Different time signatures for each hand of a piano staff
Hello, I want to write a piano score where the time signature for left hand is different for that of the right hand. For example, the G clef staff could be 4/4 and the F clef staff could be 5/4. Is that possible with Musescore? Thank you!
Comments
Would you want them to be at different tempos, so the barlines still lined up? Or are you asking for staggered barlines?
I think the nightly builds for 2.0 support the former but not the latter. I haven't figured out how it works, though. Supposedly something about using ctrl while draggng the time signature to the staff.
In reply to Would you want them to be at by Marc Sabatella
I was thinking more on a "staggered barlines" option. Say, if you have on the left hand 4/4 and 6/4 on the right hand, eventually they will line up on the fourth bar and on the third bar, respectively, and then they will part ways again. I don't even know if this is common when writing, but it's fairly common when playing, at least, to have one hand/voice/part doing something on one time signature and the other in a different one, for a handful of bars. To write such a staff picking just one of the time signatures makes the other really awkward: the emphasys are all wrong, you have the tie a lot of notes because their natural lengths are broken by the barline, etc.
In reply to I was thinking more on a by Trucoto
It is not common at all, because it makes performance extremely difficult. The musical director cannot simply say, "let's take it from measure 47" or whatever, nor can he indicate where "1" is. It adds a huge unnecessary complication.
Note it is quite common for pieces to be structured this way *musically* - repeating patterns of different numbers of beats in different parts - but normally, all parts are written in the same time signature. And yes, that means bar lines appear in odd places in some parts. But musicians are quite accustomed to reading rhythms that go across bar lines; they've been doing ti for centuries. So writing it the way you describe makes things harder, not easier, which is why it is virtually never done.
None of this is to say there has never in history been a time when some composer decided to try it anyhow, and sure, some day, it would be nice if MuseScore supported this. I would just *strongly* advise* against actually using such a feature, because it actually makes the music *harder* to perform in most cases, not easier.
In reply to It is not common at all, by Marc Sabatella
Thank you very much for your insight. I never did that before, and I thought the natural solution would be that, but I see that you have good arguments against it. Thank you again.
In reply to Thank you very much for your by Trucoto
Do keep in mind that while I said I advise against notating staggered barlines and that musicians are accustomed phrases that cross boundaries, I have no doubt there *are* examples of people using the staggered approach and that there could be cases where it really does make sense. But that would definitely the exception, not the rule, when dealing with music of this nature.
FWIW, I'd be less uncomfortable seeing in solo piano music than in ensemble music, because the specific drawbacks I mentioned wouldn't be issues if there is only one musician.
As Marc said, what you are after is really uncommon and, usually, counter-productive.
Occasionally, it is needed (or useful) and, with some manual labour, it can be reached with MuseScore ver 2.0, currently under development but available for testing.
An example of 'staggered bar lines' implementation can be found in this edition of mines, where in Fantasie 10 I tried to render different prolationes across different voices with different measure lengths.
(Note: the uploaded file is rather old and reflects an old revision of ver 2.0; it may show strange things with latest revisions: this is to be expected when working with unstable development versions.)
It is achieved with two ver 2.0 specific features:
1) Each bar line can be made individually invisible (without making invisible the bar lines of other staves, same measure)
2) 'faked' bar lines can be inserted before any note
By careful planning and with some fastidiousness (line breaks become particularly complex), the goal can be reached.
However, it IS a very fringe case.
M.