explode chord into separate staves; implode staves into chord

• Feb 18, 2011 - 04:29
Reported version
2.1
Type
Functional
Severity
S5 - Suggestion
Status
closed
Project

Finale offers an option to enter notes as chords on as single staff, then “explode” them to separate staves / voices. Also the reverse to build chords by combining staves/voices. Both are sometimes very useful.


Comments

This feature is critical for "arrangement" tasks. Being able to switch between N-staves (wind section or choir or whatever) and 1- or 2- staves (e.g. keyboards or conductor) is often necessary.

Thanks everybody. I had already seen the videos and the discussion. I just wanted to point out the importance of this feature (and of its speed) for making more and more musicians move to MuseScore.
The way shown in the videos looks more like a workaround than like a feature. And its limitations are strong: no more than 4 voices, and it doesn't work with chords on one voice. This would scare any arranger deciding which score writing software to use.
Maybe it would be easy to implement voice splitting on staves as a one-click task, while waiting for the real implode/explode feature.
Anyway MuseScore is great and you are doing a great work! :)

It occuurs to me that this is "sort of" doable via a plugin, using chords and thus not being limited to four parts. Explode would work by having you first copy the chords to each voice, then the plugin would remove the extraneous notes. The whole process would be quite simple, but the need to do the copy manually can't be avoided without extensions to the plugin architecture as far as I can see. Implode would be more straightforward though. Assuming you only needed to handle the simple cases - all parts with exact same rhythm, no special needs regarding articulations, etc.