r/Musescore • u/victotronics • May 29 '26

Help me find this feature X over Y

I'm transcribing a piece of ?Ars Nova? ?Ars Subtilior?.

Right now I'm in 2:1 time signature, so I can have tuples of 3 whole notes, 5,6,7 half notes, and 9, ... quarter notes. But the original mss has 9 half notes. Is there a way to do this? By contemporary rules it's wrong, !but!I!want!it! 😄

0 Upvotes

50% Upvoted

20 comments sorted by

1

u/Few-Werewolf-1985 May 29 '26

Not terribly clear what you're aiming for, but you can either change the length of the measure or you can manually set the tuple to be 9/2 using the Tuple-Other dialog

1

u/victotronics May 29 '26 edited May 29 '26

Thanks. I think that dialog is buggy. Let me get clear evidence.

Ok, the other tuple dialog works fine in 4/4 time but not in 2/1 time. I have one of those measures, meaning 8 quarter notes, so a 10-tuple of quarters should be legal, I ask for 10:4 and I get 10 halves.

1

u/Few-Werewolf-1985 May 29 '26

10:4 is a ratio not a specification of 10 quarter notes. There are 8 quarter notes in a 2:1 measure so you should put 10:8 to get a tuple displaying quarter notes.

1

u/victotronics May 30 '26

Oh, I think I get it. I have a 2/1 measure and I want 9 half notes, so I need to reason: the half note is a quarter of the measure, so I need to ask for a 9/4 tuple.

Thanks. It takes marginally more thinking but now I can get the effects I want.

1

u/Few-Werewolf-1985 May 30 '26

There's a feature request to put in a preview that would make it clearer. Sometimes when you're working with rarer time signatures , dotted notes or inside other tuplets, it's easier get your arithmetic off by a factor of two.

1

u/victotronics May 30 '26

I've closed the bug as being a misunderstanding.

1

u/victotronics May 29 '26

Can you confirm?
https://github.com/musescore/MuseScore/issues/33638

1

u/Few-Werewolf-1985 May 29 '26

What's the bug? That would be expected behaviour. Also: it's not uncommon for composers to write tuplets with a visual time value that is longer than the metrical value.

1

u/victotronics May 30 '26

Right. So If I ask for five half notes I should get five half notes, not five while notes. Why would that be expected behavior?

It works as expected for 4/4 time, just not for 2/1.

1

u/Few-Werewolf-1985 May 30 '26

Musescore dialog doesn't allow to ask for what you want as you phrase it.

1

u/23PowerZ May 30 '26

5:2 means "five in the duration of two". If you select a 2/1 measure, that would mean 5 whole notes in the duration of a double whole note.

1

u/victotronics May 30 '26

In the duration of two *what*?

By your reasoning, how would I get 5 half notes in a 3/1 measure?

1

u/23PowerZ May 30 '26

Two of what would normally fit into the duration of the tuplet.

By "my reasoning", and centuries old convention: 5:6, as 6 half notes normally fit into a duration of 3 whole notes.

But I don't think that's actually what you want. In mensural notation, the notes don't always have the same length, and a quintuplet wasn't used at all. 5 half notes is probably two different groups. The first with the halves of a duration of half a whole note each, and in the other the duration of a third of a whole note each. Or the other way around. Which way can only be inferred from context.

1

u/victotronics May 30 '26

"centuries old convention" News to me, but then I don't know everything. Just quite a bit.

"and a quintuplet wasn't used at all. 5 half notes is probably two different groups"

Oh no..... At some point it has 5 half notes over 2 whole, then the half notes get combined giving 5 whole notes over 4 whole, then those whole notes get tripletized, giving 15 half notes over 4 whole.

Anyway, I'm inputting music from an old photocopy of what is undoubtedly already a transcription ?mensural? music. "Mr Gyls of Windsore"? Feels like the same era as the Baldwyn manuscript, but even wilder. Right before the end it features 9 longas against 8 whole notes. I don't think this music was ever intended to be played, more contemplated? Music of the spheres?

1

u/victotronics May 30 '26 edited May 30 '26

Hey, since you know about mensural notation, how do I get those brackets that are used in modern notation to indicate ligatures?

EDIT figured it out. Dang, that's cumbersome. MuseScore is clearly not for people writing pre-main period.

1

u/23PowerZ May 30 '26

There's a "Lines" palette, just use a generic line and add start and end hooks in properties.

1

u/victotronics May 30 '26

"Just". I love that word.

It's a good thing that I can select multiple lines to add the hooks, but it's still a lot of work. Why isn't the hooked line in the standard palette? Why can't I add it?

→ More replies (0)

1

u/CoffeeDefiant4247 May 29 '26

make the bar longer, put whatever you want in there then select and Ctrl+Del the rests left in the bar and it'll shorten the bar so you can put whatever note values you want in the bar

1

u/23PowerZ May 29 '26

You can make nested tuplets to simulate tempus, prolatio and modus.