Creating parts by dividing staffs

I have spent hours trying to do the following one note at a time. There's got to be a better way.

I am preparing midi files for for 2 choir (Lots of music!) that are needed to members to learn their parts. I start with a midi file I've created with OCR music scanning software.

The originals have two staves, treble and base clefts, representing 4 to 8 voice parts (depending on whether a part or parts divide - like tenor divides into 1st and 2nd tenors).

My job is to divide the those staves into individual staves for each part. [Then, (This part I can do easily), I create leaning midi files for each part the emphasizes the one part over the others in playback.]

The attached midi is a typical example. The first staff has Soprano and Alto; the second staff has Tenor and Bass. I need to create a 4 stave piece, one staff for each part.

Here's what I've been doing (I'll explain my difficulties after).

1 - I clone the staves, so that I have 4, 2 treble and 2 bass.
2 - I select the first staff.
3 - I select from the [Region] menu [non-melody notes]. Deleting these leaves melody notes, soprano.
4 - I select the second staff.
5 - I select from the [Region] menu [top melody notes]. Delete them leaving the alto notes.
6 - Same as the above for tenor and bass.

The problems are:
1 - in many places the parts merge to sing the same notes. It's hard to edit back in the notes after the fact. Is there a way to edit the unison notes to be duplicates of the same note, one for each part, before I clone the staves?
2 - When I have divisis, a part dividing into 1st and 2nd (eg: tenor into 1st and 2 tenor) and merging to one again all over the place it becomes unmanageable for me as the steps above do not work.

The number of titles I have to do this for make note by note edits impossible in the time i have to do them. Please help me automate this better.

Thanks

Bill<center><table border=1><tr><td>Sample file for Staff to parts division
Christus pro nobis pa - copy for Composer support.mid (11.4 k)</td></tr></table></center>

Howdy Bill,

We do realize that there is a problem with "shared" note situations, and I apologize for the inconvenience for you.

The operation that you're performing above is actually already automated somewhat by selecting a staff and then using the "Staff/Split melody and accompaniment" command. This will automatically create two staves with the same splits between notes as you're performing in steps 1-3 and 4-6 above. The problem remains, though, regarding the shared notes. We have this on the "to do" list (834), that each newly created "split" staff should get a copy of this shared note. I'm bumping up the priority of this issue so that we should get it fixed for the next upcoming major release, due later in the fall or early winter.

Here's one suggestion that might help a bit, though it will depend on if you like it or not

1. Open the file.
2. Clone each staff.
3. Use the "Split melody and accompaniment notes" to split one copy of each staff into soprano/alto and tenor/bass.
4. Review each staff, and where the unison note is missing from one staff, do the following:
a. Select that unison note in the original combined staff.
b. Use "Shift+up/down arrow key" to move the unison note from the original combined staff to the missing space on the split staff.

Using this method you don't have to make sure it's the right note for adding, you're just shifting the already-correct note to the staff where it's missing. When you're done, just delete the original combined staves (which are now missing the moved unison notes) and you've got your split parts completed.

I hope this helps a little anyway, and please know that we're working on the root problem.

ttfn,
Sherry

thanks - I'll report in a week or so how it worked out for me.

Bill

I am trying to split Sop/Alt and Ten/Bas parts into S A T B only in part of the song, to add clarity to the piece. The Split Staff does it for the entire piece, which is not wanted. I look forward to the updates and request that the split can be done to selected measures.

[Sherry C]

Hi,

You could create two staves and manually shift just the notes you want to split off for just the measures that you want. If you then use the option Staff/Hide Resting Staves, it should give the appearance during playback of having the notes combined on the single staff, and then splitting off for the selected measures.

ttfn,
Sherry