Musescore Ideas (Kind of)

• Aug 11, 2017 - 22:16

So I'm coming here with a couple ideas that aren't necessarily feature requests. More of just thought stimulation.

  1. String playback - In the mixer, plural [orchestral] string instruments by default use a sound called "stereo strings fast." But in the mixer there is also the option "Stereo Strings Slow." Stereo Strings slow sound better with slower music like long held out chords, using a slight swell/slow attack and [more ambient ?] tone. Stereo Strings fast is, as the name implies better for faster music with a faster attack, but sort of at the expense of realism (In general. But you can't really tell with faster music). So I was thinking that it would make sense if you could change the midi channel based off of the length of the note. Currently, you can change the midi channel using "Staff Text Properties" And you can select 'Normal,' 'Pizzicato,' and 'Tremolo.' In the Mixer, these all have their own channels and sounds attached to them through a soundfont. So what if the 'Normal Channel' was Split into 'Normal Fast' and 'Normal Slow.' Then maybe you could use the product of the tempo and the reciprocal of the note duration to have musescore automatically choose a channel. Maybe a unit of 480 units uses stereo strings fast while a unit of 240 units uses stereo strings slow. That would mean 480 units is equivalent to a quarter note at 120 bpm or a half note at 60 bpm or an eighth note at 60 bpm. 240 units would be the half note @120 and the quarter @60. So this number unit would represent a certain speed. Any thing at [speed unit] and lower would use stereo strings slow and anything above that would use stereo strings fast. And maybe you would be able to adjust this number in settings or something. Maybe you could even take rests into consideration; like notes surrounded by no rests, notes preceded by a rest, notes followed by a rest, and notes surrounded by a rest and have a different [speed unit] for each to make playback as realistic as possible. I think that would be great for playback.

  2. Adding instruments. Well I know this is possible to do with the instruments.xml file but this is extremely hard to do. Especially if you just want to use a specific soundfont or something. Right now you have to save a score and use it as a template or add a random instrument and modify it to 'create' your extra instrument. It would be great if there was some sort of menu or module that would assist with this so that users wouldn't have to do this every time. Maybe you could even modify existing ones and reset when it gets out of hand. With this you could create keyboard instrument that uses certain sounds in your soundfont bank, modify default sounds for instruments from your soundfont bank, add channels to instruments [maybe even make channels and set what triggers them (like text, or certain articulations or ornaments if you find a soundfont for it)], change default staves, ranges, etc. This would allow one to easily customize musescore (instruments) to write for specific instruments if any visual changes need to be made and possibly have more accurate playback. The idea is that this plug-in, module, feature, or what ever it would be would have a menu that would modify the instruments.xml file as you make changes (using buttons or some sort of interface). Then the all you'd have to worry about, really, is making visual changes like staff-type, ranges, clefs, etc. and then playback changes (not as important) like channels+soundfonts, etc.

Well I guess that's it. I don't feel these are important enough to make it into musescore update with all the great things they are working on right now, but it would be great if someone with so coding/programming skills could make a plug-in. What are your thoughts?


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