repeat score section in play mode

• Nov 15, 2011 - 18:46

Hallo

I would like it if musescore could repeat part of a score in play mode. I'm singing in a choir and use musescore for my training. It would be great now if I could mark a section in the score musescore should play over and over again in play mode.

Besides that musescore is great software. It helped me a lot with singing.

Thanks Jürgen.


Comments

Take a look at this page. "In the last measure of a repeat you can set the property "Repeat Count" to define the number of played repeats."

If what you are meaning is repeating without ending, then I'm not so sure that is possible. To me, having a piece of music that never ends would be almost pointless.

In reply to by Sean Oliveras

I think what he means is just a repeat in the playback. So you could set it to play from one place to another over and over again. Would find something like this useful myself, who also actually uses MuseScore to learn my voice in a choir :D

A very good alternative, which I would like though, is perhaps just if we could have shift+space or ctrl+space start playback where it was last started, rather than where it last stopped. That way I could click on a note, start playing with space and then keep hitting ctrl+space to jump back to that spot. Or something like that... just an idea!

In reply to by Svish

To learn your voice you have sometimes to sing a section 10, 20, 30 times. Often there is a big jump from a deep to a high note ore a passage where my voice is so close to another voice that I'm tempted to sing the other voice.
But, as I said, this are only small fractions of the score and they don't start necessarily with a bar.
So, I would like the way "Svis" proposes. That would be exactly what I'm looking for.

These sorts of playback controls can be nice, but are not really in keeping with MuseScore's focus as a notation program first and foremost, so I have my doubts as to high a priority this kind of thing would be. I think the ability to restart performance from the same place, as opposed to the ability to set up playback-only repeating passages for practice purposes, would probably be a better fit. I know 2.0 changes how the current playback point is represented on screen. Not sure if it is also possible to lock the start point, but it looks like 2.0 is more likely to provide the sort of mechanism that could eventually allow it.

Also, If there were Play and Stop methods in the plugin framework, it occurs to me that one could probably create something that way.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

MuseScore is a brilliant program, which I am fairly new to using.

It seems to me that an awful amount of effort has already gone in to achieving a variety of playback capabilities. The notation side of the software and the capability to playback that notation as it is written are equally important. The notation side may come first - you can't playback something that you can't notate, but it would be a pity if the playback side of the program failed to keep up with the notation capabilities.

The software already has buttons to reset the start of playback to the beginning of the program and to initiate playback. I assume that the buttons are linked to procedures, or sub-routines, or methods. Would it be that difficult or time consuming to provide an option that combined both i.e. playback, on reaching the end of the score, reset the play start position to the start of the score and then begin playback again?

Yes it would be nice to be a little more sophisticated and add a count in before playback commenced or to enable playback of a selected part of the score but at least this would be a start.

It seems to me this ought to be a relatively minor modification that would enhance the user experience for everyone who uses MuseScore as a performer or student.

Having said all the above I also appreciate that I know nothing of the code that underlies MuseScore and appreciate that what may appear hypothetically simple may in practice be otherwise.

In reply to by JohnathanK

know very little about code, I suspect this is not so easy. There would be a number of things to do: set the start, set the end, select number of repeats, add these to the UI, hook it into the present code, etc.

I suspect if it was east to do, it would have been done, as this has been discussed a number of times.

Regards,

In reply to by xavierjazz

You are probably right, particularly since this appears to be a very active project that is well supported.

Certainly the more featured version of a loop playback with count in and the ability to select sections of the score would probably require a lot more work.

However MuseScore in its current release already appears to do most of what would be needed to impliment a simple loop playback feature. On completion of playback MuseScore already resets the play head to the start of the score. A click of the play button initiates another repeat of the playback.

To implement a simple looping feature might be a case of providing a menu option or a new button for "Loop Playback". This would first set a variable value or property to act as a flag, then call playback. On completion of playback after the play head resets a check is needed to test the flag value and if set to initiate playback again. Clicking the playback button to stop playback would need to clear the playback flag.

There is probably some good reason why something like the above could not be implemented but it does appear rather straight-forward. Then again things are often easier said than done :-)

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

I agree with others like Churchorganist that a controllable loopback function is quite essential while doing composing or arranging work with musescore. I do a playback frequently to check harmonies, usually in combination with muting some instruments. If you work with a full score with 10 or more different instruments-(groups) it really helps.

It's not that it can't be done at this moment, but chances are that i corrupt some notes on my score when i repeatedly have to select the beginning note/bar.

I tried to multi-select a few bars in different instruments together (looks to me as a natural way to select a loopback section?) and press play. Funny enough the playback start somewhere(?) in my selection section, so musescore seems to have some notice of what i am doing?
A nice solution would be if the behaviour was: if bars are selected -> play from start of the selection and, -> stop at the end of the selection. If a "loopback" toggle-button was selected, the selection would repeat playing until stopped by either "stop playing" or "stop looping".

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

On the day I posted my original comment, I took a look at the plugin information for MuseScore. As you say there appears to be no way in the plugin API to call the play method.

It is a pity. Currently I am learning the Accordion and enter tunes I am trying to learn into MuseScore. But to practice them I end up saving them as a midi file and then open them in an old copy of Band in a Box. This is so that I can play them back in a loop with a simple count in before each repeat starts. It is so useful to be able to start playing at a low bpm and then gradually increase the bpm once I am competent at that speed, until competence is reached at the target bpm.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

I have been looking for some way to programmatically set the start position for playback in MS 2.0.3 but so far I can't find anything in the qml plugin API. Am I missing something, or is it just not there? If not, what is the chance that it could be added as a plugin feature? It would really be a big help in customizing playback for choral training.

In reply to by madtom1999

Not currently, although perhaps that could be added someday. These sort of highly playback features - keep in mind, the primary purpose of MsueScore is *creating* notation - are better suited to the companion mobile apps, though, which are more focused on score display and playback.

In reply to by madtom1999

I would really love this feature too! There is an app called phonicscore that has this feature and they call it "speed training", I have tried and even thought it does the job it doesn't have the play back quality of musescore. That is why I would love this feature, even if it is only for the mobile app (paid version).

A google search landed me in this conversation thread, and I then found that I can do this already - I just did not know how. I'm using version Musescore ver 2.03 and right on the bottom line of the play panel are controls to do exactly what is asked for in this post:
[ to mark the beginning
] to mark the end
and then press play to repeat the marked section.

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