No good options for tablature of multiple voices

• Mar 8, 2025 - 02:58

Suggestion: Add the ability to generate a single tablature linked staff from multiple voices (polyphony within a clef), as well as multiple staves (eg. grand staff notation). Ideally, the tablature would represent the merged notes between all the included voices and staves. Unlike in the standard notation, the tablature rhythm notation would just need to represent the relative timing of the notes, rather than the duration of the notes, so a tablature merging multiple voices makes more sense than merging notes from multiple voices into one on the original staves as a workaround.

Background:
Options for tablature instruments playing polyphonic music seems to be a little bit lacking at the moment.
In the case of polyphonic music such that there are 2-4 obvious lines, that are preferentially (and commonly) notated using multiple voices in a single staff, or if it is an instrument in a lot of range (such as 4+ octaves) that can be more clearly notated in grand staff (so as to not require 6+ ledger lines everywhere) with multiple voices. However, this causes an incorrect tablature linked staff to be generated (see attachment for single staff multiple voices example). In the attached example, the correctly generated rhythm notation in the tablature should be all quarter notes.

When multiple staves are involved (grand staff notation), the situation is even worse: Notes from the other staff ends up completely missing from the tablature. As you can imagine, this is not idea at all.

The current choices are:
1. As is
+ notes in different voices can be much more correctly sustained in playback
- annotations of rhythm in the tablature is completely wrong, making the tablature alone useless for sight reading
- If there is more than one staff, the notes themselves end up missing from the tablature
2. rewrite available music to be in single voice single staff notation.
- it is a very manual process. musescore refuses to transfer notes from one voice to another unless the note durations match that of existing note duration in the other voice in the same position
- playback of the music is now strange, as notes that are ideally held are played back short.
- this approach shortchanges the abilities of musescore to support multiple voices
- the standard notation now makes less sense..
+ the tablature now has correct notes and rhythms though

Even though there is a workaround for generating correct tablature, it requires sacrificing both the standard notation and the playback to get there.

Ideally, one can just generate correct tablature without having to rework the whole score and also degrade the playback. There is a significant amount of scores on Musescore for a single tablature instrument in standard notation with multiple voices.

Attachment Size
multiple-voice-tab.png 18.94 KB

Comments

"Suggestion: Add the ability to generate a single tablature linked staff from multiple voices (polyphony within a clef)"

Already possible with this plugin: https://musescore.org/en/project/merge-voices-4-1
(Compatiblity: Version 3 only for this moment).
NB: the way is first, from a standard staff, to merge multiples voices in a single voice. Then to generate a linked (or not) TAB staff from there.

In reply to by cadiz1

Oh ok! thanks for the mention! So this still results in the option 2 I mentioned above, albeit in a less manual way, with all the other stated drawbacks, and with additional drawbacks
- it works in version 3 (I use version 4 so not really an option at all for me)
- does not support triplets
- very slow

It would still be far better to have built in support for this

In reply to by Keshi

" (I use version 4 so not really an option at all for me)"

It's an option for everyone (including myself and many of us for various reasons) if we really want it, especially as versions 3 and 4 can cohabit perfectly on our hardware without interfering with each other.
I switch from one version to the other according to my projects and needs, and that's it.

Which instrument does this concern? ? And could you attach a score in standard staff of this instrument (containing 2 or 3 or 4 voices) ? Just to show you what can be achieved with this plugin.

NB: "It would still be far better to have built in support for this"
Yes, of course.

In reply to by cadiz1

I didn't actually try the plugin, because looking at the sample output, it seems to have at least the same limitations as what I showed in option 2. See that with quarter notes in voice 1 and half notes in voice 2, resulting all quarter notes. Now the score is more limited in expressing voicing, as well as the playback is compromised. I'm sure the plugin will speed things up a bit by partially automating it though.

One class of instrument that would benefit from this would be lutes, particularly those with larger range (archlute, baroque lute, etc). I'm sure something like a 6 string bass guitar would also benefit..

Here's a score with multiple voices but only one staff. Just imagine some of those low notes an octave even lower and you'll see why grand staff would make things more readable if you're reading the standard notation. But having tablature notation would also be helpful for playing from too.
https://musescore.com/user/12408881/scores/7570952

In reply to by Keshi

  1. Your Kapsberger score (3 voices)
    1kas.jpg
  2. After applying plugin (so, reverts in single voice)
    It may need a touch-up or two here and there, but it's easy to fix it.
    2kas.jpg
  3. After changing to a TAB staff for theorbo (I left it in French Style, logically it should have been in Italian Style)
    3kasp.jpg
    NB: we should have transposed a little lower beforehand, as some notes become too high for the theorbo.
  4. To improve playback, we've got another plugin for that: https://musescore.org/en/project/tab-ring

In reply to by cadiz1

Thanks for the pointers! Okay, so I installed musescore 3.7 (recent mac build) to try. I wasn't able to log in to musescore with it, oh well. The tab ring plugin sounds interesting so I installed that too, but it just crashes musescore to desktop whenever I try to actually open it from the plugins menu.. unfortunate.

In reply to by Keshi

"but it just crashes musescore to desktop whenever I try to actually open it from the plugins menu.. unfortunate"
With what score?
Attach it here on this forum (.mscz format is accepted of course, as you do for a picture), no need to log on to musescore.com to show and download this score.

In reply to by cadiz1

I know that it's mainly cosmetic but I'll give the info box a few more pixels as I don't like it implying a scroll. Maybe there is even an option to force the scroll bar off.

In reply to by Keshi

I'm on MacOS Ventura 13.5.2 (MacBook Air M2) and I use the TAB Ring 1.4.6 plugin with great success:

    https://audio.com/audius/audio/courante-robert-de-visee-mm-123-no-clicks

    https://audio.com/audius/audio/st-james-infirmary-blues-solo-guitar

Here's an example of "after and before" TAB ring ... where I intentionally reduced a multi-voice score to a pure procession of eighth notes in a single voice, thus each sustained note is sculpted via TAB Ring.

    https://audio.com/audius/audio/kathy-s-song-intro-tab-ring-comparison

Despite lots of very gratifying successes I noticed that merely opening TAB Ring causes recent releases of MuseScore Evolution 3.7 to abend.

The most recent version version of MS 3.7 that I find compatible with TAB Ring is:

    3.7.0.4524440406, revision: f3d36a3

OS: macOS 10.16, Arch.: x86_64, MuseScore version (64-bit): 3.7.0.4524440406, revision: f3d36a3

It's likely that there are versions beyond MS 3.7.0.4524440406 that comport with TAB Ring. I first noticed the crash when I started using v 3.7.0.12582252621 (3.7.0.12582252621)

In reply to by scorster

Thanks scorster, it does therefore appear to be an issue with the Mac builds, which explains why I can't reproduce it since I can only test it with Windows, (runs fine in both 10 and 11).

It might be worth reporting on GitHub to see if any of the 3.7 contributors can find a fix.

In reply to by Keshi

Yes, the merge voice plugin really is very, very slow and although I have pin-pointed where, I can't find a fix.

The playback issue for option 1 can be more than fixed with TAB Ring, (assuming the crash is fixed). The other issues with option 1 may be fixable by changes to the voices-4-1 plugin.

However, due to the current plugin API limitations in MS4, TAB Ring is not portable from MS3.

I'm confused as to what you are having problems with. except for the limitation of single staff. That's probably not gonna be possible to get around. (At least any time soon.)

Here's a two-voice tab created in 4.4.4. I created it for guitar because I don't know diddly about lute/theorbo (except that they exist :-). It took approximately two seconds to create the tab from the multi-voice standard notation using a linked tab. There are several options for the appearance of the tab; this is the one I like. (Somewhere I have a three-voice score in guitar tab; I just couldn't find it.)

Attachment Size
20250308 124226 - multi-voice tab.png 48.76 KB

In reply to by TheHutch

"It took approximately two seconds to create the tab from the multi-voice standard notation using a linked tab. There are several options for the appearance of the tab"
This is not at all what the OP is talking about.
"because I don't know diddly about lute/theorbo"
This explains why.

In reply to by Keshi

Yes, there's a different format of the guitar tab that does not show the note durations. This is the easy part of creating tab with a linked staff. I have been assuming that a linked tab could create the lute tab; that's the part I don't know about.

In reply to by TheHutch

Even with the limitation of single staff, it produces a lot of incorrect rhythm notation when the notes are across multiple voices. I have set the font to modern for obviousness. See this example of a two voice score that I have attached. It looks okay only until the second half of the first measure, where the first error occurs. That note duration should absolutely not be a dotted quarter there, it should be a quarter. It should then be eighth on the third beat. The rest of this line is similarly all incorrect. As you can see, it is only generating the note value notation from the first voice. It all falls apart when there are multiple voices.

Attachment Size
image_2025-03-27_090054028.png 54.88 KB

In reply to by Keshi

I'm confused. Is this related to the plugin or to something else? The plugin generates note information from all 4 voices.

You say, the second half of the first measure, (i.e. beat 3), should be a quarter but then you explicitly say beat 3 should be an eighth? This seems to be a contradiction.

Where did the notes between the staves come from?

You have cropped the top of the first stave so there is some ambiguity.

I don't understand the lettered tablature at all so I can't make a useful comment about it.

In reply to by cadiz1

No I did not. This is musescore 4.5.1. To produce this I took a grand staff score, made the first staff voice 1, second staff voice 3, and pasted the first staff notes into the second staff, deleting the first staff afterwards. This results in a staff with notes in voices 1 and 3. I then created a linked staff and changed the style to 6-str french.

Attachment Size
incorrect-tab-rhythm.mscz 92.33 KB

In reply to by Keshi

Just to reiterate that historical tablatures (is what you use with the French-TAB style) were never intended to express 2, 3 or 4-voice polyphony. And as far as I know, none of the other important score-editing programs (Finale, Dorico, Sibelius...) do this. Incidentally, for historical tablatures (fonts, options), MuseScore wins by a wide margin...
You'll never find this in any score for lute, theorbo, archlute, etc. It's the performer who, with his or her knowledge and experience, reconstructs this polyphony from the tablature.
In the more modern or contemporary style, on the other hand, MuseScore is able to do this with "Common" staff types, with Voice 1's rhythm displayed above the staff, and Voice 2's below - see image below.

voix guitare.png

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