Converting 4 part chorale to 3 stave organ score

• Jan 15, 2015 - 12:16

Hi,
Is there a simple way of taking a standard 4-part chorale score and converting it to a pipe organ score so that the melody is on the treble stave, the alto and tenor parts on the tenor stave and the bass part on the pedal stave?
Thanks


Comments

In reply to by Gecko06

But you wanted to merge Alto and Tenor into one staff

Copy the Soprano notes into the top staff of the organ, the Bass staff into the bottom staff of the orgam, the Alto staff into the middle staff of the organ, then merge the Tenor staff in to that middle staff using the method described in that Howto

In reply to by Jojo-Schmitz

Are you sure? I interpret "standard 4-part chorale score" to refer to a two-staff score, since that's the format that's used in all the chorale collections I've ever seen. "Part" does not necessarily equal "staff".

Also, the OP's reply about wanting "to split into several staves" would make absolutely no sense if each voice already had its own staff.

In reply to by Jojo-Schmitz

Again I have to disagree. The phrase used was "a standard 4-part chorale score". It's amazingly clear from his (?) response about needing to split staves that the meaning of this is "a standard score for a 4-part chorale". The standard chorale score has four voices deployed on two staves. Check out any publication of the Bach chorales for an example.

In reply to by ghicks

OK let's agree to disagree...

4 parts is not the same as 4 voices.
A part, in MusScore, is one or more Instrument, an Instrument can have one (almost all instruments), two (e.g. piano) or three (organ) staves, a stave can have up to four voices.

A closed score SATB score combines 2 'instruments', soprano+alto and tenor+bass into two staves, sopranoe and Tenor in voice one, stems up, alto and bass in voice two. Trying to extract parat, results in 2 parts. They are used to save paper.
An open score SATB score has four staves. This is what I regard a standard 4-part Chorale score.

Anyway, the entire discuss is mute until the OP clarifies what (s)he meant, and what ever it is, merging and splitting is possible and have ben desribed in this thread.

In reply to by Jojo-Schmitz

Apparently I have no influence over whether we disagree, so my agreement to disagree isn't required.

I'll just reiterate that if the OP meant a 4-staff score, there's no reason why s/he would want to know how to split staves (see the reply timestamped "January 15, 2015 - 1:39pm"). You wouldn't need to split staves if each of your voices started out on a separate staff.

Regarding what's the standard score format for chorales, take a look at the Google Images result for "Bach chorale" and get back to me.

In reply to by Gecko06

@Gecko06
Add instrument (organ);
Copy the melody on the treble stave and the others in the corresponding;
If you have two voices in the same staff: right-click on a note of the voice to be deleted Select / More> choose Same stave, Same voice and so on;
When the notes are all highlighted press Del
(use Exchange Voices if necessary).
Add Instrument: delete unwanted

In reply to by Jojo-Schmitz

Thanks all,
I'm sorry to have not been fully clear about the question. Yes I was referring to the typical piano/organ chorale score on two staves, and, usually they have on those two staves the 4 parts SATB.
For an average organist there are many occasions where it would be nice to be able to tease out the melody line to the top (of 3 organ staves) so that it can be more easily played as a solo on another manual. You would similarly pull the bass notes to the lowest stave for the pedal. That leaves the remaining alto and tenor parts to go on the middle stave to be played with the left hand.
A skilled organist wouldn't need to bother with all that and could easily play any chorale in that way without physically rearranging the score, but unfortunately I'm not quite at that level (yet) :(.
So, Its basically taking the 4 parts on two staves and rearranging them to the typical 3 organ staves with the melody as a solo on the top treble stave.
Also, is there then a way to select and copy, say all the melody notes from the treble stave, and move them to a new stave? It seems to me that I have to select each note one by one.
Thanks for your help - it's clear there is a lot of knowledge and experience on this forum.

In reply to by Gecko06

OK, copy the S/A staff to the top organ staff and the T/B staff to the bottom organ staff
In the top organ staff select one note of the Alto, right-click → Select → More... → tick same staff and same voice → OK, hit Del. Repeat with a rest from Alto
Repeat with a Tenor note the bottom organ staff, then swap voice1 and 2, then delete the rests in voice to.
Delete the Soprano from the S/A staff and the Bass from the T/B staff, copy one into the middle organ staff then use http://musescore.org/en/node/12345 to merge the other into that staff

In reply to by Jojo-Schmitz

I have a similar question but, in my case, the four parts, SATB, are set for piano accompaniment. Instead of having separate voices, this is set with two note chords in each clef, all with the same voice. I would like to find a way of splitting the two note chords so that I get two voices on each staff.

Jojo's method doesn't work in this case. Is this possible or do I have to manually delete all the alto and bass notes from the chords and then insert them all again as a separate voice? I have been given a lot of these to do and would really prefer not to have to edit them all note by note.

In reply to by Jojo-Schmitz

I am using Linux and the latest version in the repository is 1.2. So, I had to use Marc's suggestion, which seems to work just as well in version 1.2 as in version 1.3. This worked perfectly for separating the voices out. I was then able to put them back on the original staves using the link in the post above for merging. Now I am back to two staves but with separate voices rather than chords - perfect!

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