wouldn't have to re-enter the notes manually as you could copy/paste.
I did wonder about using cross staff notation to display the bass line on a second staff whilst leaving it linked to the tab. Unfortunately this crashes Musescore 3.7, I haven't tried it with Musescore 4.
In reply to I did wonder about using… by rothers
"I did wonder about using cross staff notation to display the bass line on a second staff "
Really? Cross staff notation in guitar? I'd say that, at a glance, 60/70% of the guitar repertoire is made up of three-voice polyphony on a single standard staff. Very-very common and standardized in all publications.
Then, if anyone wants to "invent" something, that's up to them, but I rather think the OP had lost its way with misused voices (and this is far from rare in what I see in guitar scores on musescore.com).
In reply to "I did wonder about using… by cadiz1
I'm replying to the OP's desire to move the base voice onto a separate stave while maintaining the tab link.
In reply to I'm replying to the OP's… by rothers
Yes, I understood. But I say it was a wrong reason (due to the misuse of voices). This is my understanding and explanation of his message :)
In reply to Yes, I understood. But I say… by cadiz1
Using voice 4 really doesn't make a difference. When I've used voice 3, I've just flipped the stem direction (as my screen shot shows). Whichever voice I use, I still end up with stems, beams and rests conflicting with one another. I can easily put the bass part on a separate stave, which makes it much more legible - I just need both staves to be linked to the tab.
In reply to Using voice 4 really doesn't… by rduerden
"Whichever voice I use, I still end up with stems, beams and rests conflicting with one another."
Can you please attach an example, image (or better, a .mscz file)
Maybe you could use 2 notation staves and 1 TAB stave like this:
1) Stave 1 : Notation
• 3 voices with all the 3rd voice elements hidden
2) Stave 2 : Notation
• Copy of Stave 1 but with all 1st and 2nd voice elements hidden.
3) Stave 3 : TAB linked to Stave 2
Then mute playback on stave 1. A bit of effort to maintain but could be automated via a plugin. Not sure how easy it would be to read as I only use TAB.
In reply to Maybe you could use 2… by yonah_ag
Thanks for that. I might also be able to do it by creating two additional linked staves, hiding voice 3 on the first and hiding voices 1 and 2 on the second. Then I can hide the original "master" stave, which will contain all the voices and also links to the tab. However, when I try doing this, the stems and beams of all quavers in the linked staves disappear! (See attached.) If I delete and re-enter them, the stems and beams come back. This must be a bug.
In reply to Thanks for that. I might… by rduerden
Ah yes, that's annoying. Can you make them visible again with plugin code? That would at least give you a remedy whilst waiting for a bug fix. It's really easy in MS3 plugin code but I'm only just starting out with MS4.