Hoping for some advice!

• Jun 5, 2015 - 01:39

Gah, I accidentally posted this in the android group...

I've been putting the pieces I play on guitar into Musescore. The tab feature is so nice. If I change fingering I can record it in Musescore for later reference. I love it.

I just finished this one: https://musescore.com/user/1608996/scores/923906# and I'd really like to throw a quarter note of the same pitch (in a different voice) over the first note in each triplet. This would sound nicer in the player and also show how the lead voice should be sustained through each triplet.

The problem is that when you add another note, it gets smashed into the tab as a duplicate note (which it really is...) I've tried making the tab notation for these notes invisible, but it still thrashes the tablature.

My musical education is lacking in the scoring department, and wasn't sure if there was a symbol that I could use to denote letting the notes in each triplet to ring through.

Thanks so much in advance. You guys are awesome!

-Brett

Comments

• Jun 5, 2015 - 09:55

As you note yourself, in tablatures, you can't put more than one fret mark on the same string.

The current tablature implementation has some support for multi-voice, so in principle, it should dispatch the two equal notes (the two high B's in your example) to two different strings, if there are available strings. But:

1) In general, the possible cases and combinations with multi-voice are many and it is possible that the algorithm does not guess the right solution in all of them (AI does not exist, actually!)

2) In particular, if I understand correctly your specific case (I am not a guitarist), it seems to me that there are no available strings: the high B in the triplet takes the top string for itself and the lower B takes the second string: where the crochet high B should be put?

The written notation in the standard staff asks for two high B's, one held for a crochet and one held for 1/3 of a crochet.

If the intended meaning is that there is only one B, which should be kept while the arpeggio is played under it, then you hit one of the case where the tablature notation is not the 'translation' of the standard notation, but a different language in itself, with no automatic conversion. I do not know modern tablatures enough, in historic tablatures there is a specific sign to mean that (similar to a slur), which does not correspond to an added note, though.

If you really want both notations, each with its specific conventions, I see no real solution other than having two unlinked staves, one for the standard notation and one for the tab. To speed up things, you may try entering the bulk of the score with linked staves and then copy the tab to another, unlinked, tab staff for clean-up.

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• Jun 5, 2015 - 10:58

This is a piece that requires three voices (and not two, as in your score): this is the main point, and the source of your issue.
You need to enter the melody in voice1, then the tuplets in voice 2 and the bass in voice in 4 (in that order, for example, or the reverse)

From your score, I have simply exchanged the voices 1-2 and 2-4, then added the melody in voice 1 (after changing the stems direction of the voice 2)

Finally, you must hide (V) in Tab staff, the unused strings for the notes in unison. And make a some layout to avoid some collisions between beams in voice 2 and a few bass notes.

In addition, there were a number of errors in the score.

- Measures 19 and 20, it is an F # in the bass, not an A.
- Then, in measures 9-10 and 21-22, in the Tab staff, you must change the position of the B bass (fret 7, not 2, with Ctrl + Down key)
- Finally, measures 25-26, the barré is on fret 10, not 5.

I attach the "repaired" score.
1Spanish_Romance_DAmour.mscz

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