Can you adjust the audible (not visual) space between notes? (for playback function)
I am asking this in relation to two projects: the first is creating rhythm dictation exercises to be played for a ear-training class. For this I need to use the same repeated pitch, have the starts of the notes be easily discernible, but also the endings. If I use 'piano' as the instrument, the tone is not sustained enough to hear whether it is, for example, a quarter note, or an eighth + an eighth rest. If I use sustained instruments the beginnings of the notes are not clear since they are all the same pitch and there are no breaks between the notes. Accents on every note is not an option because I use those to distinguish the beginnings of the beats. Can anyone suggest an instrument with some sound-decay, but not as much as piano? Or is there a way to create a tiny bit of space between the ends and beginnings of notes. Since there are no slurs in the music, this is how a lot of it would be played on instruments anyway.
My second case: I am trying to provide violin students with recordings of beginner pieces. They definitely need time between tones to set fingers and re-articulate. And regardless of the level, the completely seamless legato sound that you get with the electronic playback is only realistic if the music is all being played in one giant slur. A normal violin sound would have some taper and some re-articulation on each note at the change of a bow. Are there any settings that can be used to modify this, or at least put some space between notes (I know this would still sound very electronic, but it would still help)?
Comments
You can, but it might not be very easy.
Use the Piano Roll Editor in which you can select all your notes and then change their length property all at once.
A length of 1000 means the note is played for it's full duration (100%); the default non-legato sound length used by most instruments in musescore is 950 (95%). You can further decrease this setting to match what you want.
In reply to You can, but it might not be… by jeetee
Ah, thanks for the tip! I made a small test score with different lengths.
Using the piano roll editor for it is very cumbersome, though. I had to select the notes, eyeball the desired length value in the Levels Display Area below with the mouse, hold Shift+Click (not on the corner/dot, though!), then move left/right to "shave off" each selected note... ಠ_ಠ
Making the Levels area taller & zooming out horizontally (Ctrl+Shift+Mousewheel) helps, but this is still annoying.
Why doesn't Shift+Click change *all* selected notes? And why can't I just use the "Len" setting on the top right to adjust all of them to a precise number? (It's greyed out when multiple are selected). I think I'll open a thread in feature requests. ;)
In reply to You can, but it might not be… by jeetee
About that 95% for non-legato: Judging from https://github.com/musescore/MuseScore/blob/master/share/instruments/in… (and messing around in scores), the default
gateTimeseems to be 100, and only 7 instruments (flute, traverso, and 4 pianos) specify anything other than 100...That disagrees with the handbook, and also doesn't seem reasonable.
Have you tried turning off reverb (View > Synthesizer > Effect A = NoEffect)? The default muddies the note offset a lot.
As for changing the note length values, I'd say adding invisible louré/portato to every note is the quickest workaround. It sounds a bit short at (67%) & may not work on accented notes, though.
- Edit > Select all.
- Palettes > Articulations > [the _. symbol] (double-click).
- Then right-click on a selected symbol, Select > More > check "Same Subtype" > OK.
- With all portato symbols selected, press V (or uncheck "Visible" in the Inspector).
Okay, this bugged me, so I messed around with custom instrument settings in the xml fiile.
@Stefni If you like how the second violin sounds in this: demo85.mscz
you can download nonlegato85.xml and select it as "Instrument list 2" under Edit > Preferences > Score. Then you will find a Violin & Viola under the new "Strings - Bowed (non-legato=85%)" instrument group, and those will have more realistic note separation & a clearer difference between legato & not.
This won't change existing scores or templates, though; you'll have to change the instrument manually on those.
(I've also included two other values for the gateTime; 95% is supposed to be standard, but it sounded too long to my ears.)