Layout - 2nd voice note placement
How do I move the 2nd voice notes to the right of the 1st voice. MuseScore places them on the left which is awkward for slurs & ties.
Also, can I stretch the space between just one line of staves (without affecting the whole score) ?
Comments
Click the note> Inspector/Chord> Horizontal offset (eg.-3)
Palette> Breaks & Spacers> Stave Spacer
https://musescore.org/en/handbook/breaks-and-spacers
Notes in Voice 2 should not be placed to the left of Voice 1. Is it possible you have the voices confused?
In reply to Notes in Voice 2 should not by Isaac Weiss
Shoichi - thanks.
Zack - No, I've just checked again - Voice 2 notes are on the left.
And in one bar (where V1 is a crochet and V2 are quavers), bizarrely, the V1 crochet is in between the V2 quavers - v.awkward
In reply to Shoichi - thanks. Zack - No, by Kinsy
Hmm, that's strange. I can't quite visualize it. Could you attach the score showing the problem here?
In reply to Hmm, that's strange. I can't by Isaac Weiss
All sorted now, thanks - I moved the V2 notes to the right with Inspector/Chord>Horizontal offset palette.
But I wasn't very clear about my other layout difficulty. Is it possible to increase the space BETWEEN the treble & bass staves in just one line ? I don't want to increase the space between treble & bass for the whole score.
In reply to All sorted now, thanks - I by Kinsy
I'd still like to see the score to figure out what's going on—no re-positioning of voices should be necessary ordinarily. Voice 2 should be below voice 1, or to the right of it, by default. Are voices 3 and 4 being used at all in the same area? Please do attach the score here, if you're willing.
As to the second question, a spacer from the Breaks and Spacers palette is what you need. See https://musescore.org/en/handbook/breaks-and-spacers.
In reply to I'd still like to see the by Isaac Weiss
Page 2 of the score attached.
I have moved all the V2 notes back to their original positions (ie Horizontal offset 0.00sp) so you can see that they defaulted to the left of V1.
They are the first notes in bars 3-5, 7-12, and, as you will see, in bar 13 the V2 quavers are on either side of the V1 chord.
In reply to Page 2 of the score by Kinsy
@Kinsy, to save time:
Highlight the measure and exchange the voices;
Press the X button
But I guess MuseScore he's right ;-)
In reply to Page 2 of the score by Kinsy
This is an interesting case, where in one chord the Voice 1 notes are both above and below the notes in Voice 2. But I think the default layout is correct. If there were no horizontal offset at all, you would have a stack on notes between two paralell stems, and it would be impossible to tell which noteheads were attached to which stem. If Voice 2 went to the right, either it would move just far enough that the up- and down-pointing stems would align—which would be the same problem—or so far over that it would look like they occurred at a different time position. Moving just the slightest bit to the left seems like the best way to go in this circumstance.
In reply to This is an interesting case, by Isaac Weiss
Thanks.
I had already moved all the V2 notes right of V2 - it was v. simple in the Inspector palette. I just moved them all back in a second version of the score which I attached because you wanted to see it, Zack.
All the help and advice in this forum is very much appreciated - Thank You !!
In reply to All sorted now, thanks - I by Kinsy
does not work?
In reply to [inline:Spacer.png] does not by Shoichi
Yes it works. I was stupidly using the wrong spacer !!
FWIW, the rule for laying out notes is nowhere near as simple as voice 1 left, voice 2, or vice versa. For one thing, it's about stem direction, not voices - if you force the stems in voice 1 down and/or stems 2 up, you will get different results. For another, the correct result depends on whether the notes overlap (downstem note higher than upstem) or collide (both notes on same line) or whether they are a second apart. And also on some other factors, like whether there are notes that can be merged (same pitch, same duration), also on things like the presence of dots. It's all quite complicated, but we follow the layout rules given in Elaine Gould's "Behind Bars" almost to a "t", with only a couple of odd corner cases where we end up producing something she lists as the second-most-desirable layout rather than the most :-).
Anyhow, looking at your score, I'm not sure which note in particularly you'd like to change, but offhand, everything looks correct to me. In particular, the arrangement of the overlapping chords in bars 3-5 are all as recommended, as is the arrangement in bar 13. Putting the downstem chord to the left in these cases where there is overlap but no collision allows the noteheads to partially overlap, thus saving space. Moving the downstem chord to the right in these cases would take more space and also increase the likelihood for confusion as to whether these chords are simultaneous or not, which is why that arrangement is not normally recommended.