How to prevent noteheads from merging in different voices?

• Jan 11, 2025 - 22:44

Hi everyone,

I'm using MuseScore to copy a score, and I've run into an issue. In one part of the score, there’s a chord in voice 1 and, in voice 2, a dotted eighth note followed by a sixteenth note. As shown in the first image, both stems are facing upwards, but the noteheads remain separate (they don’t merge, unlike regular chord notation).

However, in MuseScore, the noteheads merge by default (as shown in the second image), and I can't figure out how to prevent this from happening. Is there a way to keep the noteheads distinct, as in the original score?

Thanks in advance for your help!


Comments

In reply to by Jotadee

Ordinarily, you would have had to move the notes manually to get them overlapping in this fashion. The default is for the notes to NOT overlap.

In your case, try hitting the Reset button immediately above the two Offset fields. This should reset them both to "0".

In reply to by TheHutch

"Isn't there a way to do this automatically?"

This is what MuseScore does automatically in common cases (see the measure "A" in the GIF below),

Except that the case is a little more complex here. When you want to add the quarter note A (I typed it in with the mouse to better understand what's going on), you'll find that the A will collide with the stem of the D, dotted 8th.

To avoid this, MuseScore positions this D before the two quarter notes in Voice1. This is the "default" in this case. It's perfectly correct from an engraving point of view (measure "B" of the GIF), and can be left that way, of course.

If this doesn't suit you, there are two solutions here:

  • either, as already mentioned, act on the horizontal offset (measure "C")
  • or change the direction of the stems of the two voices. You've already started to do this, by flipping the D, dotted 8th upwards with "X" key I guess. (And in this state came your attached score).

If you had done the same ("X") with a note from Voice 1, the A or the E, you would have obtained the result of measure "D".
But you see that the voices (1&2) stems are not in their "natural" direction. It's up to you.

NB: for the record, the value of second note C in voice 2 is not correct (dotted 8th, instead of 16th), I realized this after creating the GIF, and I don't have the courage to repeat it !

Video 1.gif

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