Hi Everyone.
So i tried to export a simple piano sequence to be later imported in Sibelius. I'm sorry if this issue has been already addressed, but I can't find it with my searches.
What I discovered is that Sibelius doesn't recognize the right hand Staff, but visually it kind of looks like it does.
Look at the attachment, second bar. The "position" of the notes is correct, but if you look better you notice that the upper staff is empty (there is a full measure rest). That means that Sibelius interprets also the upper notes as belonging to the lower staff (and in different voices, otherwise it would mess with durations, which also is a weird thing). This applies to the whole score: in the upper staff there are only rests.
Of course this is a simple example, I discovered this behaviour with a much more complicated piece which was completely "wrong" exported.
I can't say if it's a Reaper export problem or a Sibelius import one, I'm just assuming that the specialized Notation program knows how to import Music Xml files.
What tried:
In reaper: force the "Staff->Top, Staff->Bottom" assignment. No Luck.
In reaper: Force the voice assignment (low voice, High voice). Even worse result because the notes belonging to the second voice just disappear in Sibelius.
SL
Last edited by simonluca; 06-03-2019 at 04:00 PM.
Reason: Better title
Could you attach the RPP project where this happens? Also you can create as many minimal scenarios as possible with combinations of different voices and staff-forcing.
And then import that into Sibelius, select all notes so that the voice assignment is visible, screenshot it and attach that as well.
Hi there, sorry for answering so late.
In attachment you'll find an extremely simple reaper project with 3 notes. One (the lower one) should go to the lower staff, the other two should be assigned to the high staff.
Instead of doing this, reaper assigned the lower note to voice 2 (green) and the high to voice 1 (blue) which makes no sense, and it also assigned them to the same staff, the higher one. Reaper should assign them to voice 1 and to the two different staffs.
In the attached image you'll see that there is a rest on the lower staff, denoting the fact that there are no notes.
simonluca: Please rename this thread (by renaming the first post) to something like "Notation bug - xml export, voices and staves".
There seems to be several problems with voice assigning in xml export.
I tried this in Reaper, where I assigned all combinations of voice 1/2 and staff 1/2 for C3 and A4:
And imported into Sibelius, it looks nothing like that. In the first measure there is event voice 3 assigned to those notes. blue - voice 1, green - voice 2, orange - voice 3
Musescore look a little better but still not as expected:
EXPECTED:
- notes goes to proper staves as seen in Reaper
- since most notation softwares use 4 voice, there is some problem how to assign voices from reaper on export.
I suggest:
default voice and voice 1 goes to voice 1
voice 2 goes to voice 2
other voices are note used.
EDIT: I've looked into this exported xml and there are some <stem>up</stem> lines while there are no stem directions set in the Reaper project, that could cause some troubles too maybe.
I updated the title, it's much better now, thank you for your advice.
The problem is very clear and highly reproducible when you have two staves.
About your suggestions: from my point of view it makes no sense to have a "default" voice. If you have only one voice (one line, you name it), it's voice 1, if you have 2 of them, they are voice 1 and voice two. A default voice suggests the idea that there are 3 voices (default, 1 and 2), which is clearly not the case. So for me voice 1 should be the default one, then if you need another voice, you have to select it from the menu. If Reaper's devs are not willing to change that well yes, deafult voice should be voice 1, voice 1 -> voice 1, voice 2 -> voice 2 as you suggested.
Of course for much improved compatibility it would be better to have 4 voices as all notation editors I know do have, but maybe that's not a priority.
I noticed some odd interpretation of stems directions too, but now I can't reproduce the bug. I had to "reset stems direction" in sibelius to make them work.
I don't think devs gonna remove the default voice ever, that would have quite a lot of consequences as I see it.
But voices 3 and 4 would be an easy addition. Inside Reaper, they would behave just like voices 1 and 2. The only difference would be on export where they would be properly exported into voice 3 and 4.
Ok, I think I got it.
I exported an xml from Sibelius, writing exactly what's in post #8 and I noticed that the C in the staff 2 is marked as Voice 2.
It makes theorically sense: it seems that in MusicXML voices are instrument-related and not staff related as they are in notation editors; this is where the confusion comes from. If you have an instrument which requires 2 staffs (Piano, Harp Etc) and you write one line in each staff, well: they are two voices, one played by a hand, the second by the other hand.
This is what I tried to do (measure 4 in the attached files): I wrote 4 notes in the upper staff marking them respectively in Sibelius as "voice 1 / 2 / 3 / 4" and 4 notes in the lower staff marking them equally as voice 1 / 2 / 3 and 4. Guess what? In the XML they are marked as voice 1, 2, 3, 4 (Staff 1) and voice 5, 6, 7, 8 (Staff 2). I imported the Sibelius-Generated XML in Musescore and it looks right. If you notice in the Sibelius File/measure two the staff 1 notes are assigned to voice 1 and the note in staff 2 is assigned to voice 2 (green). In The musicXML the latter is marked as voice 3 (voice 2 is skipped because it is silent).
To answer to Schwa question: the Reaper Generated XML file from post #8 should be like this:
(LINE 85)
<note default-x="120" dynamics="106">
<pitch>
<step>C</step>
<octave>3</octave>
</pitch>
<duration>64</duration>
<voice>2</voice> <------- this was "<voice>1</voice>"
<type>whole</type>
<staff>2</staff>
</note>