Changing from Arco to Pizzicato

• Feb 25, 2018 - 03:03

When composing in MuseScore 2, how can I switch strings instruments from playing arco to pizzicato (and vice versa)?

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• Feb 25, 2018 - 09:49

If you use pizz. and arco all the time, it saves a a lot of effort if you create some preset text for "pizz." and "arco" using a Custom Workspace:
https://musescore.org/en/handbook/palettes-and-workspaces#custom-worksp…
See the attached screenshot, where I added "pizz." and "arco" to the Text palette. The special text was copied from an existing score, where I had already set the Change Channel property to pizzicato or normal for Channel 1 (as shown on Jojo's link). After that, I can always set the bowed or pizzicato property for an instrument very quickly (on Channel 1 obviously).
MS_Custom_Palette_for_pizz_and_arco.png

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• Feb 25, 2018 - 16:01

Thanks. So this is the relevant code:

    <Cell>
      <StaffText>
        <channelSwitch voice="0" name="pizzicato"/>
        <track>8</track>
        <text>pizz.</text>
        </StaffText>
      </Cell>
    <Cell>
      <StaffText>
        <channelSwitch voice="0" name="normal"/>
        <track>8</track>
        <text>arco</text>
        </StaffText>
      </Cell>
 

I believe the <track>8</track> is not needed, and adding elements with "tremolo", "mute" and "normal" should make it more or less complete, at least for strings and brass.

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• Feb 25, 2018 - 20:51

OK, I have some code ready to have those included in the text palette, but there's a problem with arco: for violin etc. (i.e. strings) it means normal, but for acoustic bass (the usually plucked instrument, in Jazz) normal is pizzicato and arco is arco, so how would one differentiate between those?

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• Feb 26, 2018 - 05:51

> there's a problem with arco: for violin etc. (i.e. strings) it means normal, but for acoustic bass (plucked instruments) normal is pizzicato and arco is arco, so how would one differentiate between those?

If plucked instruments never user arco or pizz. then maybe you don't need to differentiate.

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• Feb 26, 2018 - 13:09

No one who knows what he is doing would put playing directions on an instrument that is not capable of it. There are other instances where items can be added to wrong instruments such as pedals, that only exist on the piano and some pitched percussion, that can be wrongly applied to the guitar.

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• Feb 26, 2018 - 13:15

Indeed. And adding those to instruments that don't have these channels does nothing.
Poblem is that contrabass and double bass have 3 channels, normal (which here is arco), pizzicato and tremolo, acoustic bass has 5 channels, normal (which here is pizzicato), arco, tremolo, slap and pop

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• Feb 26, 2018 - 19:10

Unfortunate indeed. if you have to pick, go with the one that works for contrabass and let "acoustic bass" sort it out. I guess in hindsight maybe it would have been better to keep the same channel assignments but somewhere force the instrument to default to channel 2, if that's even possible.

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• Feb 26, 2018 - 20:45

Interesting, looks like you're right. So I guess we could make the change to instruments.xml. The new staff texts wouldn't work out of the box with older scores, but that's no worse than the situation now, so I'm sure I'd call that a compatibility problem. I do know that "normal" channel is special-cased in the code, though, as the default channel name. So I suspect there would be more to this than meets the eye.

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• Feb 27, 2018 - 09:45

OK, so what texts would usually be used for
a) strings, arco, pizzicato and tremolo. I think for pizzicato it should pizz., for tremolo it should be tremolo, for arco it should be arco, right? and the unnamed 'normal' channel renamed to 'arco'.
b) for acoustic bass, pizzicato and arco, I think for arco it should be arco, but I'm not sure whether for pizzicato it should be normal (and maybe that default channel doesn't need to get named then at all, could use the trumpet normal for this)?
c) for trumpet, mute and normal, mute should be mute I'm sure, not sure though whether normal should be normal?
d) any other instruments with multiple channels that need to get added?

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• Feb 27, 2018 - 13:06

My opinion from seeing printed music

a. Agreed
b. don't know
c. Mute and open (or con sord. and senza sord. which is more common in classical music)
d. There are other instruments that have multiple channels, like the harp which has a stacato and flageolet playing style. I wouldn't worry about those, let users (including me) who use those worry about the text channels.

I would create a "Playing Styles" palette for these instruments rather than adding them to the Text palette. The texts in the Text palette are generic and include staff text, these are nothing more than edited staff text.

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• Feb 27, 2018 - 14:09

Ah, thanks, open is the term I was looking for, cleats the 'reuse' question for acoustic bass, let's make it pizz./pizzicato there rather than normal
And I think those 5 strings don't harm at all being in the Text palette, Instrument change is there too and also deals with sound changes

So just harp and the e-basses are left with more than one channel but an unnamed 1st one, should that get changed and to what?

Maybe additionaly we could 'special case' normal to always mean 1st channel, named or not

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• Feb 27, 2018 - 15:38

See https://github.com/musescore/MuseScore/pull/3500

While at it, I'd like to add (more) channels for guitars, like 'muted', 'jazz', 'distortion', 'overdriven' and maybe 'harmonics', (the latter should be correct, but doesn't sound like harmonics to me) using the corresponding GM instruments, see attachment
Maybe even Soprano/Alto and Tenor/Bass channels to the Women and Men 'instruments' (and the closed score SATB templates), to ease muting/soloing those in Mixer, see other attachment

Attachment Size
Guitars.mscx 85.58 KB
Voice_mixing.mscx 27.36 KB

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• Feb 27, 2018 - 15:59

Sorry for the extreme brevity. I have seen some requests for different techniques to be made possible on a guitar staff. Most people I think work around the shortcomings and adding channels will help with playback. I've seen guitars with channels before, but I couldn't find them doing a quick manual search through the instruments and templates.

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• Feb 27, 2018 - 16:06

Jojo, in c), for nonmuted trumpets (for that sake, horns and trombones too), I saw many times "(nat)" or "(nat.)" in cursive letters, for "natural" , would be a good text for the default. I only saw them in scores when changing from muted to natural sound for the instrument. Attached a sample (horns returning to natural after being muted)

Attachment Size
naturnal_horns.png 47.38 KB

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• Feb 27, 2018 - 16:20

Your sample is from a handwritten score. I don't remember seeing nat. or nutural indicating open or not muted for brass instruments in printed scores. For Trumpets and Horns natural has an implication of instruments without valves. Open and Mute would be my first choice for these techniques since they are familiar to all English speakers (I expect these will be translated for other languages).

Having all these pre-set up for users will indeed be useful. Users like me (or midi1972) who prefer another default text are free to edit them in a custom palette, which I will definitely do.

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