Editing scores and instruments

I recently had occasion to convert a score for organ (three staves) to one for piano (grand staff only, with the pedal part superimposed as an additional voice on the bass staff). Some aspects of the process were not intuitive, so I thought it might be helpful to describe it. Others may wish to know how to do some of these things, even if for other reasons.

The description here is for Windows. Apple and Linux users can substitute equivalent actions in those systems.

It is apparently not possible in MuseScore 4 to simply delete the pedal staff from an organ score. Its content can be deleted and then the staff hidden, but I wanted it gone. That determined the approach taken.

First, copy the pedal score onto the bass staff. Select all measures of both staves (select the first measure of both staves, then press Shift-Ctrl-End), then click Implode on the Tools menu. This will merge the two staves onto the upper one, leaving the merged staff selected. The merged material will be in another voice, generally voice 3, with stems, slurs, and ties up. It will look better, for this purpose, in voice 4, with stems, slurs, and ties down. Deselect the merged staff (optional) and right click on the first (or any) note of the pedal part. A context menu will pop up. In it, hover the mouse over Select to bring up the Select menu; in it choose More.... A third menu will come up. If the staff is still selected, the box beside In selection will be checked, else it will not be. It doesn't matter. Check the boxes beside Same staff and Same voice. Be sure the action is Replace selection; then click OK. This will leave only the notes and rests of the merged pedal part selected. Change these these to voice 4 by clicking on that icon in the toolbar (or pressing Ctrl-Alt-4). The change will leave the staff filled with rests in voice 3. Locate and right click on one rest in that voice, select all the others in the same way, and delete them. Finally, if you wish to do so, merge matching rests in voice 4 with those in other voices. For that, see the discussion below.

The Merge matching rests feature is found in the Staff/Part Properties dialog box. That box can be reached in two ways, and only one of them works for this feature. Double-clicking on the part name is the way that doesn't work, probably because the range to be affected is not selected in this way. Instead, select the entire staff (select the first measure, then Shift-Ctrl-End), then right click on the selected staff and choose Staff/Part properties.... The Merge matching rests feature is in the top half of the dialog box. Online help depicts it with just a check box, but in MuseScore 4.5 it has a drop-down selection list of Auto, On, and Off, with Auto the default. Auto is equivalent to Off. Change it to On, click Apply, then OK. (This feature might better have been left with just a check box.)

Now that the bass staff in the organ part looks right, it's time to replace the organ part with a piano part. The way to do this is not intuitively obvious. In the palette menu at the left select the Layout tab. On it select the Add button and New instrument. The dialog that comes up is titled Add or remove instruments. In other words, Add new instrument is not its only function, contrary to what the Layout tab implies. The Add button might better say Add/Edit/Remove Instruments. Maybe someday it will. In the dialog you can also reorder the instruments in the score. With this dialog open, add a piano part and move it down to just above the organ part. Exit the dialog (click OK). In the score copy both staves (not including the pedal staff) from the organ part to the piano part (select the first measure of both staves, press Shift-Ctrl-End, then Ctrl-C, move to the piano part and select the first measure of both staves, and press Ctrl-V). Now delete the organ part entirely. Return to the Add new instrument dialog, click on the organ part in the right column, then on the trash can icon. Click OK to exit the dialog. If you want to rename the piano part in the score (such as Piano/Organ), double-click on the part name and do it there, in the bottom half of the dialog.

Finally, remember to save your work.

A note about using Implode: The first time you use it, it merges all selected staves into the top one, using voices it predetermines, and leaves the staves below the top one unchanged. (The staves must be adjacent; you cannot skip a staff.) If you use it a second time directly on the top staff, it merges the voices in that staff into such chords as it can, where the note durations are the same. We did not do that in the process described above, but left the pedal score in its own separate voice on the bass staff.

Inverse to Implode, there is also an Explode function that will split the voices of the top staff into up to three staves below it. Generally those staves should have been created empty. If they are not, the exploded voices will be merged into whatever is in them. This split is for voices only, not for chords in the same voice.