Correct Notation of 3 Voices On One Staff?
Hi,
I've been creating a piano reduction for a choral piece that I've written (side note-is there an easier way to create a reduction than entering everything in manually?) and due to the SSAATTBB I'm left with many tricky notations involving three voices on one staff. I don't really have a problem except for the times where all three voices are singing notes for different durations...which way should the stems go? One example is at the beginning of a measure, when the top voice sings a half note, the middle voice sings eighth notes, and the bottom voice sings quarter notes. It's even tricker because the bottom two voices begin a step apart. Which stems are up? Which are down? Which way are the bottom two voices offset from each other because of the proximity?
Thanks for the help... I've been looking at it every which way and nothing looks right. Also if anyone has an answer, it would help to be speedy because I'm supposed to send this to a church choir director tomorrow :)). If not, I'll just do it the way that looks neatest. Thanks!!
Comments
Probably a god idea to have soprano stems up and alto stems down, similar for tenor and bass, then you end up with a closed score style.
As for your side note: do you mean, you currently have an open format score with each voice on its own line already entered into MuseScore, and you are trying to produce a closed format on two staves for piano from that? Depending on the complexity of the music, you might be able to use the Implode feature as well as copy & paste, the selection filter, and voice exchange to get some of it going without re-entering all the notes. But realistically, there is no solution for the general case - your music might well be too complex to represent that way at all, might require different choices for which voice goes where in different passages, might require certain compromises to make it physically playable on piano, all of which requires a human expert to make intelligent decisions.
If you post your actual score then people here can give you advice on specifics, but there is not nor could there ever be a fool proof automatic method.
As for the main question of representing 3+ voices on one staff, as I suggested above, the decisions are going to be very context dependent, so we'd also need to see the actual score to give more specific advice. Might be some places it makes more logical sense to have top two voices up and bottom down but other places where one up two down makes more sense, also some places where it might be prudent to "cheat" a note length or other rhythmic detail to require fewer voices.