Writing guitar score playing instructions

[Chipotle]

I'm writing out a score/tablature for a song of mine, intended for middle or high school kids taking guitar lessons or a class. It's not complicated in terms of fingering or chords, but the right hand is doing some things that are difficult to notate.

The basic score looks like this throughout:


It's played with a stead down/up alternating eighth-note pattern. The low note is played by the thumb on the downstroke. The chords are played with index-middle-ring by plucking on the upstroke. On 2 & 4, the downstroke is a percussive strike on muted strings.

It sounds like this: Guitar Audio Excerpt

Anyone have suggestions about the best way to get this idea across better in the written score?

[JonPR]

The stroke you've marked with a slash should be a cross-head, or a stack as a chord, if more than one string is hit). Example here: https://www.musicradar.com/news/how-...picking%20hand.

If the muted strings are hit with the fingers, keep it in the top voice.
If it's the thumb (or pick) that hits the muted strings, put it in the bottom voice (instead of the rests) - the top voice would then need 8th note rests at those points.

[Chipotle]

Originally Posted by JonPR

The stroke you've marked with a slash should be a cross-head, or a stack as a chord, if more than one string is hit). Example here: https://www.musicradar.com/news/how-...picking%20hand.

If the muted strings are hit with the fingers, keep it in the top voice.
If it's the thumb (or pick) that hits the muted strings, put it in the bottom voice (instead of the rests) - the top voice would then need 8th note rests at those points.

Yeah, I started with three cross-head notes in the top voice, as you say, but the MuseScore playback system still wanted to play them as notes. With the rhythm slash it was muted so I could hear if things sounded right. I guess for the printed score I'll put it back into the top voice since it's done with the fingers.



Thanks for the reminder. Do you think the cross-head notes for "muted" will get the point across by themselves?

BTW, thanks for that link. Great reference to bookmark.

[JonPR]

Originally Posted by Chipotle

Yeah, I started with three cross-head notes in the top voice, as you say, but the MuseScore playback system still wanted to play them as notes.

Well, that's a different issue! Are you writing for human readers, or to hear notation played back accurately?
For human readers, the cross-heads are understandable. The slash head just looks like "repeat the previous chord", or "play the above chord in any shape or voicing you like".

Originally Posted by Chipotle

With the rhythm slash it was muted

So that's a problem the guys at musescore need to fix!
It's a weird mistake for a notation software designer to make, to be honest, because that symbol is well understood, and it doesn't mean "mute this chord". It's the cross-head that means that.

BTW, I have similar problems (and worse) with guitar sounds in Sibelius, a hugely expensive program, not free like musescore! In fact I just downloaded musescore 4, because of how good its bend programming is for the sounds. (Sibelius is great with notation alone, of course, it's the sound playback which is surprisingly crude.)

Originally Posted by Chipotle

Do you think the cross-head notes for "muted" will get the point across by themselves?

Yes; as well as can be done in notation anyway. There are a lot of subtle guitar techniques that are difficult to notate clearly - still less to get software to play back convincingly!

[Chipotle]

Originally Posted by JonPR

Well, that's a different issue! Are you writing for human readers, or to hear notation played back accurately?

Hearing the notation software play things back is another way to check for errors, IMO. That's really what I use it for. I have had people send me "recordings" of pieces they obviously just generated from the notation, though.

Playback in general is a thorny issue for the SW programmers for sure. In MuseScore, the rhythm slash notation is usually used along with chords, so without a chord it ended up mute. Not a bug; it was just an off-label use case. I did find an easy way to mute all the cross-head notes, though, so all good.

My only other thought would be to add bowing marks for the strumming pattern, (at least as an example at the start) although since it's just eighth-note down/up maybe it's unnecessary.