Is it possible to have two different groups of instruments or voices in one score?

• Oct 23, 2022 - 12:45

OK - obviously it is - but I want something specific.

Suppose I'm writing a piece for SATB choir. I may start off with a piano version. Just suppose this is an exercise sheet or demo for students or for a book. I may then want to have almost exactly the same system just copied further down the page - or the score - but now assigned to voices SATB. Because MuseScore treats the left and right hands of a piano as just one instrument, changing instrument to voices doesn't quite do the trick.

It is clearly possible to create a new SATB score, and copy the RH part to the SA part of SATB, and the LH part to the TB part of SATB, but then there are two files. In terms of copying that is probably the simplest thing to do.

However if these were wanted to be in just one document or file - for example for an online book - is that possible in MuseScore? Maybe not!

It can be done with hiddden staves and/or hidden instruments, but is there another way? I never like using hidden features unless there's really no other way.

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• Oct 23, 2022 - 13:07

What you are describing is what Parts are for. See https://musescore.org/en/handbook/3/parts

You can create a score wth SATB and piano. Enter/copy whichever way you want to populate those staves. Then you can create three different parts that contain 1} just piano, 2} just SATB and 3} both SATB + piano. The last one is not essential as it contents are the same as the full score, but it can be useful to have the full score full sized to facilitate editing content but also have the SATB + piano with different fomatting - e.g. full sized piano staves but small sized SATB staves.

The score and all the parts live in the same single .mscz file. You can also export various combinations of parts and score to a single .pdf file.

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• Oct 23, 2022 - 15:11

I'm not really understanding what you mean here - attaching a sample score would help. Are these two versions meanr to be played simultaneously or one after the other? If simultaneously, simply add the two new vocal staves. If sequentially, you can add an instrument change to voices - not sure why you say this wouldn't work just because the piano staves are a single instrument? But if for whatever reason it's a problem, simply set up your score as two one-staff piano instruments instead of one two-staff instruments. Or add all instruments and use the "hide empty staves" option, which is what it is for - not something to be avoided, but something to be taken advantage of.

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• Oct 23, 2022 - 18:24

I really dislike the hide features in MuseScore - though I can see that they are sometimes necessary. The solution of using two piano one-staff instruments could work, as then presumably there could be a horizontal frame inserted at the point where the choir version is to be used. The idea really would be to have the two scores - not very many bars - on one page.

Steve's solution could be the best -though I'm not quite sure how it works. It might not work so well for the two examples on one page score, but it might be more generally useful.

I'll give both these methods a shot, and maybe post the results here.

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• Oct 23, 2022 - 19:51

Maybe I'm not following properly.
I created a few measures of four part harmony on a regular piano staff. Then I copied those measures to a spot later in the score. At that point, I created an instrument change to Voices. That made the bass clef change to treble clef. I changed it back. Seems OK to me. Treble clef is women and bass clef is men. It gets trickier if you want each voice on a different staff.

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• Oct 23, 2022 - 23:01

I think you almost got it - but that doesn't quite work. What I think you achieved was probably something like this:

piano-choir example-v1.png

The instrument change to Voices which you mention is only actually to one voice - as shown in this example. That is Soprano. It kind of works because of the way the voice soundfonts work in MS at present - my suspicion is that all the voices are actually basically the same soundfont. Indeed you would have had to change the lower stave to bass clef, but the system still thinks that the notes are to be sung by sopranos, which is why most of the notes in the lower stave are shown in red.

I would prefer it if the first two lines of staves were clearly marked as Piano, and the bottom two lines clearly marked as SATB.

If the mixer is tweaked it should be possible to split the voice parts to give an appropriate spatial effect, though it would also affect the piano for the first two lines - and strictly not in a sensible way.

It's almost a workable fix, but I do wish there wasn't just only a choice of various kludges.

Thanks for trying, anyway.

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• Oct 24, 2022 - 03:11

That's interesting and curious. I didn't know that would be possible. Is that an undocumented feature?

However it doesn't give quite the same effect, as the voice part still appears as a piano in the mixer, and I don't think there are separate controls for panning the men and the women, or for adjusting their relative volumes.

Thanks for posting this.

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• Oct 24, 2022 - 04:11

You don't say what about the hide empty staves feature you are having trouble with. It works perfectly and solves the problem 100% in seconds. as far as I can tell. The score you attached uses the other technique I described - two piano instruments of a single staff. That should work perfectly as well, as long as you limit consideration to cases where we are talking about two scores with the same number of staves, and where you don't also need to generate parts that make sense.

So, if you are having some sort of problem with the score attached here, using either the instrument change solution or the solution involving hide empty staves, please give precise steps to reproduce the problem so we can understand and assist. Or if there is something you are trying to do that you are unable to do, please let us know in more detail.

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• Oct 25, 2022 - 10:42

I'm not having problems. I just wish MuseScore would sometimes do things differently. To get some jobs done it is often necessary for the user to have more knowledge of the intricacies of MuseScore, as well as having to do more operations which take longer.

I can't really see why something that looks like a two stave piano score can't be copied, and then just changed to SATB as it's pasted back in. None of the methods shown as examples actually do that, as the details of the printed version do change.

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• Oct 25, 2022 - 10:47

But it can. If only you were willing to use the tool fit for the job: Add the instruments, copy from piano; paste to SATB, then use hide empty staves to make it look like what you want.

The only reason we're going through hoops and different suggestions here is because you seem unwilling to use the easy solution.

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• Oct 25, 2022 - 14:22

In what way is it not as simple as suggested? What specifically goes wrong when you follow those steps?

No matter what features are provided, there is a good chance some people won't figure out how to use them without taking a minute to read the instructions. That's true of any sufficiently complex tool. It's possible to try to make things more obvious, though. It's still not clear if you are having difficulty or not. If you are, again, please explain the problem in more detail so we can understand and assist.

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• Oct 25, 2022 - 15:43

Which details change, and foloowing which of the two given? Again, please give us precise steps to reproduce the problem. Then we can understand and assist. It works perfectly when I try using either of procedures I described, so if it isn't working perfectly for you, we'd need to understand exactly what you are doing, and at exactly which step something goes wrong, and what exactly goes wrong.

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