Muse Score Update
OK the update is refusing to do this.
I have selected a new score unpitched percussion, common drum set.
TIME SIGNATURE IS 4/4
I choose Voice 1 and INPUT FOUR Bass Drum Quarter notes.
So far so good.
I choose Voice 2 input is set to a quarter note & Select command 5 for a 16th Quintuplet.
I close the Pedal HiHat and the quarter note Bass Drum is over written with a HiHat.
I was under the impression that choosing voice 2 would allow for both the HiHat Quintuplet and Quarter Note Bass drum to co exist on the staff.
I tried both input methods with same result.
What am I missing here???
Comments
After "So far so good" and before "I choose Voice 2 input", you need to be sure that you are still or again in note input mode.
1) Press N to turn on note input.
2) Press 5 to set the duration to a quarter note.
3) Press the letter ("A"?) to input the bass drum notes, four times for four quarter notes.
4) Without leaving note input mode, press Left four times to move the cursor back to the beginning of the measure.
5) Press Ctrl+Alt+2 to activate Voice 2.
5) Still without leaving note input mode, press Ctrl+5 to set the duration to the quintuplet. This should create a quintuplet of rests in Voice 2. If it overwrites the quarter note with the quintuplet rests, you've missed something.
6) Press whatever letter the Pedal Hihat uses five times to enter five quintuplet notes into Voice 2.
If this doesn't work, attach your score (the .MSCZ file) and we can take a look at it.
Best to also include your computer's operating system and version, and MuseScore's version. You can get all three simultaneously by clicking on Help / About MuseScore from the main menu. Then click the copy button (two pieces of paper) next to the "Build" number and paste that into your post.
Some observations.
Unless you have edited the drum set, I don't think it possible to select voice 1 and enter bass drum notes. Bass drum is by default voice 2. As is pedal high hat. You can change voices after notes are entered.
Are you sure you want Pedal high hat for the quintuplet. It isn't physically possible. I think you want the regular high hat.
And yes, I cantell by your use of "command" that you are a Mac user.
In reply to Some observations. Unless… by bobjp
Really??? I would certainly assume that most drum kits can play simultaneous bass drum and pedal hi hat. One with the left foot; the other, the right.
You can't have a quarter note and a quintuplet sixteenth on the same beat in the same voice - not because of some limitation in MuseScor,e and not because of anything having to do with any update - it's just not musically possible. To have the bass drum on the same beat as the pedal hi-hat in the same voice, they need to have the same duration. So, don't enter the quarter note for the bass drum. First create the quintuple, then add both the bass drum and pedal hi-hat to the first beat (enter one, then press Shift while entering the other if using the pads or shortcuts).
Unfortunately the drum set cannot do this as Bass Drum and Pedal HiHat are always same voice.
Musescore should allow four voices for drum sets after all I have four independent limbs.
The only way to notate the polyrhythms I was experimenting with was to write in bass clef
by choosing contrabass as instrument and then changing note heads for cymbals and HiHat.
No Playback but it's the notation I was after and I don't need to hear it as I can play it.
Thanks to all who responded.
But why can't I notate an Octuplet or group of 12 over a bar of 5/4 ?
The distance of a whole note is not long enough for large tuplets.
Why can't a metronome be equal to an odd value?
an example would be a quarter note tied to a 16th note.
Yes I know this is unusual, but I am tired of being forced to make everything even.
If I can hear it and play it why can't I notate it?
In reply to Unfortunately the drum set… by jackverga
Why would you want them in different voices? There is no need for that. What I suggested would be the simpler way to notate it
But if for some unusual special reason you really do want to force the bass drum into voice 1, that certainly works. When you create the quintuple in voice 2 and enter pedal hi hat it stays in voice 2. I tried it and it worked just fine. If you have a score where this doesn't happen, please attach it and give precise steps to reproduce the problem.
And you can certainly have four voices on percussion staves - it's just almost never necessary and almost always a very bad idea. There are almost no rhythms that can't be notated with just two voices (hands voice one, feet voice 2), given that durations don't matter so you can use standard "tricks" like the one I described. That's how it is normally done - not just in MuseScore but in published drum music in general.
To create a tuplet over 5/4, start with the default measure rest and split that.
You can certainly enter a quarter note tied to a 16th, and it will be notated and played exactly like that. The metronome won't do that of course, but you can absolutely notate it and play it.
In reply to Why would you want them in… by Marc Sabatella
OP's originally described situation is why you need two voices for feet ... and two for hands. Because most drummers (and most other people too) have two hands and two feet. One voice (one foot) is playing quarter notes on the kick bass; the other voice (and the other foot) is playing a different rhythm on the Hihat. This is an extremely common thing for a drummer to do, with both feet and hands. Indeed, I would expect that to be almost always what a drummer would want to notate.
I was trying to explain HOW to enter notes into two voices, but y'all seem to be saying that he can't do that on a drumkit?????
In reply to OP's originally described… by TheHutch
No, you almost never need two voices for feet or two for hands. I explained exactly how to handle that exact situation with only a single voice - the way the vast majority of published drum music does it. You might think of the bass drum as being a quarter note because you are kicking it once per beat, but notationally, it works exactly the same to simply combine it with the pedal hi-hat quintuplet sixteenth, because notated durations don't usually matter for drums. Sure, there are some rare cases where the rhythms of what is going on might require two voices for the two feet, but they are quite rare, and this definitely isn't one of them. Even when those rare situations come up, it's still perfectly possible to use all four voices on drum staves.
No one is saying you can't separate the kick and pedal into separate voices - I am simply pointing out this is not how a professional editor would do it, and not how most drummers would be accustomed to reading it. but if you have some unusual special reason to complicate the notate in that way, you can certainly send any note to any voice.
In reply to No, you almost never need… by Marc Sabatella
Mark, I appreciate your efforts in replying to me and trying to solve the rhythmic issues
I am encountering.
But your concept of time and rhythm are based on the rules of 19th century music.
Which musescore follows correctly.
I personally find the concept that a metronome can only be based on an even or dotted note value quite antiquated, and doesn’t allow for easier ways to notate odd rhythms.
A metronome can be any note value your imagination can think of, and then teach yourself to hear and feel.
Yes, I know no notation or sequencing program allows this.
And I suspect it is based on the limitations of MIDI’s code base and the lack of imagination and rhythmic understanding and abilities of the programmers.
Finale at least had the ability to create any tuplet value in any meter.
Musescore will not allow me to place an octuplet over a 5/4 measure as it
Forces it to the whole note value of four quarters.
It would be better if tuplets could be entered over selected notes in a measure
rather than being forced to a note value. Yes, I know this creates a lot of mathematics solving for the programmers but this is what professional drummers have been doing in their playing
For the last 30 years. Shouldn’t notation programs be able to keep up with what drummers are doing?
Not all drummers aspire to be pop artists and to be quite honest if you want to be a drummer, you should be able to learn to play 4/4 time on the drums by ear. For drummers very little has changed in pop music since Chuck Berry, James Brown and the Beatles.
If you can’t hear and feel quarter notes eighth notes and 16th notes and understand what you’re hearing and feeling, you should not be a drummer. Notating simple rock/pop drum beats for drummers is a waste of time as many of them can’t even read notation and they play all those beats by ear so they don’t really need a drum book full of things they already do. Musescores drum notation is locked to old ideas about what drummers do.
As a professional drummer after 10 or 15 years of playing the same thing over and over and over for all kinds of bands and recording sessions you will realize you are repeating yourself and at that point you have a decision to make, you can keep doing what you’ve been doing, and if you have had some success at it, you can continue in the same way earning a living, but if you harbor the dream of being creative then at some point, you have to break with what you have been doing and find new paths to take in your musical self expression.
That’s what odd groupings, odd meters, polyrhythms, and metric modulation offer to drummers and musicians who have an open mind and are willing to explore the music of the 20th and 21st centuries.
What I was trying to notate was one foot playing in five while the other is in four
while the hands are playing eight or 12 notes in the same span of time.
Either foot can play bass drum or high hat
Conceptually either foot could be considered the time or meter.
Which leads you to either 4/4 or 5/4 as the time signature.
If you go with 4/4 you end up with 16th note quintuplets with four rests in each one which is a notational nightmare to read and musescore refuses to beam over the rests and doesn’t support the feature Finale had of adding stems to the rests which helps the eye see what attacks are happening in the odd grouping and if you go with 5/4 there is no way to place the groups of eight or 12 over the meter.
In one of the responses to my posts, someone suggested using individual staves for each part
But that is only confusing and would obscure what is happening rhythmically between the different rhythms you are trying to play.
In reply to Mark, I appreciate your… by jackverga
I think you are misunderstanding me. When I talk about a convention of using at most two voices from drum music, I am very specifically talking about 21st century drumset music - jazz, rock, modern concert band and orchestra, etc.
Metronomes aren't music notation - they are devices for helping people count. MuseScore is a notation program, not a playalong aid, so it is focused on features used in music notation. And you can absolutely notate whatever rhythm you want and use it as a metronome if you like (hide iun in the score. It's only the built in metronome used for playalong purposes that is limtied to the beat-focus that musicians have used for the last half a millennium or so. But just because the *built in" metronome is optimized for the type of music that 99.09% of users write, you are still free to create your own click track using whatever rhythms you like.
But in any case, again, if you have a case where it makes sense to use more voices, that's totally fine - you can use up to four per staff, including for percussion. Somehow you seem to have gotten the idea this isn't supported,d but that's not true - it absolutely is. You are also completely free to create an octuplet over a 5/4 measure, and to beam over rests. Stemlets are also possible with just a little fiddling. It's not clear have questions about how to do this after reading it, or if you are just wondering if it's possible, or if you tried and something went wrong, but in any case, we're happy to help you get the job done - just explain your problem in more detail if the answers I've given already don't solve it.
In reply to I think you are… by Marc Sabatella
Unfortunately, muse score does not do what you say it will. From my reading of the manual and my interacting with the program, I can find no way to make a tuplet grouping last more than a whole note. The program says I must pick a note value for the tuplet to be defined. So please tell me how I can make a tuplet that spans more than a whole note.
In a measure of 5/4, I can find no way to notate an octuplet over the entire bar.
You also stated that Muse score supports stemlets for rests.
I’ve looked through the preferences and all the style settings and can find no mention of this anywhere, so how is that done?
When it comes to any of the drum sets being used as the instrument, the bass drum and high hat pedal always default to voice 2 and I can find no way of separating them except by using a different musical instrument, and then changing the note heads to look like drum set notation.
what I’m trying to notate is 1 foot playing five attacks while the other foot plays four attacks in the same amount of time.
This can be done in either 4/4 time or 5/4 time. One foot will represent the quarter note pulse of the meter while the other must play a tuplet. Since Muse score forces, both feet into voice 2 they are forced to be beamed together and into the same rhythmic grouping, which visually obscures the fact there are two different speeds occurring at the same time. If I could place one of them on voice one and the other on voice two, then the stems could go up on one of the voices and go down on the other voice, and the difference in speed between the two voices would be visually apparent to the student.
When teaching this to students, they first have to get their feet doing this before they can even imagine accompanying their feet with another rhythm and when the notation visually shows them the difference, they get the concept much more easily than if both feet are locked to the same mathematical amount and are beamed together as if they are both the same rhythm and one voice is simply a syncopation of the other voices rhythm.
In reply to Unfortunately, muse score… by jackverga
In a 5/4 measure select the whole measure rest, then apply the tuplet (Ctrl+3 for a triplet)
In reply to Unfortunately, muse score… by jackverga
As Jojo observes, you can creates tuplets of any total duration by selecting a measure rest in a measure of the desired duration. You can then also copy/paste that tuplet to other measures, so you can have that same five-beat tuplets in a 6.4 measure, etc.
I didn't not say stemlets for rests are supproted directly. I said the beaming over the rest is supported (which it is, just select the rest and click the join beams icon), and that stemlets for rests can be achieved (with some fiddling) - via invisible notes in other voices.
To move a note to a different voice than the one you select as the default in your drumset definition, just enter it into the default voice and then mvoe it to the desired voice (e.g., in normal mode, via the Tools / Voices commands, or the voice commands on the toolbar or equivalent shortcuts). You can also enter notes into any voice to form a "chord" with existing notes via Shift. Or enter a note that defaults to the desired voice and then change its pitch. There are other methods being considered for future updates, like the possible that no voice will be selected by default at all when you first enter note input mode but if you select a voice, it will be used in preference to the voice defined for the drumset.
Anyhow, for 5-agaisnt-4 on the same beat, you do indeed need multiple vocies. That wasn't what you originally described though - you described a single note against a quintuplet. That's easily doable in a single voice as I explained. But if you actually want four sixteenths in one and a sixteenth note quintuplet in the other, you do indeed need separate voices, so use the techniques I described.
@jackverga
The way the drum palette is set up, you can't choose what voice to enter anything in from the score. Whether you need to or not is not the point. By default the bass drum and pedal HH are voice 2. But you can change that. With the palette open, select Customize Kit on the far right. There you change the voice, notehead, and position on the staff for the instruments. Read in the manual on how to save this to be your default kit.
And you absolutely can have an octuplet in a 5/4 bar.
I'm not sure that if you can play it you should be able to notate really holds up. Notation has always been rigid, while music is not always so. People have been trying to notate African Djembe music for many years. They get close, but never spot on. As a drummer, I think you can guess why. Also consider that traditional sitar music is so complicated that it is taught by ear only.