"Speed training" option
Hi everyone, I would like to suggest an option that currently Musescore doesn't have but that I find that it could be really useful which is a "speed training" mode in the play back options.
I got the idea of "speed training" from the app phonicscore which is basically you loop a section of the score and every time it repeats it increases the tempo (65%, 70%, 75%, etc, for example). This is great for those who use musescore for practicing. The reason that I ask this here is because I do not like the quality of the other app, and I really love using musescore and it's sound quality.
Since the desktop version is more focused in creating and the mobile app more in play back, maybe it could be a premium feature for the "paid" app.
It is just an idea that I think that a lot of people would appreciate and use on a daily basis.
Thank you and greetings
Comments
This feature has been requested several times but I still think it's a bad idea from an educational point of view. I'm a drummer and I have been taught to *never* practice my part like this because it will make it harder to keep the actual tempo of the piece if practiced "accelerando" (I know it's not really accelerando, but 5% faster each time). Then, I'm not an expert in music instrument pedagogy. Any instrument/vocal teacher opinion?
In reply to This feature has been by [DELETED] 5
Well, I completely disagree with you on that, I am sorry. I am a profesional musician and one of the many techniques to practice a difficult fast passages is to put the metronome really slow and little by little work your way up till the real tempo. This can be done as well with musescore with the metronome option on (or off if you don't need it) and starting at 50% of the final tempo and little by little increase towards the real tempo.
All of this is really helpful and every profesional musician independently of which instrument he or she plays has used this method with the metronome (more or less, depending if they find it useful or not). I personally, use it on a daily basis, my colleges do it as well and I encourage my students to work with the metronome increasing the speed in the difficult fast passages.
What this "speed training" option would do, is to do all of this automatically, so the musician doen´t have to stop every time, go to the computer/tablet/phone, stop the play back, increase the tempo and play it again for 15 times in a row.
Therefore, I think it would be a great tool for everyone that uses musescore intead of a noisy metronome in order to learn music in a musical context besides the metronome beat.
In reply to This feature has been by [DELETED] 5
In my considerable experience as a classically trained musician who has spent a lot of time playing and writing Jazz and Latin music, I believe this is a poor idea.
As well as a poor practise habit, how would one set the appropriate number of repeats prior to each tempo shift (for example)?
You'll end up spending more time making adjustments than practising.
In reality there is no such thing as "speed training" if by that you mean the ability to learn faster. One can only learn at the speed one can "learn".
Regards,
In reply to In my considerable experience by xavierjazz
Well this is to work on an specific passage, the same as you would use a metronome, every time it repeats it increases 5% the speed, and when you reach the limit you stop it yourself.
Speed training does not refer to the ability of learn faster but to the method to practice increasing the speed
In reply to In my considerable experience by xavierjazz
I don't know if I should mention another piece of software here, but a certain guitar tab app in the 5th version made this perfectly, in my opinion.
1. You tap the "Speed Trainer" button
2. You select the tempo percentage of the first (slowest) playback (minimum tempo) and the fastest playback (maximum tempo).
3. Then, you set up an increment - a percentage on which the tempo is increased each playback.
4. You hit OK
5. You Hit play and start playing after a countdown.
So, let's say your piece has 100 BPM (for the simplicity of the calculations).
You set up the lower margin at 80% and the higher at 120%.
And you set up an increment of 5%.
When you hit "Play", the piece starts playing at 80 BPM. When it reaches the end, it starts playing again at 85 BPM, then at 90 and so on. When it reaches the end of 120 DPM playback, it loops at 120 BPM indefinitely.
In reply to This feature has been by [DELETED] 5
Interesting thought about practice speed and drummers, since they are the ones who set the tempo in ensemble playing. So, I guess something like Chicago's Color My World shouldn't be practiced/memorized 'accelerando'. :-)
Anyhow, the idea is not 'speed training' as an end in itself - i.e to play faster and faster to reach one's human limit - but rather to start off 'slow' and bring the score selection up to 'normal' speed.
(Think 5 string bluegrass banjo... for novice players.)
A similar request from an accordionist:
https://musescore.org/en/node/13679#comment-47508
Regards.
In reply to Interesting thought about by Jm6stringer
Exactly!
In reply to Exactly! by Ja4Music
As a violin player I would strongly agree with the people advising against this sort of speed training. As a kid I used to try and get my hard passages to the desired speed by ramping up the tempo on the metronome. It was boring and it was time consuming: Whatever tempo I got to on day one: On day two I had to start at the low end all over again. With help from good teachers I use a few tricks now that usually get me to my goal faster:
Step 0 is thinking really hard and making sure the fingerings / bowings are as efficient and comfortable as possible in the context (or whatever the analogous issues are with your instrument).
Then:
1. Practice well below tempo (half or less) until utterly comfortable.
2. Now don't speed up; add more difficulty instead: More complex bowing for example or dynamic patterns that you don't need at the end (stick with the fingerings through all of this though).
3. A special trick is to sharpen the rhythm: If your passage is in even sixteenths play it in dotted rhythm. What this is is playing every second note at tempo and use the dotted note to rest in between. Practice until comfortable, then turn around the rhythm: rather than Taaata taaata play tataaa tataaa. Once you get that right take it to taaatatata etc. one dotted eighth plus three sixteenths, now playing 75% in tempo with half the "rests". Turn that around by starting with the three fast notes as before.
4. You can practice longer sections in tempo, e.g. take a "rest" at the end of each measure or every second measure etc.
Once you have done this you'll often find you can play the passage with few problems in tempo. For me this is much more efficient than ratcheting up a metronome.
In reply to As a violin player I would by azumbrunn
Sounds like a good tip to me. Thank you, @azumbrunn . I'll try that.
In reply to This feature has been by [DELETED] 5
Thank you all for your input. I will try to be more precise and rephrase because I'm not sure I convey my idea correctly (I'm not a native english speaker).
Of course, there is no discussion that one should start to practice at a slow tempo and then gradually speed up to learn a difficult passage. We all agree on this.``
The point I was making is that I believe it's a bad idea to play a passage twice at slow tempo, and then repeat it twice directly 5% faster without a pause, and again 5% faster etc...( what I called accelerando). But I believe it's beneficial to repeat it X times, master it, take a breath (get a coffee or even a good night sleep) and increase the tempo X%.
What I feel is not good is the automatic increasing of tempo without a break. It doesn't feel right "pedagogically", but again, I'm not an educator nor a professional musician.
In reply to Thank you all for your input. by [DELETED] 5
Yes, my thoughts exactly :-)
FWIW, I personally am a fan of this sort of practice technique. However, I can't see any realistic way to automate it and have anywhere near the same benefits as doing it manually. In order for the technique to have any value st all, you have to stay with each tempo long enough to actually *master* it at that tempo, and that could be twice or it could be twenty times. Without some sort of scheme where the software "listens" and detects errors, it could not know when to move on to the next faster tempo. You could aribtrarily choose to do it twenty times at each tempo just to be safe, but then the approach becomes more time-consuming that it should be. Plus, realistically, simply repeating it at each tempo isn't right - if you can't play it perfectly at a given tempo, you might need to slow it back down, or work out some fingering or whatever for just one little passage, etc.
To me, the whole value in the approach is forcing you to slow down and not advance until you are ready, and when you encounter problems, to stop and fix them, not just keep repeating it over and over at a tempo you can't play it at yet. Automation is counter to both of those.
In reply to FWIW, I personally am a fan by Marc Sabatella
"In order for the technique to have any value st (sic) all, you have to stay with each tempo long enough to actually *master* it at that tempo, and that could be twice or it could be twenty times."
Yep.
It really depends what you hope to achieve. If you just want to play faster, you can do it, but can you do it deliberately and exactly? Great music is extraordinarily precise. That's one of the things that makes it great. Don't be seduced into a musical dead end.
There's a video on youtube where Hal Galper discusses the drive for more speed (he has a number of very interesting and informative things to say). He comments that if you cannot play at the speed you want, it's not that you are physically too slow, it's that your MIND is too slow. You don't really understand what you are trying to do. Understanding that completely changed my practise habits for the better.
As has been stated so many times by real masters, practise slowly, MASTER it. This is not saying to repeat slowly in a mindless fashion, rather slowly in a mindful fashion.
Once you have actually internalized (learned) the gestures that you wish to express, you will.
You can always export the audio into .wav or .mp3 and then load into your favorite player that supports speed increase or decease with a shortcut hotkey (VLC for instance has the +- shorcut for playback increasage/decreasage). This isn't exactly what the OP was asking, but it's a viable solution. Or why not manually press up or down in the percentage box of tempo when in the Play Panel while the music is playing? Then again what if you're away from the computer and practicing on an instrument somewhere else as it is playing without a computer keyboard near by? The art of increased tempo practicing seems to be better suited to a manual approach imho.
P.S. I've found that it's nice to have a computer keyboard near the instrument for instances of utilizing navigation-shortcuts, include time-based changes, accessible while practicing instead of having to move around all the time.
Disregard my post if this seems non-applicable
P.P.S. the gradual increasing of tempo/time ought to be done AFTER the notes have been "embedded" in muscle/mental memory, not before hand ;)
Well, I wondered about this too.
I am learning piano and guitar still - well - will THIS end some when? ;)
I fully agree with the comments saying: "Repeat at slower tempo until you are really familiar with the piece you are playing at the given speed."
I have TuxGuitar installed in parallel to MuseScore. TuxGuitar is not limited to guitar. It has a lot of different voices too ... and it features a training mode. For now I use to "copy" the score from MuseScore to TuxGuitar but I'll have a look if the percentage in playback can be used for slower playing directly in MuseScore. This would save a lot of time because the "copying" I mentioned above is in reality a rewrite of the score in another tool.
I'd support this feature request tough. If someone will implement it, please cheat at TuxGuitar. The training mode is very customisable. Playing a section round and round with or without increasing speed. Playing the piece round and round with or without increasing speed ...
Last but not least - it is a feature request. If the feature is implemented there is no MUST to use it if someone dislikes it.
That explains why I can't find it. I thought older versions had one but really don't remember
See #325482: Suggestion - Add speed variation for loop playback (aka. speed training)
I totally agree with you on this. A speed trainer option would be excellent, especially for new, middle-school level musicians.