Chords not working properly

• Jan 15, 2014 - 21:32

Hello,

I am having trouble with notating a dissonant chord. I am trying to create a chord consisting of the notes Ab and G natural. I have tried all the different methods of chord creation mentioned in the handbook, yet Musescore only displays and plays one of these notes and not the other (the note which Musescore chooses to play varies inconsistently with each trial). This neither works on the Alto Clarinet line, which is the originally intended instrument, nor does it work on the piano line, which I used to test it. Previously in my score, I have had similarly close chords work perfectly on the Alto Clarinet line, but for some reason, this does not work anymore.

I am using Musescore 1.3 revision 5702, and am running OSX 10.9.1.

I will appreciate any help or advice you can give me. Please refrain from any unnecessarily snide or rude remarks which I so often see on these forums.

Thank you,

-Eli

Comments

• Jan 15, 2014 - 21:47

This could be yet another variant of the problem we currently see with MuseScore 1.3 and Mavericks. You could try whether 1.2 works any better for you, get it from the download page

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• Jan 15, 2014 - 23:08

No one even knows what the problem with Mavericks compatibility is. One of the problems went away with 10.9.1 (?), so it seems to have been something Apple broken then fixed. The rest of the issues may turn out to also be this.

But I haven't heard of anything like what you are describing. Please attach a sample score and steps to reproduce - exactly what you are doing, what you expect to see happen, and what happens instead.

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• Jan 16, 2014 - 03:00

Here it is, I mean I literally just opened a new project with the parameters you see in the score and tried to create the chord I wanted, to no avail. This is the exact rhythm that I want (the three half notes over two 3/4 measures), but the middle note (the tied one) should be G and Ab, which I cannot manage to type out in any way. As you can see, whenever I try this, it only shows and plays one note. Try for yourself and see if it happens for you. I'm using an M-Audio Keystation Mini 32 midi keyboard for musical typing.

Attachment Size
Chord Error.mscz 1.76 KB

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• Jan 16, 2014 - 06:30

Again, it would be helpful if you described *exactly* - step by step - what you are doing. Otherwise, it's difficult to guess what you could be doing wrong. I don't normally use MIDI, so I am not too sure of the steps when entering notes that way. But based on what it says in the Handbook in the section on Note entry , the following *should* work to enter what I think you are describing:

1) click first measure
2) press N
3) type 6 to select half note
4) play G# then release - this enters the first half note
5) play G & Ab simultaneously then release - this enters the quarter note chord and ties it to a quarter note in the second measure
6) play F & G simultaneously then release - this enters the last chord

At step 5, instead of just playing the chord with the half note selected and having MuseScore create the tie for you, you can instead select quarter note, play the G+Ab to enter the chord on beat three of the first measure, then play the G+Ab to enter the chord on beat one of the second measure, then leave note mode, select the chord on beat three, and press + to create the tie yourself. It's conceivable you could just press + after entering the chord on beat 3, but I don't know if that would tie both notes of the chord or just one.

As I said, I rarely use MIDI, so I can't swear any of that works as I think it does. What I *know* works is doing the equivalent using the computer keyboard. In particular, at step 5, you press 5 to select quarter note, type G to enter a G on beat three, then Shift+A to add an A to the chord, then down to flat it; then press G to enter a G on beat one of the next measure, then Shift+A & down again, then exit note entry mode, select the chord on beat three, and press +.

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• Jan 17, 2014 - 00:57

Thank you for your help. It doesn't work with either of my MIDI keyboards to play the exact notes (G and Ab), but it does work to hit G and A, and then flatten A (although I could have sworn I tried this before and it didn't work). I think there is a problem with Musescore defaulting to G# rather than Ab, and it won't recognize a chord containing both G and G#. This seems to be the case with all half-step intervals where the higher note is the lower note sharpened; C and F, for example, work fine. Do you know of any setting to change Musescore's default accidentals to flats instead of sharps?

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• Jan 17, 2014 - 02:00

I don't know of a way to influence the default spellings. I don't think it's literally always sharps, FWIW - I think it depends on key.

But your post gave me a hint: I think it *did* add both notes; they just aren't displaying as you'd want. You can see the G# in the second measure if you click the G in the first and move it up with the arrows.

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• Jan 17, 2014 - 05:06

Marc-Wow, you're right...that's really weird. I did notice that when I deleted the visible one note, there was still a note left behind--thought it was a glitch, but I guess it really was creating the note after all. If I hit G, then while holding it down, hit the Ab/G#, I can arrow it up and back down again to get the Ab. There does still seem to be trouble with Musescore creating two tied quarter notes over the barline when entering a half note, but I guess for a little more work I can just create quarter note chords on either side of the bar line and then tie the notes together manually.

garos-Yes, that is another method, and would actually require a bit less work to get the desired notes displayed. I just tried using that method to tie the chord over the barline, and it still only displayed the chord on the downbeat of the next measure, and only one of the notes displayed on the final beat of the preceding measure, where I started my two-count chord.

This led me to investigate, and I believe I have found another problem that may have been the cause all along. Any chords, at all, cannot be automatically tied over the barline: for example, if I am in 3/4, and wish to create a two-count chord consisting of a C and a G starting on beat 3 (so that it ties over into beat 1 of the next measure), I hit C on my MIDI keyboard, and while holding C down, hit G, so that Musescore creates a chord. However, Musescore correctly ties the C over (it being the first note I hit), but when I hit the G, it only stacks it on top of the chord on beat 1 of the second measure, and NOT beat 3 of the first measure. I believe that, as long as you continue to hold down your initial note (or hold down SHIFT on the computer keyboard), Musescore should create that chord on both sides of the barline and automatically tie them together, instead of me having to manually build the chords on each side and tie them myself.

If I lost you anywhere, please let me know. I feel like this might have just turned into a feature request, but I'll leave that judgement up to the regulars on here. It just seems like fixing this could majorly improve everyone's workflow.

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• Jan 17, 2014 - 06:13

I followed you. Tying chords is not a strong suit of MuseScore. Again, I don't know about MIDI, but with the computer keyboard, you have to enter the chords separately then tie them later, and attempts to do it more directly lead to the same sort of half-tied glitches you are seeing. So no surprise to me its that way in MIDI too.

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