Vibrato

• Jun 13, 2014 - 09:00

There NEEDS to be a method to alter the amount of vibrato that instruments use because different pieces require different amounts of vibrato. And the settings to change it need to go from zero vibrato to vibrato faster than trills, because different pieces require different amounts of vibrato. Different instruments require different amounts of vibrato. Flute and Piccolo should have a lot of vibrato while the French Horns should have zero. I did a test in the middle of writing this paragraph and I have concluded that the French Horn soundfont has vibrato and it is literally called "French Horns". I'm WANTING to work on a new piece but I can't because the 15 measures I have written already sound terrible played though MuseScore. Only because the vibrato is hard coded so staggered entrances all have vibrato and sound incredibly out of tune. Unison long tones played through just intonation should by definition be never out of tune. I'm sure there are so many people who have tried to write something and it sounds out of tune because of the vibrato.

I was just about to start writing the third movement to the suite I’m writing. I could continue writing the piece. But I will instead hold all projects, because staggered entrances sound ungodly out of tune because the vibrato pattern is hard coded.


Comments

What soundfont are you using? Tried any other soundfont? What Version of MuseScore (and on what O/S)?
However: MuseScore is primarily a scrore writing application, sound is not the (main) Focus.

In reply to by Jojo-Schmitz

If sound is not the main focus, why would any one bother with all the fussing you have to do, first just to get the program installed and performing correctly, then to get a score to look, play and thus sound correctly? If it weren't for the sound I would go back to pen and ink. Having to switch sound fonts to get rid of excessive vibrato is a rather extreme solution when vibrato is an embellishment. Putting it in every note that is played by an instrument, a string section, or orchestra suggests a lack of something, I'm not quite sure what.

In reply to by Jack tom Chang

This is a very old post you are replying to, but fortunately most of it is still applicable.

In the past year, with the development of version 3, playback has a higher priority than it did in previous years. When 3.1 is released we will at long last have dynamic change on individual notes for example.

Vibrato is a very different issue. Vibrato is recorded into the soundfont. If you don't want any vibrato, you need to find a soundfont without it. You can even load several soundfonts and play vibrato sometimes and straight other times. It's not too bad once you know how. There are several soundfonts without vibrato, most of them designed for Baroque music.

In reply to by Jack tom Chang

FWIW, though - there are many reasons besides sound to use notation software. The appearance of the printed score will be much more professional looking ("much" is an understatement here!), plus you get things like copy and paste, the ability to have parts generated automatically, fonts, etc - tons of things that make notation software useful besides small details of the sound. If you happen to not like the amount of vibrato in the default soundfont, it's really quite simple to install another.

You will find that vibrato is hardcoded into the soundfont you are using - MuseScore does not hardcode vibrato.

This is a feature I too find quite annoying, the problem being that many of these soundfonts are created by people who have no proper knowledge of sound design, or the instruments they are trying to emulate.

I don't know which particular OS platform you are working on, but there are Soundfont Editors available for all three platforms MuseScore supports.

As a Windows user, I tend to use Viena.

With such an editor it is possible to control vibrato parameters so they are not a problem.

The other alternative is to find a soundfont which doesn't have automatic vibrato.

You may find this Wikipedia article helpful:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SoundFont#SoundFont_creation_software_.28…

In reply to by Delahunt

What instruments are you talking about? And are you sure it's vibrato you are talking about? I can' think of anything about the very small amount of vibrato in any of the instruments in the default soundfont that would cause problems in staggered entrances. Could you post a score you are having trouble with? I suspect whatever problem you are hearing will turn out to be something else.

I too am having a similar nitpick about the sounds. Particularly with strings. The standard solo string sounds have a nice expressive sound, but in orchestral pieces, if using the standard string sounds, clustered chords sound atrocious when they're not meant to be. Whereas using either the strings or slow strings sounds, they sound much better when playing clustered chords and sound closer to how a string orchestra sounds in real life, but to me has a somewhat lifeless, emotionless sound in more active, moving passages.

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