Entering piano music - best practices
How do people enter piano music? More specifically: how do you deal with the multiple voices per staff that piano scores are so full of, with voices beginning and ending in the middle of a measure. I've been toying with two different models:
- enter one voice at the time, completely, then go back and do the next one. The problem is that it is so easy to miss those pesky little one-note middle-voice entries (much easier with choral scores, where everything has to be notated precisely for each singer),
- enter one measure at the time, with all voice details. The disadvantage is all the back-and-forth, and the switching between voices all the time.
Which method do you use? Or are there other and better ways?
(This should have nothing to do with input method - midi keyboard or computer keyboard, the problems would be the same, no? - but if it has, what I'm interested in is computer keyboard input)
Comments
Mostly, I enter piano music starting with one voice until I reach the end of the system. Then I return to fill in any others.
If it's a complicated piece with more than 2 voices on a staff, having a dense texture (with complex note timings) , I may plod along single measure by single measure. My "piano" instrument is electronic and so it can produce orchestral sounds which sustain longer than piano; and therefore a score which "mimics" an orchestra often has voice entry/exit timings (polyphony) which require greater attention to enter accurately.
N.B.: I am not talking here about composing music from scratch.
In reply to Mostly, I enter piano music… by Jm6stringer
Yes, I was also thinking of entering/transcribing music, not about composing. And about more complex multi-voice music.
In reply to Yes, I was also thinking of… by eyolf
In this sense, by transcribing music the most practicable way for me also is to enter all voices system per system, starting with voice one, following with other voices step by step (favorite note input is the computer keyboard ;-).
I typically work a measure at a time with respect to the notes themselves, but entering other markings later. Switching voices takes a small fraction of a second via keyboard shortcut and seems a practically insignificant part of the time spent. But if I were forced to enter notes with a mouse, that would perhaps change my thinking.
In reply to I typically work a measure… by Marc Sabatella
I agree - it's not really that much of a problem, other than the problem that the practicalities of piano music creates...
![Screenshot from 2021-01-25 19-05-33.png]( "Screenshot from 2021-01-25 19-05-33.png")
That said, there may be room for improvement. One quite frequent situation is this example:
Voice 1 has some line, voice2 enters in the middle of the measure. One then has to switch to voice 2, enter a rest, hide it, then enter the music (and then hide rests for the rest of the measure.
A great improvement for piano music would be if there were some command: "Add to voice2 at this place only" - something vaguely similar to "Add note to chord".
Anyway, I'm glad to hear that my working method isn't entirely off. Thanks!
In reply to I agree - it's not really… by eyolf
It's still not that bad, though, just enter left to right, hiding what you want as you go. It's only if you stop thinking of it as left to right but instead random notes at different beats that things start to seem complicated.
In reply to I agree - it's not really… by eyolf
In that situation, I would add the G and B to the E in voice 1, and then move them to voice 2. That way, MuseScore will create the rests automatically, and it is quick and easy.
In reply to In that situation, I would… by [DELETED] 1831606
Marc: agreed - it's not that bad. But still: some information is there already (i.e. the exact position in the bar) but is "discarded" when one changes voice, so one has to navigate back to the same position in the new voice. Using that information directly would have been an improvement.
BSG: can you do that? Move notes from one voice to another while still in input mode? I can't find it. And you would still have to go back and make the rests invisible manually, right?
In any case: since (a) this is not an uncommon situation with piano music (I've learned; why can't people just write vocal scores...?), and (b) the way to get around it is by using hacks that only expert users know of, there might after all be potential for a feature request here.
In reply to Marc: agreed - it's not that… by eyolf
No, you have to exit input mode, click on the note, and type ctrl-alt-2, and then you're "in" voice 2 for more entry.
In reply to No, you have to exit input… by [DELETED] 1831606
That would make it take even more keystrokes and actions than changing voice and entering the music there.