I can't find a way to enter alternate notes for lyrics

• Dec 2, 2015 - 11:43

Alternate notes are standard on sheet music. For example a word in the first lyric might use a quarter note. The second lyric uses a two syllable word and requires two eighth notes in that part of the melody. The alternate notes are always very small. Similar to grace notes.

I can't figure out how to handle alternate lyric notes in musescore.

Is that feature available? If not, what is a work around? Other than penciling in the alternate notes on my printed copy?


Comments

Enter them in a different voice an make them small (and silent?) via Inspector
Or use tied 8th notes, make the tie dashed or dotted and use a Melisma underscore in the lyric that has only one sylable for the quarter

In reply to by Jojo-Schmitz

I've looked up voices in the handbook. I see how they'd work in this situation.

So there isn't a way to just annotate a score with comments? Much like you'd pencil in notes for performing a piece? These alternate lyric notes could be considered personal performance notes. They don't need to play in musescore.

In reply to by CroceFan4life

You can certainly add comments - any text or graphics you like. And there would be nothing stopping younfrom creating a graphic of eighth notes and inserting that. But in cases like this, you normally want them to truly behave like real notes (eg, be spaced properly even as the layout of the score changes, or transpose should you transpose the piece, or copy and paste, etc). If you added these notes as a graphic, none of that would work correctly. So it's much simpler and more effective to just enter them as real notes, using another voice as mentioned. If you don't want them to play back, just uncheck the Play property in the Inspector. That's also where you'd make them small.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

Ok. I'll set up a new voice since that gives more flexibility. Thank you for your help.

Almost finished my first Musescore. I had to create a lead sheet from a score that didn't include a separate vocal part. Even worse, the second verse was a block of text that had to inserted into the melody. Musescore made the job much easier.

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