A collection of plugins to assist with writing music for handbells and handchimes in MuseScore Studio.
Click the green "<> Code" button and click "Download Zip", unzip it, and move the "handbell-notation" folder inside your Plugins folder. This is normally in your Documents folder under MuseScore3 or MuseScore4.
Then, in MuseScore, choose "Manage Plugins…" or "Plugin Manager…" from the Plugins manager. In MuseScore 3, check the boxes next to the plugins you want to enable. In MuseScore 4, select each plugin and click the "Enable" button in the bottom right corner.
There should now be a submenu under the Plugins menu called "Composing/arranging tools" in MuseScore 4, or "Handbell Notation" in MuseScore 3. You must have a score open to use these plugins.
Analyzes all notes within the current selection, or the whole score if nothing is selected, and identifies any notes written on C5 or below in the treble clef or D5 and above in the bass clef. All bad notes are marked in bright green, and a report is presented with a list of the bad notes found.
Sharps and flats are ignored, so C♯5 is expected to be in bass clef and D♭5 is expected to be in treble clef, even though these are enharmonically equivalent.
Analyzes all notes within the current selection, or the whole score if nothing is selected, and produces a list of handbells and handchimes used.
Does not insert an actual Handbells Used chart at the beginning of your score. I may explore the feasibility of doing so in a future version, but for now it just gives you a list as text.
Unfortunately there is currently no way to copy the text out of this window. You can take a screen shot if you want, but you can't copy the text to paste it into something else. Also, you'll have to use the mouse to close the window; the normal keyboard shortcut to close a window (⌘W on Mac, Ctrl-W on Windows/Linux) does not close the Handbells Used window, and will instead try to close your score.
Be careful to select the complete range you want to analyze (or make sure nothing is selected). If you have a bells used chart at the beginning of your score, you should exclude it from your selection.
Notes with normal note heads are assumed to be handbells. Notes with diamond note heads are assumed to be handchimes. Notes with any other note heads will be listed as "Unknown". These are each listed separately, as you'd expect.
If notes with the same pitch are written in more than one way in your score (e.g. D♯ and E♭), both names will be grouped together in parentheses.
Handbells are a transposing instrument; they sound one octave higher than written, so a note written as C4 (middle-C) will sound like C5, and should be listed as C5. In MuseScore 4.x, the "Hand Bells" instrument is set up this way by default, but in MuseScore 3.x it isn't. And some of us prefer to use the "Piano" instrument for writing handbell music, which is also non-transposing. The plugin tries to do the right thing in all cases, which is to go by one octave higher than the written pitch on the staff, regardless of the instrument used or the transposition settings. Due to some bizarre limitations of MuseScore's plugin API, figuring this out is is really complicated and it could break in very strange ways if you're doing something weird, but so far it works correctly in my testing.
Changes all selected notes to use standard note heads, and sets the color to black. This is intended for changing handchime notes to handbells.
Dots and accidentals belonging to the selected notes will also be updated, but stems, hooks and beams will only be updated if they are included in the selection. They will be included if you select a range, but not if you select only individual note heads. Rests and other elements, even if selected, will be ignored.
If any of the selected notes use some note head other than standard or diamond, you'll get an error; fix these manually, or exclude them from your selection.
If nothing is selected, you'll get an error.
Changes all selected notes to use diamond note heads, and sets the color to red (if you want). This is intended for changing handbell notes to handchimes.
The first time you use the plugin in a particular score, you will be asked to choose your preferred color. Bright red is best for printing (it looks different on paper) but can be hard to look at on a screen, so you can also choose a darker red if you prefer, or choose black if you won't be printing in color. Your choice is saved as a custom field called "handchimeColor" in Project Properties (or Score Properties in MuseScore 3), so if you change your mind later, you can edit the hex value there or simply delete the field if you want to be asked again.
Dots and accidentals belonging to the selected notes will also be updated, but stems, hooks and beams will only be updated if they are included in the selection. They will be included if you select a range, but not if you select only individual note heads. Rests and other elements, even if selected, will be ignored.
If any of the selected notes use some note head other than standard or diamond, you'll get an error; fix these manually, or exclude them from your selection.
If nothing is selected, all existing handchime notes in the score will have their color updated to match your preference, without changing any note heads. When doing this, stems and beams will also be updated, but only if all notes that share the stem or beam are handchimes.
These plugins are intended to work with both MuseScore 3.x and MuseScore 4.x on Windows, Mac and Linux, but have only been tested in 3.6.2 and 4.4 on Mac. As with most plugins, it is very likely that they will break in a future version of MuseScore, and will need to be rewritten.
Known differences between versions:
- In MuseScore 3.x, all plugins will appear under a "Handbell Notation" submenu under the Plugins menu. In MuseScore 4.x, they appear under "Composing/arranging tools" (which may be shared by other unrelated plugins).
- Graphics are not used by MuseScore 3.x.
- In MuseScore 3.x, the "Hand Bells" instrument is assumed to be non-transposing, just like "Piano". In MuseScore 4.x, the "Hand Bells" instrument is assumed to be transposing by one octave. These are the default settings in each version. However, in both versions we also try to verify this by checking the vertical position of the note on the staff, and adjusting as needed.
- The "Find Handbells On the Wrong Staff" plugin implements a workaround for a bug
in MuseScore 3 which caused
curScore.stavesto fail. The bug was fixed in MuseScore 4.
Handbell artwork © 2007-2012 Tena Luben, A Familiar Ring
https://www.afamiliarring.com/handbell-pictures.htm