Support for microtrones

• Jul 23, 2021 - 13:05

I wonder - what is the current state of support for microtones in MuseScore? I can see that there are some symbols for half tones (24 per octave), but do these correspond to any playback devices?

As noted in posts from previous years, it's very tedious trying to tweak the tuning of different notes - for example using the Inspector.

While this might not be very high priority for the developers - say of MS 4 - it would be good to have some microtonal features built in. I note that there has previously been some effort on plug-ins - but perhaps some of that could now be brought into the mainstream development plan.


Comments

There are plugins that can automate applying cent offsets to notes depending on accidentals.
Other than that there is the internal infrastructure in place to know ehat offset each accidently is supposed to have, but nothing in the midi rendering that uses that

In reply to by Jojo-Schmitz

Indeed - it is possible to change the tuning - I assume consistently - for a notated piece in standard Western notation(s),

Such notations are mostly based on 12 tones - whereas to do microtones one might wish to use (say) 24 tones - giving at least some greater variety of expression. One could argue that it's really not worth the bother, as many people might not be able to hear the differences - certainly in melodic pieces. There would be differences in harmony, however, and beat notes would be perceived in some combinations of microtones

Clearly it is (or ought to be) possible to vary the tuning of each note individually, but that may be far to much effort, whereas it would (perhaps) not be unreasonable to have the possiblity of working with 24 note scales - and for each note in such a scale to have adustable tuning, and some creators might find that very helpful.

Do you happen to have or know of a list of the plugins you mention?

In reply to by Jojo-Schmitz

There are indeed many plugins, though not so many which address the specific issue of microtone tuning and notation. Most people don't have the time to check through all the individual plugins in order to discover ones which might be useful in this - or indeed any other - context.

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