Changing from score to chord symbols
Hi
Please accept my apologies in advance regarding the nature of this question. I'm evaluating several scorewriting packages at the moment and would like to understand if MuseScore (1.3) will do a particular job. If it does then I will roll up my sleeves and go through the tutorials carefully. I'm just concerned that it could take me a very long time to discover that it doesn't do what I'm after.
Assuming you are ok with this, here's the question:
Q. Is it possible to write a piece with chords and a melody line and then at a later date choose to present it alternately either as a leadsheet (i.e, so I can see the melody line and chord symbols together) or as a full score with the melody on one stave and chords written out in dots on a second stave?
Many thanks for any light you can shed on this.
Duncan
Comments
Welcome aboard!
In reply to your post:
1. You wrote: "a piece with chords and a melody line".
Yes, MuseScore can attach chord names to the melody line. These chord names will even transpose along with the melody should you ever wish to change to a higher/lower key.
Lyrics can also be entered.
2. You wrote: "a leadsheet (i.e, so I can see the melody line and chord symbols together)".
What specifically is the difference between this and #1 above?
3. You wrote: "a full score with the melody on one stave and chords written out in dots on a second stave"
I'm not sure what you mean by "dots". If you mean whether you can add a staff to manually write out a chord accompaniment (for example, as in the bass clef staff seen in many piano songbooks) then the answer is yes.
You can always add/delete staves and/or instruments to an existing score.
All this merely scratches the surface regarding MuseScore capabilities. Please read the handbook, watch the tutorials, browse the forums, and download the software.
Regards.
In reply to Welcome aboard! In reply to by Jm6stringer
Hi
Thank you very much for your thoughts.
Your answer at 1. is very helpful.
Just to respond to the question you raised at 2., I wrote that quoted text because I was trying to draw a distinction between that and the following part of the sentence, namely "full score with the melody on one stave and chords written out in dots on a second stave".
For your question at 3., by "dots" that is simply my slang for properly written score.
I can see I didn't write it very clearly. As the rest of your question has also been picked up by some of the other respondents so I will jump to that part of the thread to clarify.
By the way, should it help with context, I'm not a student, just an adult trying to find something that is workable for a bunch of volunteering friends, some of whom can sight read but can't really manage with just chord symbols, whilst others can't sight-read but can improvise from chord symbols. I'm trying to find some way that we can, literally, all play from the same song sheet. Something we all have in common is a non-musical day job, hence the grindingly slow pace and blatant attempts to stand on the shoulders of other more involved sorts.
Thanks again
Duncan
Yes, it can do all those things, if you tell it to. But if you're looking for some sort of automatic "look at this piano arrangement and extract a emlody line and figure out chords symbols based on the acocmpaniment" function, that's not going to happen. There are probably programs that attempt that sort of artifical intelligence, but I wouldn't trust any such function, personally.
In reply to Yes, it can do all those by Marc Sabatella
I read that the other way, that he wanted to write the chord symbols and have the software generate an accompaniment staff (or staves) from them. But that's not likely to happen either.
In reply to I read that the other way, by ghicks
Yes, I think you're right about the direction. It is true MuseScore won't do this automatically, but that much at least is more feasible to implement if you don't care too much about the quality of the generated accompaniment, and there are a number of third-party programs to do this (see for instance Impro-Visor, which is free / optn source like MuseScore). So you *could* generate the accompaniment automatically elsewhere, then import it into MuseScore as a separate score.
In reply to Yes, I think you're right by Marc Sabatella
Hi Marc Sabatella, ghicks and Jm6stringer
Thanks for all your replies. To clarify what I didn't really get across earlier, my original post wasn't so clear:
1. I accept that to attempt to generate some score from a chord symbol is going to present ambiguities in respect of the inversion and octave.
2. I accept that to attempt to determine a chord symbol from a group of notes is going to mean both:
a) choosing whether to address just the notes played at a given instant, or choosing to put a (manually selected) box around a group of notes and addressing all those in the box
b) that to go from some intervals to a chord name could involve an arbitrary choice of root, or it could attempt some likely chord shapes until something fitted.
Here is some context. I'm not a student, just an adult trying to find something that is workable for a bunch of volunteering friends, some of whom can sight read but can't really manage with just chord symbols, whilst others can't sight-read but can improvise from chord symbols. I'm trying to find some way that we can, literally, all play from the same song sheet. As an aside, the playback feature is not so important to me, other than as a quick way for the various friends to grasp what the piece sounds like.
Hence I don't mind the problems of 1 or 2 if the outcome is mostly usable. i.e. I don't mind if the starting point is score or chord symbols, I'm just looking for an efficient a way to create lots of leadsheets and be able to provide something that everyone can work with. If writing the chord symbols and the corresponding score has to be done manually then so be it.
As it happens, I have used Impro-visor in the past. I haven't yet found any functionality like this in it though I have coincidently found that it (even the latest version) will no longer run on my windows 7 laptop, throwing up some sort of Java like class problem.
Thanks again
Duncan
In reply to Hi Marc Sabatella, ghicks and by mildlyodd
The *usual* way of dealing with this is not to have separate parts, but to simply put chord symbols above the piano arrangement. This is similar to how most published sheet music for pop songs etc is produced. It is called PVG format (piano, vocal, guitar), and it uses three staves - two for the piano, one for the vocal and guitar. So I'd just do that and not worry about automatically generating anything. The downside is that you end up with more page turns than would be necessary if you had separate P and VG parts. If that is a concern, then I would go one step further and actually generate VG part from the PVG score, which *can* be done automatically.
So, create with score with two instruments: vocal and piano. The vocal instrument will have one staff, and you attach the chord symbols to that. The piano instrument will have two staves. The full score will show all three staves - this is exactly PVG format. Then if some people would rather see just the melody and chord symbols, simply generate the parts in in File / Parts. Chances are no one would want to play from the P part, but it doesn't hurt to generate it. I'd print the full PVG score and the generated VG part.