How to arpeggiate across two voices?

• Aug 14, 2012 - 00:46

Is there a way to make MuseScore arpeggiate a chord whose notes are in two separate voices? I write guitar scores, and since everything is on a single staff, the bass notes are generally written in a separate voice so that they can have different durations than the treble notes. However, if I were playing the passage in my screen shot, I'd probably arpeggiate the four-note chords in their entirety, and would like to indicate this in the score. If I apply an arpeggio symbol to the lowest note, however, it won't cover both voices. Of course, it works just fine if all the notes are in the same voice.

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Comments

Double click the symbol after adding it and it puts you into Edit Mode, where you can stretch it upward or downward as desired. Playback won't be affect, but hopefully that's not your priority here.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

Thanks, Marc. That helps a bit; at least, it makes the score more accurate. I wish it could play back that way, too, but I realize that MuseScore's main focus is the appearance of the notation. Up until now I've been arpeggiating only the treble notes so that the effect can be heard on musescore.com.

Another thing I've noticed about the playback of arpeggiated chords: If one of the notes in the chord is repeated later on in the measure in the same octave, even by itself, it is likely to be cut short, i.e. played staccato, presumably because the arpeggio caused a timing delay. This is most pronounced if that following note is short to begin with. For example, if the arpeggiated chord consists of dotted quarter notes and is followed by an eighth note, the eighth note is played staccato, and sounds more like a sixteenth or even a thirty-second. I have to use the effect sparingly.

I came to this very old thread to get an answer to the same question, and have found a way to do what the OP asked for. Add the bass note to the upper voice and the lower voice. Hide the bass note in the upper voice (keystroke - v) so that the chord aligns properly. Then use the selection editor (F6) to select only the upper voice. Select the chord and apply the arpeggio symbol of your choice.

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