Separate chord track??

• Sep 30, 2021 - 10:58

I made the attached arrangement to give me something meaty to work on in my online singing lessons. It is still a work-in-progress, but I wanted to get to the stage when I could sing each part into my DAW and mix a "performance" that I am happy with. It is not intended for anything more.

I originally had the chords attached to a vocal part, but to give me more flexibility in singing against other parts, I split it off into another part of its own, which could be mixed independently. I am fairly sure that this worked at some time recently, but now I can find no way to play the chords. I can mix the voices parts just fine, but can't play the chords.

Is what I am attempting reasonable within MuseScore? and is there anything obvious I am doing wrong here in my setup of the parts and their Mixer settings?

Thanks

Brian

Attachment Size
Baby Plays Around 18-09-21.mscz 28.27 KB

Comments

• Sep 30, 2021 - 13:12

Thank you so much for this. Your version works great. I don't know what you did - and maybe I don't need to. I did have good separation between the parts and the chords at one point and then, as a result of some forgotten edit, the chords simply stopped playing even when soloed. I guess I broke the score file in some way and you have managed to fix it for me.

So once again, thank you

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• Sep 30, 2021 - 14:25

For the record: you always have independent control of both the volume and playback sound for chord symbols. Just go to View / Mixer, click the arrow to expand the channel strip for the instrument you have attached the chords to, and adjust the sub-channel for the chord symbols (might be labelled "harmony") as desired.

For more info, see the online Handbook section on chord symbols.

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• Sep 30, 2021 - 15:46

Thanks Marc,

I had done that, And it had previously been working for me. But somehow I had managed to break it in my originally posted score. And the first reply contained a version that fixed it.

My intent was to move the chords onto a part of their own (one with no notes or even staff) so that I could easily mute/solo any voice and still retain independent control of the playback of the chords. I wasn't sure that this was even possible, but it does appear to be!

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• Sep 30, 2021 - 15:59

It's not broken at all. Your score plays exactly as expected given your mixer settings. You currently have it set to solo the bass part. Turn that off and you hear all the parts, including the chords. The chords are currently set to use a voice sound, and that's exactly how they sound. Open up the Chords channel strip with the arrow button, select the chord symbol sub-channel, and you can change it to another sound. But as mentioned, it really wasn't necessary to move the chords to another staff to do that, the same exact technique works no matter which staff the chords are on.

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• Sep 30, 2021 - 17:02

Got it!!

Your reply prompted me to investigate further on my original score. It turns out that my issue was that I had set my chord sound to "Voice Oohs Expr". Changing this to "Voice Oohs" makes it work. I am guessing from the behaviour and the name that "Voice Oohs Expr" requires some CC (11??) in order to make any sound.

You learn something new every day :-)

Thanks again for the replies.

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• Sep 30, 2021 - 17:17

Expr sounds are designed to work with instruments that are set to use single note dynamics (in Staff/Part Properties); non-expr sounds are designed to work with the instruments that are not. So if the default sound for an instrument is expr, you should only change to other expr sounds, and similarly if the default is non-expr.

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