Support for Playback of Drums Ghost Notes
When writing drum scores ghost notes can be made visible in the score using bracket, however there is no functionality associated to them concerning playback. It is of course possible to select notes one by one (with and without bracket) and offset their velocity in the navigator.
The request is to have the possibility to associate a velocity offset with the bracket in general, which is
- configurable in the range of +/- 127 (for flexibility, even if for ghost notes only negative values make sense)
- stored per score.
- initialized for each new score with a default value of 0
Im not an expert enough to judge if the bracket on note is used for other purposes than ghost notes, however the feature becomes neutralized by a velocity offset value "0".
Comments
For anyone planning to implement this I think it's important here to note that the concept of a ghost note exists for both drums and stringed instruments, and that they are completely different:
For bass guitar ghost notes are typically 16th notes. I emulate the effect by making these 16th notes staccatissimo and making the notes invisible. This way you get a click like sound with very little pitch information. This however does not work for notes longer than 16th notes while a longer ghost note would be valid I believe (though rare).
there is a muted sound for guitar, check the attached
Those notes have discernible pitch, like palm mutes on guitar.
The defining characteristic of a ghost note is that it has no discernible pitch, just a percussive quality.
Ah, yes, more like in "Locomotive Breath", muting the strings with the left 'fingereing' hand rather than with the right 'plucking' hand
Yes, Locomotive Breath by Jethro Tull is a very good example :-)
For reference here are some Youtube videos which show this technique in isolation:
Sorry to interrupt, but the only commonality to the feature I requested is the term "ghost note". I renamed the issue title, as I do not see any feature request where these two things could be combined. It would probably make more sense to create a separate issue.
You're right. The related issue can be found here #174131: Support for playback of ghost notes for Strings and Winds.
I just downloaded Musescore 4 and am using it to transcribe drum parts. I want to include ghost notes. I saw a tutorial online but it was using Musescore 3.something and directed us to Inspector where it was possible to alter individual notes to create ghost notes that sound like ghost notes in playback, not just look like ghost notes in notation form. Musescore 4 has been "upgraded" and no longer has Inspector where you can change velocity.
For new people:
You now go to the menu on the top left called "Properties." Under Properties you will see a box called Playback. Click on that and a Velocity box will appear where you can adjust the volume of individual notes. Be aware, though, that you must have some kind of score created and you must have selected an individual note. If you are new to Musescore and are just investigating the system, you will not be able to see Playback and Velocity without having clicked on an individual note in your score.
Another way to create ghost notes is to subdivide the previous note and use that note to create a ghost note. So, you would, say, take your 1/8 note hi hat note on the one-and and make it a 1/16 note. Keep the hi hat note and add a snare to the new 1/16 note. De-couple the bars joining them using the beam palette. Then go to Properties and Playback and Velocity to adjust the new snare note. Depending on the song you are creating or transcribing, you can play around with the various ghost note notations and sounds to get the Playback to be as you want it.