Add harmonic symbol for tablature: and harmonic notehead for staves

• Sep 27, 2015 - 09:54
Reported version
3.0
Type
Functional
Frequency
Many
Severity
S5 - Suggestion
Reproducibility
Always
Status
GitHub issue
Regression
No
Workaround
No
Project
MuseScore

Feature request for:

1. (Emmentaler?) black and white harmonic noteheads to be added to the noteheads palette. These are what guitarists (amongst others) use for harmonic notation. e.g.:

harmonics_various.PNG

See Lilypond special notehead glyphs :

lilypad_harmonics.PNG

2. Add paired angle brackets (<>) to the noteheads palette. Commonly used to put around TAB fret marks to indicate harmonics. e.g.:

harmonics_and_brackets.PNG

Comments

• Oct 9, 2015 - 10:39

Note: According to Lilypond, TAB staff lines are broken behind the angle-brackets (as shown in the image above) – staff text can't do this.

Reply

• Oct 10, 2015 - 14:25

There is a neat solution:

To add a guitar harmonic bracket to TAB

Standard angle-brackets are too wide but the following symbols are narrower and work very well:

1. Single left-pointing angle quotation mark (Alt + 0139), AND
2. Single right-pointing angle quotation mark (Alt + 0155)

Copy and paste these symbols into staff text (FreeSerif) . You will need to adjust the font size of the brackets in "text properties" and the number of spaces between the brackets. Leave the text background transparent. Use 400% zoom when adjusting. The paired brackets can be saved to a workspace (drag while holding Ctrl + Shift). e.g.:

harmonic_brackets.png

Feature request: Can you add these brackets to the "special character box?

Reply

• May 30, 2016 - 10:21
Title Guitar harmonics: Noteheads and paired angle-brackets ⇒ Add harmonic noteheads to "Note Heads" palette

Harmonics are common in guitar music. The existing "Mi" and "Diamond" noteheads are just too small.

Reply

• May 30, 2016 - 17:43

I don't know what you mean, the dimond head appears about the same size as the picture in the original post - a little larger, actually, in the default font. Bravura and Gonville weach provide their own variation, only Bravura seems unusually small to me but that's out of our control. Is there some *different* head you ared now requesting? Can you show examples from published music?

Reply

• May 30, 2016 - 22:48

That looks almost exactly like the standard diamond notehead in Bravura, does it not?

Interesting, Bravura (and hence SMuFL) does not seem to define a separate "harmonic note head - just the diamond. So unless they extend the standard to allow for harmonic in this way, there probably isn't anything much we should do either. You might try brining it up with them. Or maybe they will just say that's what the diamond is intended for, in which case, that's your answer - use Bravura if you like its notehead shape better than the one in Emmentaler.

Reply

• Jul 19, 2018 - 10:06
Title Add harmonic notehead to "Note Heads" palette ⇒ Add harmonic symbol for tablature: and harmonic notehead for stavesads" palette

Due to changes in MS 3.x (see #122481: Staff text out of position compared to 2.0.3), all previous harmonics in tablature using text will have to be readjusted. A dedicated tab harmonic "notehead" (which you could add from a palette) would be welcome. IME, the best solution is a symbol that combines a left- and right-pointing angle quotation mark (Alt + 0139 and Alt + 0155) around the fret number.

harmonics_and_brackets.PNG

Reply

• Jul 19, 2018 - 10:07
Title Add harmonic symbol for tablature: and harmonic notehead for stavesads" palette ⇒ Add harmonic symbol for tablature: and harmonic notehead for staves

Reply

• Feb 9, 2019 - 05:07

DON'T FORGET THIS!

Guitar Open Harmonics that fall between frets, no way to notate this. I can be achieved using TAB and decimal places, e.g. 3.2. I would like to see this added as a feature.

Attachment Size
Guitar Harmonics.jpg 150.08 KB

Reply

• Feb 9, 2019 - 05:09

<5> This is the standard way to represent open harmonics in TAB, there is also a need for decimal places to Open Harmonics that occur between the frets can also be notated. e.g. 3.2

Reply

• Feb 8, 2020 - 10:45

Also note that harmonic can change the fret number : if you play an harmonic on the fifth fret of the E string, this should appear as an E in staff and a 5 in tab. Currently we have to choose between A in staff and 5 in tab OR E in staff and 24 in tabs, which are both false.

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• Feb 13, 2020 - 17:48
Reported version 3.0 ⇒ 3.3

I'd just like to pile on that I too would love functionality for MuseScore to be able to do as this original feature request asks. This pops up in nearly every guitar arrangement I've made, and it would be lovely if I didn't have to do goofy work-arounds every time manually changing noteheads to diamonds, marking numbers in tab as invisible, etc.

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• Mar 2, 2021 - 01:43

Subscribing...

Btw, in Leland the diamond heads look reasonably sized:

diamondleland.png

Are those still an issue with the other fonts generally, or is MuseScore mainly now needing only the < >'s for harmonics?

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• Apr 12, 2023 - 02:38

Aside: unfortunately there was no progress on this ... and the issue tracker doesn't really do anymore, apparently.
But I figured I'd acknowledge that under Guitar category is the "Fade In/Out" symbols. Those, combined with
+ Rectangle frame
+ White Highlight
+ 0.0sp Border
+ High Corner Radius
+ Stacking Order = 1300 -> gives something kind of nice:
guitarHarmonics.png

Reply

• Apr 22, 2024 - 20:00

Still hoping that this is a feature we'll eventually see in MuseScore 4! Doing these manual workarounds tend to fall apart if making changes to staff spacing and such. I'd love to be able to just tell MuseScore that a note is a harmonic and for the standard staff notehead to turn into the diamond alongside the bracketted fret number to appear on a tablature linked staff.

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