Playback is being weird

• Aug 24, 2011 - 01:14

The playback will not recognize the clearly placed ending 1, ending 2 and ending 3. I only did this due to the coda bug. But now, it's acting very, very strange. It's jumping around to random places in the song instead of following directions.

Attachment Size
Princess of the Stormy Seas.mscz 6.19 KB

Comments

I have a similar issue. I'm trying to make a simple Old-time tune (A, A, B, B) and the repeat doesn't work properly any way I do it. I imported it from a MIDI, cut out the extra measures, and constructed the repeats properly to the best of my knowledge. I've tried with and without the 1st & 2nd ending notation, with and without the end-start repeat, with and without a grand staff, with and without the drone notes in the 2nd ending, etc. No matter what, the behavior is:

- Start the playback, it goes through the A part and into the 1st ending
- cursor bounces back to the beginning (correct behavior)
- simultaneously, notes in the 2nd ending and B parts are played (as if another cursor keeps going).

The result is a big jumble of superimposed notes that eventually becomes a constant chord.

I'm using 1.1.

Attached is the current version, but I've tried many variations.

Attachment Size
angeline.mscz 3.24 KB

In reply to by [DELETED] 5

Thanks for the fix! It helps me move forward with that little project. The file was pretty much straight from the MIDI import other than the rearranging that was needed to break out the repeats.

Still, the things you addressed seem to be unrelated issues (correct me if I'm wrong). Could you reproduce the problem with the original file, and is there anything you did which might have repaired it? Playing it here, the problem is very obvious after the first repeat.

BTW the file seemed to play properly in v2 according to what I saw on the screen, but I have no sound in v2 for some reason and the v2 file cannot be read by v1.1.

In reply to by AntonLargiader

I could certainly reproduce the problems with the original file. I tried to fix it up (remove/replace some repeat signs and first/second endings) but that didn't work.

V2 sound can be an annoying problem with v1 scores. You will have to go to the Synthesizer panel and load the soundfont. I believe the reason is that the sound font is stored in the v2 MSCZ file so you can switch fonts between files without having to manually load a different font each time.

In reply to by schepers

Thanks. It played correctly for me after I opened your version, so I figured something changed. However, using it last night we experienced the playback skipping measures (such as at a repeat, it would go back to the 2nd measure of that section instead of the first). We changed the tempo slightly in playback and it worked properly.

So, a different problem. I think the playback functionality just isn't solid. Might be the program, might be my PC. It's a shame, because that's an integral part of what I'm trying to do (create some play-along scores).

I can also try to fix the V2 sound issue, since the playback tracking seemed to be correct in V2. The thing is, I like the V1.1 interface much better! I'm not a huge Windows fan, but Windows programs just work better with the Windows API.

In reply to by AntonLargiader

Playback is pretty solid in general, but repeats perhaps less so. If your main goal is playalong, I'd just write out the the repeats (using copy/paste) for the version you plan to use for the recording.

Not sure what you mean about the API in 1.1 versus 2.0. Both versions use Qt for the UI components as far as I know. Neither version looks all that natively "Windows", but 2.0 is actually a little closer than 1.1 to my eyes. If it's the color scheme that is throwing you, go to Edit->Preferences and change it from "dark" to "native", then restart.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

"If your main goal is playalong, I'd just write out the the repeats (using copy/paste) for the version you plan to use for the recording."

All of the MIDIs that I find are that way, usually AABB (old-time) repeated three or four times. I specifically want to change them to the correct repeat structure. As a single stream of notes, there's no concept of sections being the same, and it's hard to find differences when you don't know where you are after a while. From the learning perspective, knowing how the music really is structured is important. The whole repeat thing is an integral part of these tunes, and sometimes in a jam session you play them many times.

As for the API, during the brief time I had v2 loaded I noticed specifically the File dialog box seemed nonstandard as did others, unlike V1.1. The Windows API File dialog has panels for Desktop, My Documents and so forth whereas this one at least did not show Desktop which is where I had the files. I had to figure out where the desktop folder is buried in the other pseudo file structure. I'll probably load it again to keep working on the repeat thing and then I'll take a closer look.

In reply to by AntonLargiader

The playback problem varies with the tempo, and the problem also exists in v2. I can play a tune with repeats and everything is fine. Then I might slow it down, and it totally breaks after it encounters repeats. Or when I speed it up. V2 is better for me than v1.1 but neither are reliable. Sometimes it skips the first measure after a repeat, and sometimes I get the 'multi-play' effect where it plays the A and the B at the same time, etc. When it happens, it's not random. I can replay it and the exact same error occurs every time as long as I don't change the tempo.

It has only happened on scores with a repeat.

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