dynamics in treble changed by what is in bass

• Oct 2, 2018 - 23:59

I am having trouble with the volume in a piece for piano. In the sample provided, when I have no "PP" in the bass, the treble plays quite loudly, but the bass, which is supposed to be "P", also plays loudly. When I changed the bass to "PP", the treble drops in volume quite drastically. When I did the "select all similar elements", it said that in either Staff or Part, the dynamic markings had the correct velocities. Something is amiss, though, when the volume of the "mf" rises and falls depending on the dynamic marking in the bass, but in F11 it says that the "mf" has the same velocity in both versions, with and without the "PP" in the bass.

Attachment Size
Test piece from Rest....mscz 6.91 KB

Comments

To be clear: the standard - in MuseScore and in real life - is for any dynamic marking to affect both staves equally. If you have some special effect you are trying to achieve where you want one hand at a different dynamic than the other, then you can use the Inspector as shown above to change the "Dynamic range" of any marking you want to affect the current staff only. If you don't actually want to create a special effect but merely want to mimic the behavior of a real pianist who would naturally bring out the melody notes a little bit, I would suggest not using dynamics for this but instead use the Inspector to add an offset to the "Velocity" of the notes themselves.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

Are you saying that throughout the piece, where I never have the right and left hands at the same volume, I should go through and change the velocity, one by one, of each and every note? Oh, just give me a gun and I will shoot myself! It's a LONG piece. Is there no way to get the separate staves to have different volumes, here and there, for sections of several measures?
Beth

In reply to by Beths

Is there no way to get the separate staves to have different volumes, here and there, for sections of several measures?
Sure there is; it's even in the start of Marc's answer: add the dynamic to the staff, then use the inspector to change the range it applies to from "(whole) part" to "(just this) staff".

Are you saying that throughout the piece, where I never have the right and left hands at the same volume, I should go through and change the velocity, one by one, of each and every note?
Yes, you have to change every note.
No, you don't have to it one by one (that would just take ages).
1. Select a whole staff (click on first note, press Shift+Ctrl+End/Shift+Cmd+End)
2. In the inspector press the Notes button
3. In the inspector in the Note section, ensure the Velocity Type is set to Offset; in the next field enter a value between -127 and 127 to set a relative volume offset on all those notes at once.

In reply to by jeetee

OK, I went into F11, the Inspector, and clicked on the "mf" and other markings in the sample I sent and it turned out that one of them was set at "part". I had been wondering why this trouble was only in this one spot in the whole piece and it turns out that every other dynamic marking was correctly set at "staff". So I changed that section in the original and now all the volumes are doing their parts properly. Thanks, and thanks to all the others who also sent advice on the matter. Beth

In reply to by Beths

jeetee's answer is spot on,. No need to change velocity for notes one by one, you can do so in groups as small or as large as you can select. He gave a method for selecting an entire staff, but the same principle applies if you just want one passage of a few measures. Select the measures (eg, click one, Shift+click the other, or however you like to make selections), press Notes to limit the selection to just the notes, then make your adjustment.

Or, if we're just talking about the slight bump a human musician would give to make the melody a little more prominent, you could simply not worry about this subtle detail in the computer-generated playback but instead have confidence that human musicians will do this naturally anyhow.

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