Increase duration without changing note
I need a 16th note (with a tenuto) to sound like an 8th note; but, due to notation reasons, I cannot make it an 8th note nor tie it to another 16th. I also cannot make it an invisible tied 16th because invisible notes take up space and the beat count would be off (everyone loves 3 and 3/4 beat measures). Is there a solution to this problem?
Comments
I would suggest using the piano roll editor (aka PRE). See https://musescore.org/en/handbook/3/piano-roll-editor
In reply to I would suggest using the… by mike320
Thank you! That did the trick.
While the piano roll editor can be used to do this, something seems not right. Why can you not make it an eighth note? Only reason I could imagine one might think that is there is another note that starts a 16th later, but this is solved easily and correctly using multiple voices. Basically, if you can't notate it that way, you'll never be able to get a musician reading the score to understand it. If you attach your score we can understand and assist better, so you can end up with music that will actually be readable.
In reply to While the piano roll editor… by Marc Sabatella
It's purely notational. The part used to have two tied 16th notes (that split beat 4) but I decided to make it one 16th with a tenuto instead. A friend of mine, my piano accompanist from when I played in high school, suggested the change. He said, at the tempo of the piece, the level of precision (the two tied 16ths) wouldn't matter much to a player; so, I should focus more on making it easier to read with one 16th note and mark it with a tenuto to let the player know it's supposed to be slightly longer. Alternatively, he suggested to make it a 16th note tied to an 8th, but that looked (and sounded) way too long. A 16th with a tenuto serves my purpose well. I just wanted it to sound correct during playback.
In reply to It's purely notational. The… by CptBraddock
I'm not sure which note you mean, but on the syrface, I would say, if it sounds different from what you have written, it is not correct. People playing your score play what's written, they don't know what modificatiosn you made int he piano roll editor. If you want a note longer, you must notate it as such. It's possible you misunderstood something about what your friend told you, it's also possible he is simply mistaken (many people who read music a lot are not necessarily as well-versed in the intracacies of the rules of notation and music engraving).
FWIW, I do see other things not notated correctly here that would also be worth fixing. The diminuendo in measure 2 should not require an invisible note and all the other manual adjustments you made. I'm guessing you did that to get the "pp" to appear, but that was unnecessariy - you can add the "pp" directly to the diminuendo (eg, click the hairpin, double-click the dynamic in the palette, or use drag & drop). This produces better layout with much less effort. Only drawback is you will need to set the velocity change on the diminuendo manually, but that's still less work - and, again, better layout, which is really the important thing - than what you did. And the same basic thing throughout really - you've worked much much harder than necessary to get the hairpins to work, and the results still don't really look right, whereas everything works correctly out of the box if you use the method I described.
The fadeouts starting in measure 14 work well, I'd say you found the right approach: invisible hairpins with explicit velocity change. I'm not so sure I'd have bothered with the fadeout itself, I probably would have just used the hairpins themselves as simpler to write and at least as simple to read, but both are valid notational choices. My concern with the fadeouts is they really look like accent markings in some of the places you have used them - eg, the series of quarter notes in measure 25. I'm not so sure there really is any added value to that marking in that context, there really isn't time to do much beyond what the tonguing and airstream would accomplish naturally. But if you do keep all the fadeouts, I'd consider adding a text explanation of the desired effect.