Select upper/middle/lower note in voice
I love the wide variety of selection options that are available in MuseScore! They save me so much time. Though, I frequently wish it were possible to select only the upper/middle/lower note of a chord within one voice. (See the attached 'Selecting lower notes.png' file). This would be very helpful for creating practice files for choral pieces when a transcription does not separate out the parts into voices.
Since there may be multiple middle notes in a chord, it would be nice to have options to select the middle, upper-middle, or lower-middle notes, which, together with options to select only the upper or lower notes, would cover nearly all common situations. (See the attached 'Selecting upper middle notes.png' file)
In the temporary absence of a middle voice in a selection, such a feature would need to either default to selecting the upper note or not select a note for that chord. Ideally, there would be an option to select which behavior is preferred. This would especially be true if there were two middle notes in most chords but sometimes only one middle note, as users would likely prefer that the middle note of a chord be selected instead of the upper note or no note.
Perhaps the most robust and useful way to implement such a feature would be to allow the user to select a hierarchy:
To select the notes for a Soprano 2, a user could specify:
1 - Upper-middle note
2 - Middle note
3 - Upper note
Which would result in the selection shown in the Selecting Soprano 2.png file attached. When there is no upper-middle note, the selection will choose a middle note. When there is no middle note, the selection will select an upper note.
A selection hierarchy of:
1 - Upper-middle note
would select only the upper-middle notes.
Of course, even just a simple upper/middle/lower option that defaults to selecting no note when necessary would be incredibly useful!
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
| Selecting lower notes.png | 43.23 KB |
| Selecting Soprano 2.png | 52.01 KB |
| Selecting upper middle notes.png | 51.15 KB |
Comments
I think this plugin may do what you want, perhaps nor exactly in the way you describe, but with the same goal and result.
https://musescore.org/en/project/prunestack
In reply to I think this plugin may do… by SteveBlower
Thanks! I will give it a try. At a glance, it does look like it will get me most of the way to what I'm looking for.
I cannot suggest a solution for what you are asking for. But if you write using Voices, you have the opportunity to select very precisely between four different vocal parts. I use this technique all the time when creating separate SATB practice files for a church choir. For example:
![MuseScore_voices.png]( "MuseScore_voices.png")
See the Handbook on this topic of Voices:
https://musescore.org/en/handbook/3/voices
Also, you might find the "Chord Level Selector" plugin useful (https://musescore.org/en/project/chord-level-selector). Or the "Explode" command in the Tools menu. If you attach your actual score and describe what you are actually trying to do once you've selected these notes, we can understand and assist better.
In reply to Also, you might find the … by Marc Sabatella
Indeed, the Chord Level Selector plugin looks useful! I'll give it a try.
Attached are files, along with an explanation:
I conduct a church choir, and commonly select music that is in the public domain. As an aid to my choir, I make MIDI files for each voice part, and often of various combinations of voice parts. MuseScore has an excellent library of public domain sheet music, so I can often find a transcription that is close to the song we're singing. Thus, I am often working from someone else's transcription, which may not consistently split parts into voices.
For example, I may find a transcription of 'Come, Thou Fount'
![1 - Piece to make practice files for.png]()
and then separate the parts into their respective voice parts: 4 - End goal 1.pdf . I usually then duplicate each part with a piano, to add a distinct attack as an aid for learning rhythms: 5 - End goal 2.pdf, Come, Thou Fount (End goal 2).mscz . Having to copy/paste the piano part into each voice part and then manually delete the upper or lower note is a hassle, so I was hoping for a way to automatically select all upper or lower notes in a selection, to save time. Then, I was thinking that it would be useful to be able to handle such operations in more complex music, where there are 3-part, 4-part, or even 5-part splits happening on one staff, all represented in the same voice. Hence the above feature request.
WHOA. As I have been gathering attachments to illustrate what I am trying to accomplish, I realized that the Explode tool is exactly what I'm looking for. Somehow I misunderstood its functionality until now. Many thanks for your reply! What a feature!
Here is the demonstration that revealed the power of the Explode tool to me:
![8 - Varied chords to voice parts.png]( "8 - Varied chords to voice parts.png")
I was hoping for a feature that could take the piano part in the above image and select only the notes that an alto 1 middle would sing (any individual notes, the lower note in a 2-note chord, the middle note in a 3-note chord, and the lower-middle note in a 4-note chord). And likewise for soprano 1, soprano 2, and alto 2. My hope was to be able to select the appropriate notes, and then to copy them and paste them into the alto 1 staff.
Lo and behold, Explode does exactly that, but even more efficiently! Brilliant! Consider this feature request resolved / irrelevant, since I can't think of a use case that wouldn't be better served by the existing Explode tool.