Designing the Mixer for MuseScore 4

Ooh color me intrigued
Is soundfont a combination of fluidsynth and zerberus in the UI? And the mixer applies to both backends?

Am i right in interpreting this that i can have whole different synths on different instruments?

One thing, I regularly miss with actual mixer is, that it doesn't seems to follow the rules of other window views (like inspector, play panel and so on) concerning the integration of the view, see for example #279228: Mixer: size issues and other issues about the size integration.

I, for one, am very happy to see scrollbars (https://musescore.org/en/node/2406—look how early that node number is!), the piano roll in exactly that location instead of as a separate window, and what I assume is a "Customize Toolbars" button.

Tantacrul...you are a lifesaver. This is all I ever wanted from Musescore.

Edit: Well, add channels with routing and automation and we have ourselves a whole DAW. Which would be amazing.

I really like it! The colors and the interface in general is so nice!
The integrated effects in the mixer for easy access is really good too!

A suggestion: Instead of the 'Show less' and 'Show More' buttons, why not something like the icons on Ableton Live Mixer where you can turn on or off different sections of the mixer?

Amazing! I like the idea! I would also suggest to replace "show more/show less" by the individual modules directly. Maybe I would also place them in the same place where "show less/Show more" is written. I also like the idea of a scale that gets smaller towards the bottom so that the volume can be fine-tuned towards the top.
I would also like to see the colors of the instruments below being individually adjustable. I would also like to see a bit more detail in the sliders and maybe also in the knobs - not so simple, but other users might have a different opinion. I don't want to be misunderstood here, I really only mean more details at the two - slider and knob. Like in the picture below maybe

How would the subchannels look like?

I just noticed that the volume "0" value isn't at top. Is this on purpose? Is it supposed to be set up like on some mixing consoles, so that there is a "normal/default value 0" and can be overdriven a bit and otherwise just decreased? I like it when it is on purpose!

Why does the clarinet in the second last picture have 8 voices? A function that I do not know yet?

Interesting idea. Seeing Musescore improve so quickly. I wish I could contribute in creating some "improved" sounds for the instruments (when I mean improved I mean a bit more realisitic and not so instense vibrato in winds and bowed s.) , like recording instruments as VSCO. Well that will probably never happen hehe... Alright end of my story.

Tantacrul,
Please could you consider adding "Mixer Groups" as seen in Ableton Live?
Also, thank you - MuseScore has developed so much since you started helping out!

This all sounds really good but I think it’s important to remember that MuseScore should first and foremost be simple, there’s lots of talk about things I don’t understand so I’m hoping there will be some sort of simpler mode (like the current basic or advanced layout) where those of us who just want to write music in a nice program and use a mixer in a fairly standard way will be able to do this easily.

Brilliant stuff, I'm hyped! I just wanted to ask if we'll see beta versions of the audio engine in Musescore 3 or is it being developed entirely with the new UI elements for Musescore 4. Since the audio engine is the biggest thing that bugs me about Musescore at the moment I'm veeery exited about this.

This looks great! One thing that has always bugged me about the mixer is instrument selection. When you go to pick an instrument from the soundfont you get every possible choice for however many soundfonts you have active. Is it possible to have a division by soundfont or by instrument type like how instruments are added to the score? It's a little thing but I think it would make a lot of lives just a bit easier.

SHOW MORE/LESS OPTION: I have no idea if this is a bad or good idea, but what if you implemented a slider instead of separate buttons? The slider would have "SHOW" over the top, with "LESS" on the left and "MORE" on the right. Maybe there would be a few notches on the slider so each level of additional options would be a fixed setting. In any case, it would give immediate feedback as to how MUCH less or more options there are to display. It's not possible to know that if you incrementally have to keep hitting the Show More button but a slider could indicate this easily. Just a thought!

ADD RITARDANDO AND ACELERANDO SO WR DON'T HAVE TO DO IT MANUALLY!!! I KNOW HOW TO SIMULATE IT BUT MAKE IT AN ACTUAL OPTION, IT WILL MAKE IT EASIER, MAKE SO WE CAN EDIT THE RATE IT DECLINES(OR RECLINES)!!!!! MAKE IT HAVE SIMILAR MECHANICS TO THE CRESCENDO AND DIMINUENDO(DECRESCENDO)!!!!! C'MON, MAKE IT EASIER FOR US!!!!!

Make it to where an instrument with two staves is treated like another Instrument.

Musescore looks as cool as your videos like that.

Love this idea, but it seems a bit large and covers up a lot of the score. I think I'll submit some designs of my own as well, but I think one thing that would be a good thing to include is including an option to type out a value similar to FL Studio since setting a value out of 1 or 100% is easy to do without much thought.

This is my mixer idea for a compressed mixer view. It is pretty basic, and also not the most pleasing thing to look at since it was just a quick photoshop, however I think the idea gets across. The volume sliders would be the things compressed or expanded when resizing vertically. Right clicking could also bring up options or if there aren't options, just automatically open an option to type the value.

Will there be a way to open mixer through a keyboard button instead of hovering the mouse over the button to open it? Just asking because for some it might be tiring.

I’d vote for an optional vertical layout that could be docked to one side, with the channels running horizontally one above the other. I know this would require vertical scrolling if there are many instruments, but that’s precisely the situation where the score itself is likely to want the whole height of the screen.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m very happy to see this whatever shape it takes.

As a Linux user, I wonder how VST compatibility will work... On LMMS, Windows' VST work pretty good with Wine as long as they are 32 bit. Will it be the same with Musescore? Often I create a midi file with Musescore and then use a mix of VST and soundfonts on LMMS to have a more realistic sound for orchestra or wind band. It would be great if I could use only Musescore.

This sounds fantastic. It would be wonderful if there were an articulation mapping function that would allow one to assign a different soundfont/VST/MIDI channel/keyswitch/etc on a per-articulation basis for the instrument. It would be awesome to be able to control BBCSO and other major orchestral libraries with this.

Such an implementation could perhaps even pave the way for support for NotePerformer (I seem to recall the NotePerformer devs saying to another forum member a couple years back that they would be happy to support MuseScore if only there were third-party audio engine support and patch/articulation control via MIDI). Even to be able to just get soundfonts and VSTs working with various articulations and set those up to be triggered appropriately would be a boon.

A while ago I requested a huge overhaul on bracket function that would include mixer groups. I don't know that my suggestions will be implemented (easier bracket placement, option to display system objects above top stave of certain brackets, mixer groups, etc.), but it seems to me that brackets would be a convenient of grouping the mixer because it shows a relationship between the score and the playback. After all, brackets appear on the score for the sole purpose of organizing the staves for the ease of reading. If they are meant to represent the organization of the staves to a real orchestra, would it not also makes sense for them to represent the organization of a virtual orchestra?

Hi, and thanks already now for the great work (the new palette is simply wonderful)!
About outputs and busses, I like the Reaper and Pro Tools design, where the highest slots are for 'insert effects', and the lowest for the busses / output. In other words very similar to your design with all the options switched on, but with an additional section for audio outputs / busses. Reaper's design is even simpler, as I/O and sends are combined together.
About the vertical layout, I definitely prefer the horizontal layout for mixing. However, in most DAWs I find it practical to have some basic controls (Mute/Solo and a volume knob) on the left-hand side of the tracks. However, in that case I'm wondering whether the vertical 'mixer' / 'tracks basic control' element should be visually linked with the staves or not, for example when resizing or scrolling the staves.

MuseScore becoming 1/2 Notation Program, 1/2 DAW.

Hello
I really like all the ideas about the new mixer. What I have not found is a individual adjustment of the voices in one line/instrument. I choral music it is very common to have 2 or sometimes 3 voices in one line. For practice it is extremely useful for the singer to make their voice stand out and have the other voices somewhere audible in the background. I have worked around this for 5 years by duplicating the individual voices into separate lines and for practise - hide the individual lines but have them play and mute that compact choral lines. This is somewhat awkward to maintain, because every note appears twice. It would be awesome to include a new concept for this in 4.0. Many singers will highly appreciate.

Sometimes I just want to adjust the mixer settings of one track/instrument. Opening the entire mixer window and scrolling around to find the track can be annoying when there are lots of instruments in the score.

Some DAWs I've worked with (Reaper and Ardour) have an option to display a single mixer strip down the side of the screen. This strip updates to show the controls for the last track that was selected. Would something like this be possible in Musescore?

Or even if just clicking an instrument in the score will make the main mixer jump to that track would be helpful

I think that it would be really cool if there was an option to record each instrument part from a mic in the mixer.

VST / Kontakt support for Musescore? That would be incredible - I recently migrated to doing more work in Logic Pro simply to have access to more instrument/sounds but I still prefer the focus and ease of Musescore for composition, it's a really elegant design.

Thanks for the brilliant work!

Tantacrul: I know there will be lots of questions.

...
So when is it released? :P

Not sure how I missed this post! Then again, it seems you missed my own Mixer design proposal.

In my design, Mixer controls are only displayed for one instrument at a time (i.e. the one that is selected in the list on the left of the dialog). This makes my design much more compact than the "show everything" approach used in the current Mixer as well as in your proposal.

> The Mixer is by nature a horizontal beast

I disagree. As you can see from my proposal, arranging the instruments vertically instead of horizontally has numerous benefits, including:

1. Easier scrolling (vertical rather than horizontal).
2. Able to fit more instruments on the screen.
3. Characters in instrument names are vertically aligned (easier to spot groupings like Horn 1, Horn 2, etc.).
4. Names can be longer without being truncated.
5. Instrument families can be organised into a tree (e.g. expand or collapse all brass instruments).

Accessibility

My design is also very accessible. Users are first encouraged to select an instrument, and then presented with the controls for that instrument and no others. This reduces the number of keystrokes required to navigate the dialog by an order of magnitude compared to a flat design such as yours. (If there are N instruments, and each has M controls, then it takes M*N presses of the Tab key to fully navigate a flat dialog, wheres in my design it is closer to M+N keystrokes.)

Further improvements

@Startled Bee began implementing my design on GitHub. He added volume sliders and mute/solo buttons to the instrument list for quick access and to enable side-by-side comparison, while still displaying more complex controls for the selected instrument only.

I could imagine taking this a step further and allowing users to choose which controls appear in the list (for quick access) and which are relegated to the area on the right and displayed for the current instrument only (to save space).

Comparison to your design

I appreciate that a horizontal design like yours is useful for people with a multi-montor setup who have no shortage of screen real-estate. However, for single-monitor users (i.e. the majority) I believe a compact design is more favourable as it enables you to see more of the score.

I think it was a good idea to dock the Mixer at the bottom of MuseScore's window as this increases the number of instruments displayable with a horizontal design, and minimizes the need for awkward horizontal scrolling. However, it leads to lots of wasted space when there are only one or two instruments in the score, and awkward scrolling is still required when there are too many instruments to fit on the screen. My design uses minimal space regardless of the number of instruments in the score, and horizontal scrolling is never required.

I appreciate that your horizontal design is closer to the look of a DAW, but I would argue that the vertical layout I proposed is more consistent with other areas of MuseScore where instruments tend to be displayed vertically. That's how it's done in the Instrument and Parts dialogs, for example, and of course instruments are also presented vertically in the actual score itself.

Hi @Tantacrul . I want to mention first that I recently installed a "nightly version" of the Musescore 4 software (Windows 10) and I have to say that I'm loving the new direction in which the UI Design is going thus far; I was hooked once I saw the home page and the Qt design of the score preparation wizard and the inspector panel was flowy and intuitive. You guys keep of the good work. Ok let me switch this conversation to the propose mixing design.

MASTER MIXER

Yes, I like the design direction this is heading. Not only it replicate how most DAW display individual tracks with in a project (which in fact is a copy of the hardware mixer board), it also have a very simplistic style of displaying essential and advance information which will help appeal both beginner and advance users. There are some features, though, I was hoping that this mixer will implement as well.

1. Aux Tracks and Track Sending Capabilities.

An aux track (sometime called busses in other workflows) is a track that receives a copied audio signal from an original track. The main purpose of this workflow is to able to create and manipulate certain FX without affecting the original audio signal. So, basically I can make an Aux track dedicated to a reverb effect and only EQ or Compress the sound of the reverb without messing with a flute and a clarinet being sent to that track. Also, the sent signal should have a volume and panning gauge. You can also use it as a way to group multiple track in to one fader.

2. Folders and Subfolders.

The idea is to be able to create a vertical skinny strip (which I call folders) between tracks in which you can label and drag tracks and other folders into. Main function is collapse and expand -- similar to how Windows collapse and expand folders and files in the navigation bar of File Explorer -- so

3. Separate Tracks for Voices.

So, to put it simply, instead of left clicking a voice part to mute it, you can right click it and that will command a pop up window showing a mini track mixer of the selected voice. This give the opportunity for the user to change instrumentation; add FX; and control panning, volume, audio signal sending (see 1) specifically geared to the selected voice without needing to separate voicing into different stave within a score. So, essentially it is another way of grouping instruments under one track.

4. Mono button and Audio Signal Meter.

How I visualized this was that all new tracks are automatically put into stereo tracks with two bars signal meter (similar to the master fader). Once the user press the mono button, the audio signal is converted into mono and the meter will change to one bar.

5. Gain Gauge

This is a handy tool to have to set / automate the volume of a track before it hits the list of FX.

DYNAMIC MIXER

This is something complex I was brainstorming that could be a neat selected feature to have on the Master Mixer. How I imagine this to work is that if a track have any audio or midi signal (So basically a clip in a sequencer view), then that track and any aux track(s) and folder(s) connected to it will appear on the mixer board. But, if is doesn't have any signal it will disappear. This will work in both pause and play. This should help save up screen space and help the user focus on a section of the music where only a few instrument are played without scrolling so much on the Master Mixer.

:)
S. Daz

I will say I hope the VST/Soundfont selection isn't a dropdown menu. I have a shit-ton of separate soundfonts that would make that a nightmare to navigate. A dialogue or, better yet, a file explorer may be better.

Sibelius user here:
1) Soundsets are important, and one thing I find very useful is the ability to save sound-configuration with project, or have a soundset that is shared between projects. This should be a checkbox in save-pref.

2) Although choosing sounds in the mixer for vstis might not be available, the importance of setting midi-channel is needed. (typically for a multi-instrument vsti)

3) Noteperformer-support/AI: AI is just in it's infant sages, and will be huge. Just saying.

4) Mono-button: Is crucial for delivery of audio-files where definition of voices is first priority.

Not sure if this is the right place to post - but it seems logical. Others can move this - if necessary.

Currently I'm struggling with the Mixer in 3.6. This seems to be muddled with the scores, and also the Synthesisers.

Ideally I'd like to see the possibilty of any instrument from any sound font being available in the notation editor. Usually that would be a set of defaults - for example a flute in the General Midi soundfont, and generally one might hope, just as with GM, that if the overall sound font was changed or updated, that the instruments would remain the same. In practice I know it might be more complicated than this because of additional factors, such as articulation.

Maybe some form of library of what's possible might make sense too, and could contain even more data/metadata.

For examples:

Soundfont 1 - Classical Orchestra -> flute -> tuning 440
Soundfont 2 - Baroque Orchestra -> recorder -> tuning 415
Soundfont 3 - String quartet - > violin -> tuning 440

Most scores would have a default soundfont - with "standard" instruments, but it should also be possible to "borrow" instruments from other soundfonts. For example, in a baroque style piece one might use the Baroque Orchestra - Soundfont 2 - but "borrow" a violin - consordino - with the tuning lowered to A=415 for some special instrumentataion.

Underlying the notation system there might be a DAW (sequencer) and a synthesiser, but I don't see why some of the lower level aspects could not be brought up to the notation level - even if most people didn't use those.

So far, while using the nightly builds, I was able to load in VST3 instruments and effects, but Musescore wasn't able to see anything that used the slightly older VST2 format (which most of my virtual instruments are). Will the final release allow the use of VST2 instruments?