Vertical alignment

• Jan 5, 2025 - 23:21

This is not so much how to do something in MuseScore, but if what I have done in MuseScore is acceptable.
To the point - or points:
- I want to submit a song I have to our choir with SAT vocals but without a piano part
- I also have a SAT version with piano part, but at too high a key
- I transposed the piano part of the latter (B flat to A flat) and merged this with the former using MuseScore
- I allowed (is there a choice?) MuseScore to comfortably layout the sixteenth notes for piano (I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day). This resulted in an 8 page score
- When I added the lyrics to the vocal notes there was considerable collision of the lyrics, so I moved the notes and corresponding lyrics horizontally for clarity/legibility

Here lies my dilemma. I play classical guitar i.e. I am only reading one line at a time. Although my score is musically correct insofar as the bars align and the music flows clearly, is the vertical non-alignment of the beats a problem for a pianist leading a choir? Or, should I rearrange the score to give more spacing - resulting in approx 14 pages to manage further down the line?


Comments

Across instruments, by default, the beats should align. If you have moved a lot of stuff around, however, then stuff will not all align.

Post your score (the MSCZ file)
Post an image of what you want it to look like.

In reply to by TheHutch

My apologies; I’m not making this clear. The beats of my vocals and piano are mis-aligned because I moved the lyrics/notes to eliminate lyric collision. I confess I didn’t think of beats at first, and I was then reluctant to increase bar spacing (an obvious solution) as this would result in many more pages. This led to my question if this would throw a pianist, however, both your comments, at least insofar as they go, lead me to think that it would!

I have now re-arranged this with beat notes aligned. The lyrics are not so evenly spaced, and in some places are rather close together, but I am much happier.

However, in the process I have realised that changes were not occurring in the way I thought. At first, I was moving notes and then matching the lyrics in position, believing that these elements were moveable independently - as the norm. Then I discovered that if you move the lyrics then all the notes vertically matching also moved, although sometimes in a random manner. The only thing is that this does not seem to be universal, which added to my earlier confusion, with some lyrics movement resulting in no notes movement - possibly, not necessarily only, the first and last notes in a bar.

Thank you for above comments.

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