Tremolo

• Apr 22, 2012 - 16:59

I know musescore is more for notation but one thing that should be added to improving the playback is for the program to actually play the tremolo my pieces have various tremolos in parts such as timpani or cymbals and i would love to hear a clean roll sound


Comments

The good news is, playback of tremolo is already present in the nightly builds for the next major version, at least for tremolo between two different pitches (eg, string tremolo on two notes). Bad news is, still no single note tremolo, but I think it's pretty safe to safe that this is getting attention.

Note you can already get playback of timpani rolls and so forth if the soundfont you use has separate tremolo samples, as some probably do.

I would really like a SoundFont that includes tremolo, but I don't really know how soundfonts work. Could you please explain it to me, and maybe provide a soundfont download with tremolo? Thanks!

In reply to by Kdielol

Not sure what you mean. What instrument are you talking about? Any GM-compatible soundfont, including the one included with MuseScore and the ones listed in Soundfont as good alternatives, includes tremolo sounds for the strings. Are you wanting tremolo for other instruments too? I kind of doubt many soundfonts would include that - it's really a string technique primarily. At least, single note tremolo is. Tremolo *between* two notes can be done on other instruments too, but you can't capture that through a soundfont - you it will depend on the specific pair of notes. But 2.0 will support that directly.

In reply to by Kdielol

There probably are soundfonts that have drum and cymbal rolls, although it won't be GM compatible, so it will require some work on your part to integrate it with instruments.xml.

Trills playback is not currently in the development builds, although some other ornaments do playback, and there has been some work toward adding more or providing a facility to let the user design his own playback. I'm guessing that won't make it in for 2.0, but it's clearly something being considered at some point.

In reply to by Kdielol

Basically a Soundfont is a soundset using the Sample & Synthesis technology of the 90's.

In this you take a sample of an instrument and use the waveform to synthesise the sound by using amplitude envelopes to define which parts of the sample are played when, and which should be looped during a sustained note.

Probably the best way for you to learn about the technology is to open up an existing soundfont in one of the soundfont editors around. There are free ones around for Linux and Windows but I'm not sure about MAc.

If you are using Windows you have a choice between Viena and Polyphone.

Linux has Swami and Polyphone

I think Polyphone may run on Macs but don't take that as gospel

HTH
Michaels

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