Piano Four Hands "Instrument"
My first scores I created in MuseScore was a set of Beethoven's Op. 45 marches for piano four hands . For instruments I chose two pianos. However, for the purposes of playback, that's not really correct -- only one instrument should be used. When the secondo player presses the damper pedal, all notes played by both players are dampened.
For the Beethoven, I didn't put in any pedal markings at all, so that wasn't an issue. But what if I wanted to add pedal markings in a future score for piano four hands? If I put pedal markings in the secondo part, then the notes in the primo part will not be dampened (which is no surprise to me). Listen to the Piano_Four_Hands-2_Inst.mscz file to see what I mean.
I guess I could work around this by adding hidden pedal markings to the primo part. But dampening separate parts sounds different than dampening the two parts together. So I decided to experiment. Just for kicks, I added to the instruments.xml file a piano instrument that requires 4 staves (I replaced the brackets with parentheses so that the text would appear in this forum):
(Instrument id="piano-four-hands")
(longName)Piano Four Hands(/longName)
(shortName)Pno. 4H(/shortName)
(description)Piano Four Hands(/description)
(staves)4(/staves)
(clef)G(/clef)
(bracket)1(/bracket)
(bracketSpan)2(/bracketSpan)
(barlineSpan)2(/barlineSpan)
(clef staff="2")G(/clef)
(clef staff="3")F(/clef)
(bracket staff="3")1(/bracket)
(bracketSpan staff="3")2(/bracketSpan)
(barlineSpan staff="3")2(/barlineSpan)
(clef staff="4")F(/clef)
(aPitchRange)12-108(/aPitchRange)
(pPitchRange)12-108(/pPitchRange)
(Channel)
(program value="0"/)
(/Channel)
(Articulation)
(velocity)100(/velocity)
(gateTime)95(/gateTime)
(/Articulation)
(genre)common(/genre)
(genre)jazz(/genre)
(genre)orchestra(/genre)
(/Instrument)
Not surprisingly, when I created another score with this "instrument," the long and short names do not appear. However, the brackets and barlines are laid out the way I expected, and the damper pedal works as it should (listen to Piano_Four_Hands-1_Inst.mscz). I tried to add the long names manually by inserting a horizontal frame; however, I had to add two characters (I used semi-colons) of different fonts in order for the names to line up. It looks like I can't hide individual characters in the frame.
Probably it wasn't worth it to create a new piano "instrument" with four staves. I know that in MuseScore notation is more important than playback. I'll probably use the workaround I mentioned earlier (use two piano instruments and put in hidden pedal markings in the primo part). But it was cool that I made some guesses on the syntax of the instrument.xml file and the score laid out correctly.
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
| Piano_Four_Hands-2_Inst.mscz | 11.46 KB |
| Piano_Four_Hands-1_Inst.mscz | 12.19 KB |
Comments
I think you could just ads staves to a normal piano and save that as a template?
In reply to I think you could just ads by Jojo-Schmitz
like this, maybe?
In reply to like this, maybe? by Jojo-Schmitz
Jojo - regarding your attachment...
![test]( "test")
Great idea... a single pedal mark placed anywhere works for all four staves!
This 'piano four hands' would be great to include in 'All Instruments'- especially useful for piano teachers where student and teacher share the same instrument, and lessons are written for four hands, teacher operating the pedal.
Regards.
In reply to Jojo - regarding your by Jm6stringer
No real need to add that to the list of instruments, it should be sufficient to use that file as a template, i.e. store it in your personal or the system's template folder and then pick it from the New Score Wizzard
In reply to like this, maybe? by Jojo-Schmitz
Jojo-Schmitz, nice! When I create a new file with this template, then the pedaling works as it should. One minor thing – usually in piano four-hand parts Staff #2 starts in treble clef and Staff #3 starts in bass clef. I tried to change the clefs and resave as another template (which I've attached), but the changes did not stick. In the View->Instruments window, I cannot change any of the clefs. Anything else I should do here?
In reply to Jojo-Schmitz, nice! When I by suhak_eumak
Content - including notes, key signatures, lyrics, but also clefs - are not inherited from templaters. Just the basic arrangement of staves. The default clefs for each staff come from the instruments.xml file, so modifying that is the only way to make a custom/non-standard clef arrangements appear as the default, as far as I know.
In reply to I think you could just ads by Jojo-Schmitz
Jojo-Schmitz, I think I fixed the issue with Staff #2 & #3 beginning with the "wrong" clef -- I noticed that in the View->Instruments window, one can change the order of the staves, so I just switched the order of Staff #2 & #3. The edited template is attached. Anyone notice anything amiss?
EDIT: Attachment deleted. I found some errors that I made. I also didn't realize that you can edit an uncompressed mscx file with a text editor.
EDIT #2: Attachment restored. It was fascinating to look at the uncompressed mscx file and figure out the various XML tags. So much that I created another template - a four part open score that uses a single piano instrument. (I'm thinking about notating Bach's The Art of Fugue next.)
If you look at the syntax for the organ, you can also probably get the primo / secundo "instrument names" correct too.