Diminuendo hairpin not affecting volume?

• Nov 14, 2015 - 20:01

Hi guys.

Isn't the diminuendo hairpin supposed to actually lower the volume of the notes being played without the need for a dim... sign?

In 421f366 on Windows, this doesn't actually change anything.

Thanks.


Comments

Well, I closed MuseScore and played the same part again and this time it did diminish the volume.

I guess it was just a temporary fluke.

I can't reproduce this on demand either, but will come back to this thread if it happens again.

Chances are, if it happened once, it will happen again.

Thanks.

Most likely, you hadn't entered the dynamics on either side of the hairpin and that is why it had no playback effect, then you later added such dynamics and that is when it started working. The hairpin playback uses the dynamic on either side to determine the degree of change, so a hairpin with no dynmics has no effect unless you manually set the degree of change in the Inspector.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

You're kidding right?

And this is normal behaviour?

In what skewed universe would that be logical?

Has whoever decided that actually had a look at a score?

No score publicist such as Peters or so on so forth does that.

People are obviously expecting to input things as they look in a score as according to international music notation practices and have MuseScore actually pick up on that.

Whats the point of diminuendo and decrescendo then?

Sorry, I don't even have time to explain this further, I'm sure you won't understand.

I guess after all that MuseScore isn't actually professional, just a hobby-type application, and as such, one can't expect too much from it.

I'll go back to using Sibelius, thanks.

Gosh...

In reply to by musescorister

Do you know of a single paper score that plays back? How on earth should a program guess which what dynamic to start and with what to end, if it isn't told that? How is a musician to konw? If you don't want this on a printed score, make it invisible.
Another option is to use the hairpins' properties in the inspector, velocity change to influence by how much the velosity changes

In reply to by Jojo-Schmitz

Uhm... Sibelius? :D

Sorry, it's just unbelievable. A crescendo sign that doesn't actually do anything.

How is a brand new MuseScore user going to know it doesn't actually do anything?

Anyways, back to Sibelius.

MuseScore is nice, but it's more of a hobby I guess, with many standard things missing and counter-intuitive design choices being made.

Sibelius is the standard, but then again, I guess MuseScore never set out to match that.

What does MuseScore.org intend to do in the end anyways? Just be a slightly more useful freeware music notation software when compared to the host of completely useless ones that are out there?

Does MuseScore.org even have a set list of obectives as to what it's actually trying to achieve, besides just being a nice thing to have?

In reply to by Jojo-Schmitz

The problem is that, many classical score writers do not specify a dynamic at the beginning and end of a crescendo or diminuendo, yet obviously artists know how to interpret that.

All I'm saying is that MuseScore should be able to do the same without necessarily needing dynamics at the beginning and end of a crescendo or diminuendo.

Whatever the velocity was when a crescendo starts, it should increase velocity as according to the lengthy of the hairpins. That is how artists are taught to interpret scores, aren't they? The shorter the hairpin, the smaller the increase, and so on.

I can't just add fp and mp and pppp and so on so forth to the scores I'm transposing, as they are not in the Peters editions at all, and, it would change the velocity in a way that was unintended.

Changing velocity from mf to f is more than just a small crescendo hairpin over two beats would achieve.

Again, MuseScore is supposed to be WYSIWYG, right? Then why is it that I see hairpins that don't actually do anything unless more things are added before and after them or if things are changed from the inspector?

Yes, I'd still go to the inspector for special fine-tuning, but I'd expect a symbol that I place onto a score to actually do something.

Otherwise it should have a "text only" tag like in Sibelius so as to not lead users into confusion over why said symbol doesn't actually do anything.

Again, WYSIWYG is supposed to be logical, not counter-intuitive and needlessly complicated.

In reply to by Jojo-Schmitz

Here's a quote from the latest Sibelius manual:

"When you input a hairpin, by default Sibelius automatically works out its end dynamic. If there’s
an actual dynamic (e.g. ff) written at the right-hand end, it uses that; if no dynamic is specified,
Sibelius increases or decreases the dynamic by one level (e.g. a crescendo hairpin that starts at a
prevailing mp will go to mf, while a diminuendo hairpin that starts at a prevailing ff will go to f )."

Obvious intuitive behaviour.

Why doesn't MuseScore do that?

I knew I should have posted this in the issue tracker as a feature request...

I guess Sibelius is more WYSIWYG than MuseScore...

The only problem with the forum is one can't easily convert a thread to a feature request... Who has time to rewrite everything........

In reply to by musescorister

Indeed, that does seem reasonable, and I'll be happy to file the request for you, and it will probably be implemented at some point. MuseScore absolutely aims to be a complete Sibelius competitor, but it can't get all the way there in a day. Not even necessarily in a year. (It's nine-tenths of the way there already, though.)

By the way, I think there may be some misunderstanding of what WYSIWYG means. It has no connotations of anything except visual results. What MuseScore displays on the screen ("what you see") "is what you get" when you print the score. (As opposed to, say, LilyPond.) "What you see is what you hear" is not something that should be thought of as part of WYSIWYG.

In reply to by Isaac Weiss

Of course I don't expect MuseScore to be there instantly, obviously it is free and developed by people in their own time, I already know that.

But to make design decisions that are completely counter-intuitive is just annoying.

WYSIWYH doesn't really exist https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WYSIWYG

As such, I inherently expect it to be part of WYSIWYG.

Anyways, thanks for filing that, it only took this entire thread to make that point advocating obviousness. Sigh...

In reply to by musescorister

WYSIWYH doesn't really exist. Therefore, it seems to me very odd to expect it to be a part of WYSIWYG. If I wrote a movie script in a WYSIWYG text editing program and it couldn't deliver the lines the way I wanted it to, that would be irrelevant to the program's WYSIWYG nature. (Though it would be awesomely cool if there were simple ways to get the text editor to speak the lines with the desired inflections, as there are with MuseScore's playback.)

But, anyway, now that the issue has been filed, and it's getting some more thought, it looks like implementing that request might not get WYSIWYETH (what you see is what you expect to hear), either. See discussion on that page.

In reply to by musescorister

Again, please, politeness and civility on these forums is appreciated.

For the record, scores *are* often published with dynamics following the hairpins. It's extraordinarily common, in fact. But it is also very common for there *not* to be a relevant dynamic immediately afterwards, that is true.

In any case, the *point* of hairpins is tyo appear visibly on your score for the benefit of the human musician who ultimately reads it. Computer playback is very much secondary to MuseScore or pretty much any other notation program, including Sibelius. But again, it's not that MuseScore doesn't handle these cases at all - just that it doesn't do so *automatically*. As mentioned above, you simply need to input the desired velocity change into the Inspector.

And as I commented in the issue that was created recently, it really isn't often the case that there is literally *no* dynamic following the hairpin. There almsot always is - it's just a question of *how far* after the hairpin the next dynamic occurs. So in order for there to be much noticeable difference, we'd need to implement some sort of arbitrary cut-off for how close the following dynamic needs to be before it is considered. It's not out of the question of course, but the fact the MuseScore currently requires an extra click or two in these particular cases to get the playback to work as you might want hardly makes it not professional. What *is* unprofessional is insulting the developers of the software and people trying to provide free support for it by suggesting they "won't understand". That's unacceptable social behavior, period.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

I'm sorry Marc, but I've had a few previous encounters with you and you were always a drag in terms of simply impeding development and simply just being a cosmic nono. I say this from experience, and whenever I post something like a feature request I come to expect that you will post something negative towards it trying to impede it's creation or to water/dumb it down as if it's not important.

It's like you approach everything with a big no regardless of what things are.

Sorry, but this is my experience of you. And I can't say your English isn't good enough.

However, with people like Thomas Bonte, David Bolton, lasconic and such, their replies were always a breath of fresh air, having an understanding of issues straight from the start, and knowing way more what is to be expected and what is proper.

To be very honest, and I think that is what forums should be, I simply don't like you very much as an online presence. You're not encouraging, or exhorting, you simply put a drag on everything.

Perhaps you are not as passionate/thrilled/enthusiastic about MuseScore as some other people on the forums are who are not developers.

Again, I don't have anything personal with you, it's just that whenever I read one of your replies I feel a downer coming on, because getting any new features past you is usually an impossibility because you will always argue that the status quo is good enough and as such crush the enthusiasm of new users.

Again, nothing personal, just observations and an honest communication of how I have experienced you as a poster on the forums.

With you it's like I have to bring 100 arguments so that you'll accept something, whereas with the other main guys they have this innate feel of everything. It's like they just "get it" instantly.

Just look at how long it took me to make this point about the hairpins.

Again, behaviour that is completely counter-intuitive. If it's a symbol that you put on, it should do something, not just sit around dead.

And if you look at any great piano classics and romantics, hairpins with no start or end dynamics are all over the place.

But then again, I don't know what your musical background is, and of course, who wants a score in MuseScore that doesn't actually play back the way it's written? And who wants to litter their score with mfs, and mps, and pps and fortes? Not to mention that I'd have to create everything manually since so many intermediary dynamics do not exist built-in into MuseScore. It is simply unworkable. It would take way too much time, and look way too cluttered. Not to mention that often times there simply is not place to add a p and a mf when trying to use hairpins.

Anyways, I can only conclude with a big sigh...

In reply to by musescorister

Let's stop this, now. Marc is a champion of MuseScore development (some recent major contributions are mentioned in https://musescore.org/en/node/85301, and I personally thank him for single-handedly implementing #74171: Implement "cresc." dashed line as alternative to hairpin), and arguably the single most reliably helpful user of these forums. But even if he was something less than a lead developer and unfailingly polite voice, there's absolutely no call for this kind of aggression. Back off the personal attacks before things get serious. Disagreements should not cause feuds, whether or not you believe that others' opinions are wrong.

"… who wants a score in MuseScore that doesn't actually play back the way it's written?" Just about any composer! MuseScore is not an audio sequencer—realistic playback is something really nice but secondary to the primary purpose of producing sheet music. Who would not want a score in MuseScore just because the music notation program didn't (automatically) play it exactly the way a human musician would?

In reply to by Isaac Weiss

Who would not want a score in MuseScore just because the music notation program didn't (automatically) play it exactly the way a human musician would?

People who'd also want it to automatically play the way it displays.

If I see an fff dynamic in a score in a musical notation software, I expect it to relay that back during playback. We're not in the 90s anymore to only have visual score editors.

And as for the "attack" you're referring to, it is nothing else than mere honesty, which not everyone can handle.

I don't have time to post a litany of previous attempts to contribute to this project under different user names that went nowhere or were seriously hard to get any traction on because Marc thought they weren't important/useful/whatever.

Again, the guy's probably a nice person, but as for his default approach to new ideas/suggestions/improvements, I don't like his style. At all. I believe it simply encumbers development.

But someone like lasconic and David Bolton especially were always forward thinking, running with new ideas immediately, getting things (as in, understanding root causes) from the very post.

With Marc, anything new I post I instinctively know will take 20 replies to convince him about. It's why I stopped contributing to MuseScore in the past. The way he approached things by default simply stifled my enthusiasm.

Again, the above are all facts and are the way I experienced the guy. Nothing personal. Just facts. (Sorry I don't have time to list the threads and such, I even had other MuseScore users agree with me and post their sadness that "yes, Marc doesn't think it's important...".

Developers set tones. If they are against new ideas, features, improvements, maturing a product by default, that will discourage enthusiastic new users.

Just see the exchanges between me and him on the few threads I've created so far.

Again, I hate to say this, but I will probably end up giving on MuseScore again, but this time for good. Sibelius has also gone subscription-based now, so people can actually afford it! :D

Finale NotePad isn't that awful either, for jotting down ideas that is. It does few things, but does them well.

In reply to by musescorister

I am truly sorry you feel that way, but hopeful over time time if you stick around you will come to see things differently. I am trrying to be patient and polite, and simply ask the same.

Anyhow, once again, I am *not* saying you have to fill your score with dynamics you don't want. As I keep saying, you simply need to set the "Velocity change" value of the hairpin using the Inspector. Then it will play back however you like, no dynamics whatsoever required. Which is to say, the symbol *will* do something - you simply have to take two extra seconds to use the Inspector to tell MuseScore what you want that effect to be. Chances are you'd end up wanting to do that to override whatever guess we might make in the absence of dynamics.

In reply to by jotape1960

Which is why I will look elsewhere for something better. Like Sibelius. (Perhaps MuseScore should better state it's goals as a piece of software on it's about page. Does this project actually have any set goals? Is it just to beat Sibelius or to be the best at what it's trying to do?)

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

See above reply as well.

However, in terms of design choices, what you keep saying is no music to my ears, or any other user's ears that wants an intuitive experience.

Have you thought of the extra work that will take me if I want to transcribe a piano concerto into MuseScore for example? All of those "two seconds" you talk about will end up being hours in the end.

Sibelius does it automatically, and it fulfils the obvious expectations of users looking for an intuitive experience. (as in, things should behave the way they should be)

If MuseScore wants to be a mature piece of software, it has to be more user-friendly, and it has to do more things automatically as opposed to require the user to manually fiddle with things every step of the way.

In terms of design changes as well, it should really look at Sibelius and see the absolute sheer logic behind it and implement some of it's principals.

Symbols that don't actually do anything by themselves (not that many) are marked as text only in the palette. How helpful is that!?! It actually lets the user know that the symbol they are picking won't actually do anything, so then the user will know that he needs to do something extra in order to get what he wants. Intuitive.

Do any of the developers of MuseScore actually ever compare it's functions to Sibelius or use it in comparison so as to see whether there are better ways of doing things??

In reply to by musescorister

See replies at https://musescore.org/en/node/87271#comment-387291 and https://musescore.org/en/node/87281#comment-387296. The problem is, many of the ideas you propose would save you personally two seconds, but would cause a lot of other people to lose two seconds or more. I'm gathering that you genuinely don't believe this, but user-friendly does not mean 100% the same thing as me-friendly. Does your preferred Sibelius actually include "ugualissimo" as an out-of-the-box drag-and-drop thing with playback effect?

Also, MuseScore is a Sibelius competitor, not a Sibelius clone. Finale is another music notation program that does things differently from Sibelius, and differently from MuseScore. They aren't "wrong" or "inferior" any more than MuseScore is. (However, they are much less likely to change based on users' suggestions than MuseScore is.)

In reply to by musescorister

If you want to use "Sibelius", and you have enough money to buy it, then... simple... Use it!!!

To me, MuseScore is enough to work the music I "do" (because the playback world is a secondary issue to me as I am a human chorus conductor and arranger, almost without any synthesizer sound).

Yes, I've used MuseScore to make some instrumental pieces, with some problems, minor problems, But... most of the problems I'd had with MuseScore are because my ignorance about how to use the program.

I think MuseScore have to improve some things, related with the visual presentation, mostly.

BUT... Man, Can a machine (like the PC) replace the human musician? ??? Is it the main purpose of any music software? ???

In reply to by musescorister

You should recognize that musescore offers a lot for it's listing price; nothing. It doesn't cost you a dime, and you still get more than any other 'free' software will offer you. You expect a lot from a piece of free software, and you will never find anything that gives you everything, there'll always be something missing. Anybody who wants to be able to write sheet music easily, this works. Musescore is a NOTATION software, it's not necessarily designed to give you exact playback, just an idea of what It'd sound like if played in a band. If you had such a big problem with the crescendo and decrescendo not working the way you liked, then you didn't have to rage on here like you have been doing. It's low, unnecessary, and annoying. Nothing you are doing here is helpful, and several easy solutions have been offered to you, but you're simply too stubborn and lazy to try any adjustments yourself. If you like Sibellius that much better, then go use it instead, and stop raging on here for no reason, your negativity has no place here, and does us no good.

I don't know where to write, so I'll write here. I spend an hour searching the solution for this, my problem was in my instrument, I picked flute instread of flute expr.

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