Why are marcato accents so dang violent?

• Dec 16, 2019 - 23:28

I used a marcato accent in a piano piece and it sounds like the key is being bashed with a hammer. why is it like this


Comments

It's a common problem among soundfonts, playing marcato on a real piano doesn't produce such harsh sound. Neither does playing fortississimo.

In reply to by Howard-C

I select a note and double-click the “Marcato above” item in the Articulations panel (or press Shift+O) to add a marcato. I select the marcato and look at the Inspector and see that “Play” is checked. I press Space to play the selection but there is no audible change in velocity. I verify this by turning on MIDI output and checking the actual velocity value using a MIDI monitor: no change at all with or without the marcato.

Should I file a bug?

In reply to by Spire42

I just restarted MuseScore and created a new score to test this again, but I can no longer reproduce the problem. Then I reopened the score I was testing on initially, and again I can no longer reproduce the problem. Ack.

I'll continue to observe and will file a bug if it comes up again.

I suspect the OP meant "sforzato" - the regular ">" accent you get with Shift+V. It's easy and obvious to reproduce: default empty score, enter four quarter notes, put an accent on one, hit play. It's way too harsh. It's been brought up before, I'm surprised it isn't reported several times a day. Not sure if it's the definition of sforzato in instruments.xml that is the problem (maybe 150 is too much velocity change, or maybe it is just for piano), or maybe it's a soundfont issue where the difference between 80 velocity and 120 is just out of whack). But it's something that should be looked at, taking into consideration a variety of instruments and soundfonts and dynamic levels.

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