Notehead schemes

You can choose choose any one of nine notehead schemes for a standard staff. To set a notehead scheme:

Right-click on a staff and select Staff/Part Properties…; click on Advanced Style Properties… and choose from the "Notehead scheme" dropdown list.

The schemes are as follows:

Normal: This is the default scheme and the one the vast majority of people will use: it is also the only scheme in MuseScore 1 and 2. It uses normal noteheads which can be changed via the Noteheads palette or the Inspector.
Pitch name: Noteheads automatically and dynamically change to include the English pitch name in the notehead.
German pitch name: Just like the previous one but B will be replaced by H, and B♭ by B.
Solfège Movable Do (also called Tonic Solfa): Noteheads include the solfege syllable, depending on the degree in the scale. It uses Ti and not Si.
Solfège Fixed Do: Noteheads include the solfege syllable for the note name. As used in France, Italy, Spain, etc... It uses Si and not Ti.
4 Shape (Walker): Noteheads follow the four-shape system used in books such as William Walker’s Southern Harmony (1835).
7 Shape (Aikin): Noteheads follow the seven-shape system used in books such as Jesse B. Aikin’s The Christian Minstrel (1846), and books by the Ruebush & Kieffer Publishing Company. It's the most used 7-shape system.
7 Shape (Funk): Noteheads follow the seven-shape system used in books such as Joseph Funk’s Harmonia Sacra (1851).
7 Shape Walker: Noteheads follow the seven-shape system used in books such as William Walker’s Christian Harmony (1867).

(For more info about the different variant of shape notes, see the SMuFL specification)

The setting applies to a given staff and the notehead will be used when entering and editing notes. Here is an example.

Note names

Noteheads

A range of alternative noteheads can be accessed via the Note Heads palette of the Advanced workspace, or the Inspector (see Change notehead group, below).

Note: The design of the notehead may vary depending on the music font selected (Leland, Emmentaler, Gonville, Bravura, MuseJazz, Petaluma). Those in the palette are displayed as half notes in Bravura font.

Notehead groups

MuseScore supports a range of notehead styles:

Normal: A standard notehead.
Crosshead (Ghost note): Used in percussion notation to represent cymbals. It also indicates muted and/or percussive effects in stringed instruments such as the guitar.
Diamond: Used to indicate harmonic notes in instruments such as the guitar, violin etc.
Slash: Used to notate rhythms (e.g. guitar strums).
Triangle up/down: Used in percussion notation.
Shape notes: Do, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La, Ti.
Circle cross: Used in percussion notation.
Circled noteheads
Slashed notehead: A notehead with an oblique line through it.
Plus noteheads
Alt. Brevis: Used in early music notation.
Brackets (Parentheses): applied around an existing note (or accidental).

Change notehead group

To change the shape of one or more noteheads in the score, use one of the following:

Select one or more notes and click a notehead in a palette (double-click in versions prior to 3.4).
Drag a notehead from a palette onto a note in the score.
Select one or more notes and change the notehead in the Inspector, using the drop-down list under Note → Head group (not supported for drum staves).

Change notehead type

Occasionally you may need to change the apparent duration of a notehead—i.e. notehead type—without altering its actual, underlying duration:

Select one or more notes.
Choose one of the following options from the Inspector under Note → Head type:
- Auto: Automatic, i.e. apparent duration = actual duration.
- Whole: Whole notehead, regardless of actual duration.
- Half: Half notehead, regardless of actual duration.
- Quarter: Quarter notehead, regardless of actual duration.
- Breve: Breve notehead, regardless of actual duration.

Shared noteheads

When two notes in different voices, but of the same written pitch, fall on the same beat, one of two things may happen:

The notes may share the same notehead.
The notes may be offset: i.e. arranged side by side.

MuseScore uses the following rules:

Notes with stems in the same direction do not share noteheads.
Dotted notes do not share noteheads with undotted notes.
Black notes do not share noteheads with white notes.
Whole notes never share noteheads.

Note: If two unison notes occur in the same voice they are always offset.

Change offset noteheads to shared

To turn offset noteheads in opposite voices into shared noteheads :

Make the smaller-value notehead invisible by selecting it and using the keyboard shortcut V (or unchecking the "Visible" option in the Inspector).

In a small minority of cases (where the smaller value note is dotted) this workaround is not applicable, so use the following alternative:

Select the smaller value notehead and, in the "Note" section of the Inspector, change "Head type" to match that of the larger value note in the opposite voice.

In the first example below, the notes of voices 1 and 2 share noteheads by default, because they are all black, undotted notes:
By contrast, in the next example, white notes cannot share noteheads with black notes, so are offset to the right:

To create a shared notehead, change the black eighth note's head type to match that of the white note or, pre-3.5, make it invisible (as explained above):

Remove duplicate fret marks

In certain cases, a shared notehead, when pasted to a tablature staff, may result in two separate fret marks on adjacent strings. To correct this, make any extraneous tablature notes invisible by selecting them and using the keyboard shortcut V (or by unchecking the "visible" option in the Inspector).

External links

Shape notes at Wikipedia.
Ghost notes at Wikipedia.