Tempo Marking Wrong
Creating a composition using the New wizard and placing it in 6/8 meter with MM = 114, MuseScore writes the tempo as 76. This would be the correct tempo if each beat was 4 eighth notes but in most cases 6/8 has 2 beats per measure, each with 3 eighth notes.
( Marc, I am sure in the world of Western European classical music there are many exceptions, but in hundreds of other cultures 6/8 is virtually always 3 eighth notes per beat.)
The same problem crops up with 9/8, 12/8 and 3/8. Is there any setting to control this? Or how do I request a new feature, which might be a choice, in the wizard, to specify the beats per measure or eighth notes per beat?
This also might be an issue in meters such as 7/8.
Thanks!
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Comments
in 6/8 the beat is on dotted quarters
In 4/4 the beat is on quarters
a dotted quarter is 50% longer than a quarter
76 dotted quarters per minute is 76 +50% = 114 quarters per minte. MuseScore internally and iinspector as well as in the new score wizzard uses BPM (Beat Per Minute) to mean QPM (Quarter Per Minute, as that is what MIDI uses
In reply to in 6/8 the beat is on dotted… by Jojo-Schmitz
To me, that seems suboptimal behavior. Perhaps adding the choice of QPM vs BPM would be good?
There definitely is a bug, though, since the new score wizard explicitly asks for BPM but then write then wrong BPM to the score.
In reply to To me, that seems suboptimal… by DMarcus123
No, it is not. MIDI defines BPM as QPM, MuseScore uses that. No bug there. And it correctly calulates the BPM as shown in the tempo text from the QPM as entered in the new score wizzard.
MuseScore might be more clear about what it calls BPM in the UI (it won't change this internally, that'd screw up playback and MIDI standards, but that isn't a bug, at most a design flaw.
OTOH it is even documented in the handbook, see https://musescore.org/en/handbook/3/glossary#B
But yes, it should be mentined in https://musescore.org/en/handbook/3/create-new-score and https://musescore.org/en/handbook/tempo too.
Suboptimal, yes, maybe, but not a bug.
In reply to No, it is not. MIDI defines… by Jojo-Schmitz
I get what you are saying. I would still like to request the choice of entering BPM in the new score wizard. It just seems a waste of time to have to calculate QBM from the desired BPM (even though it is easy math).
And it is definitely a bug for the program to write the QBM as the MM marking but to show that the beat is a dotted quarter. If it said quarter note = 76, that would be more defendable, although still bad (in my opinion).
But this is what makes horse races, and make some people use some products and others use others. (I love MuseScore, btw; this is just a repeating annoyance.)
In reply to I get what you are saying. … by DMarcus123
You enter the tempo in QPM, and MuseScore does the BPM calulation for you
Quarter note = 76 would be plain wrong fos a 6/8 time sig, where the beat is dotted quarters
In reply to No, it is not. MIDI defines… by Jojo-Schmitz
See also: #304412: Metronome ticks do not always match reference beat value
and #291727: Improve tempo indication in Play Panel to reflect time signature
and https://musescore.org/en/node/306588
FWIW, I agree it would be nice if MuseScore did the calculation the other way - if you enter enter 100 into the tempo box, you should expect 100 to be the number that shows up in the score, and then any behind the scene calculation to determine the value to put in the Inspector should happen after that.