How best should I vary a short section in a subsequent verse?
I'm using the 2.0 beta, but this is a general question about music scoring.
I arranged a piece that repeats and has four verses. Each verse is 16 bars. Now I want measures 7 and 8 to be slightly different, for variation, in verses 2 and 4.
It seems silly to have to have all 16 measures shown anew just to show such a small change to a couple of bars -- twice in four plays-through. Practically speaking, what is a reasonable approach to scoring such a thing?
Attached is a simplified example using "Mary Had a Little Lamb" with two verses. I'd like, in the second verse, to play an E in Measure 6, Beat 4, instead of a C. I marked the note(s) in red. (Needs MuseScore 2 to open, I think.)
/d
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
| Mary_Had_a_Little_Lamb.mscz | 2.39 KB |
Comments
Just a simple direction should suffice rather than fancy footwork with DS al thingy.
I'd put the two notes in different Voices for clarity, hiding the rests. Increase the space above lyrics to 3.0. Increase Repeat count of last measure to 4.
In reply to Just a simple direction by underquark
Hey, that looks pretty good, thanks.
That said, the real score I'm doing this with has piano and two choral voices - each voice on its own staff. As with my "Mary" example, there's only one note that the voices sing differently on odd-or-even repeat. And the treble clef for piano doesn't even change. But the bass-clef line for the piano in that one measure is different to set off the variation in voice.
When I save Flac files and so on, I'd like to be able to have the actual sound produced...
MuseScore is primarily a layout program to create printed scores. Playback is secondary but it doesn't cater for every nuance that can be conveyed but apparently simple directions to a performer. I suspect that you might be able to do this by using voltas, multiple DS's and hiding measures but if you really want to print it out and have it played back to an audio file then perhaps the following?
Copy the section four times, make the note changes and play it back to an audio file.
Make another score with just the one section, both (/all) the notes and playback instructions for the performer and print that one.
Or, make a big file for playback and only print the first page(s) (use a Page Break after the first section). You'll need to show both (/all) notes in the printing bit but render the ones you don't want to hear as non-playing (F8, untick Play).
In reply to MuseScore is primarily a by underquark
More excellent ideas here. Thanks very much!