Look at note velocity

• Aug 21, 2020 - 19:43

I can't see a way to conveniently look at a note's velocity. To me, convenient would be (1) click on a note, hit F8 and see the velocity. We all know that is not the case however. WHY? As an aside: I already got into a discussion that you should be able to do everything with a right-click menu, but that is another discussion. I am not able to find ANYWHERE where you can see a note's velocity. Instead, you have to remember that "p" is 49 (if you keep it at the default - a big IF) so your note should have a velocity of 49. Ridiculous.
So, I am requesting that this be an enhancement to the inspector. Since it is an easy fix, I would say build 3.5.1.
I am using 3.5 stable build.
BTW: Why is there a right-click menu item "edit element" that doesn't do anything?
Thank you.


Comments

To see the velocity click the note, press F8 if you don't have the inspector open and you can see the velocity. Unfortunately someone thinks right clicks are archaic so us old people just have to suck it up.

In reply to by mike320

Mike, shame on you. You more than anyone, I thought, would know that you don't see the velocity when you press F8. You see something called "Offset" and the velocity says 0 (zero).

EDIT: Actually, right-click menus are what all ""modern" software uses. I know 20 years ago, Microsoft went away from keystrokes (as much as possible) to embrace right-click menus so you don't have to take your hand off the mouse 20 times a minute to do something. Also, Finale uses right-click menus A LOT. You can do almost everything with a right-click menu (I know as of about 5 years ago anyway).

In reply to by odelphi231

Oh, by velocity, you mean the current velocity the note is being played. What if it's in the middle of a crescendo? This would be difficult. Put a crescendo on a whole note that starts at pp and ends at ff then tell me what the velocity should read if you select the whole note.

I'm not arguing about what they should do, but what they decided to do with the program. Someone thinks people are too stupid to right click something, read the menu that pops up and decide if it does what they want it to do. (Perhaps reading is the problem, they need an animated icon to tell them exactly what just happened and what they should do next.) They don't consider right clicks to be "discoverable" but I vehemently disagree with that opinion. It's intuitive when you've done it for 30 years and I had no problem learning about it back around 1990 when I started using windows.

In reply to by mike320

How every other music program does it, it tells you the velocity of the note at the time it first starts sounding. I am just talking about clicking on a note during notation to see the velocity, not playing. But, in fact, with Finale, you can open the velocity window while it is playing and see the velocity setting moving. It is updated in real time. MIDI does the same thing but oddly, the piano roll in MS doesn't show you the velocity either.
I agree with you about the right-click menu. If what you said is the reason they don't have it, that is stupid.

In reply to by mike320

Mike, I wouldn't bet on it coming in version 4. Why? All I heard is crickets from the poobas on this comment. Where was jojo and Marc? Also, why should we wait for over a year on a feature that has been around in commercial products for 20 years. 15 years ago I had Cakewalk. It is still around but called something else now. It would show you the velocity of any note you clicked on. Cakewalk back then was not a DAW. It is kind-of a DAW now. This feature is a no-brainer.

In reply to by odelphi231

There will be a DAW in version 4 according to the announcement back in June. See https://musescore.org/en/MuseScore4.

There is a huge difference between version 4 and previous versions. Version 3 was mostly developed by the 3 guys that took nearly 10 years to go from nothing to version 1 along with a core of about 10 volunteers that contributed a lot of code. They claim over 100 contributors and this is true, but 90% contributed very little. I'm not knocking what these people accomplished, they made a very fine piece of software.

MuseScore was bought by Ultimate Guitar prior to the release of version 3, but they stayed mostly with the plan so the release would happen. UG has hired quite a few people to help with the development of MuseScore and they are the ones who have come up with the plans for version 4. Most of the same volunteers are still around, some are now paid employees, there are some new volunteers doing good work and the staff dedicated to MuseScore is much more than 3. I know they added 3 new programmers to the payroll in the last month or so.

The point is, I expect a DAW with all of the bells and whistles you expect from a DAW in version 4 along with the other things promised in the above mentioned release.

In reply to by mike320

Mike, MS is an awesome program. I congratulate the programmers, mostly working unpaid, who created this great program. I am just making a suggestion for something that should have been in the program a long time ago. I think I can speak for everyone who enjoys this program, even if this feature is not implemented, there is no way I am giving up this program. I really enjoy using it. I can't wait for Version 4. I already have a couple of DAWs - ACID and Music Maker (latest version). Not the best and not the industry standard, but it does what it does. So, I am on the fence about MS getting a DAW, but if it enhances the MIDI aspect of MS, then I am for it. If it goes hog wild and implements MIDI 2.0, WOW!

In reply to by odelphi231

For the record, neither Jojo nor I do much if any programming work on details of synthesizer and playback. That's all being done by others who are far more experienced in this area.

Currently, the best way to get the playback velocity where relevant (recall with single note dynamics, velocity isn't actually used, volume is controlled by CC messages) is via the Piano Roll Editor. That seems to work just fine from what I can tell, if a bit indirect. Maybe you missed the dropdown where you can switch between displaying duration and velocity?

Based on what I see for the proposals for MuseScore 4, it absolutely seems that even easier and more direct methods would be implemented, though.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

Marc, as usual you come through. Yes, it is an indirect method but it works. A right-click on the note method would be better. I looked and looked at what you were talking about until I noticed tucked in the left-hand corner of the piano roll is a drop down that gives you velocity. Would be nice if it was on top (just a thought). BTW: It is odd that you can't call up piano roll under the View menu like other screens. I would imagine with the great changes that are taking place on V4, they will have to have a right-mouse click method of seeing velocity (a basic notation number).

In reply to by odelphi231

FWIW, right-click menus are generally more about providing actions, not just showing values. So I wouldn't personally think this would be a candidate, unless one of the actions were, "display a note properties dialog" that allowed one to view this info. But then, I also don't see what advantage such a dialog would have over the sequencer view, or the Inspector for that matter.

In reply to by mike320

Apparently MIDI has only note-on/off velocity, so a crescendo upon a single note for instance, it seems to me, must be altering another MIDI-CC like volume or something rather than actual "velocity", and in that sense, even if there were a "peer into the absolute" midi velocity of a note within MS , it wouldn't reflect the CC-volume changes. I might be wrong here or irrelevant, but it seemed worth noting in the moment. Probably irrelevant, fwiw.

In reply to by worldwideweary

P.S. Isn't the user-velocity in the PRE relevant? Like, if you select a note that normally reads as +3 in the "Offset" department of the inspector, and say you have a dynamic that sets the overall velocity to 80, in the PRE if you use the drop down on that note to read "User", it will read as 83. Of course that isn't really quickly accessed. Maybe it would be better to have "User" and "Offset" showing at the same time within the PRE in some way without getting messy. It seems that this + a keyboard shortcut to insert into piano roll editor would probably give the OP'er a decent mechanism to achieve their purposes

In reply to by worldwideweary

Thanks. Your workaround is another method. I am always checking the velocity of notes, so it would be nice to have a one-click method to check velocity. I am always checking the velocity because when I orchestrate 20 different instruments, sometimes I like the overall sound to blend seamlessly so I have to tweak one instrument's velocity so it blends. Sometimes "p" is too loud but "pp" is too soft. Music directors for orchestras do the same thing. One Music Director's "ff" in the Jupiter Symphony is different from another Director's "ff". The pianoroll method is OK for now.

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