Support for playback of ghost notes for Strings and Winds.
This feature request was prompted by Issue #110451: Support for Playback of Drums Ghost Notes
Currently it seems there is no support for playback of ghost notes on (bass) guitar. These are notes which are muted to the point that they have no discernible pitch but only a percussive effect. They are marked with an 'x' notehead. For more info see Wikipedia
For reference here are some Youtube videos which show this technique in isolation:
For bass guitar ghost notes are typically 16th notes. I emulate the effect by making these 16th notes staccatissimo and making the articulation invisible. This way you get a click like sound with very little pitch information. This however does not work for notes longer than 16th notes while a longer ghost note would be valid I believe (though rare).
Comments
Any wind instrument can also make ghost notes. For winds, it is basically the same concept...the note is so quiet (almost silent) made by fingering the note while deliberately not blowing enough air to fully sound the note. (on a saxophone, most of the sound just comes from the pressing down of the keys). The are can be noted as 'x' notehead, although I often use parenthesis around a regular notehead. Implementation would be the same: I believe just have the volume of 'x' for all these instruments be close to 0.
I don't think that need to have a separate issue for all different instruments, so I'm changing the title.
Actually I see ghost notes notated quite a bit for eighth notes, especially for up-tempo jazz transcriptions. But I don't know what the best interpretation for "ghosting" a quarter or half or whole note would be. But if no one is going to write a 'x' quarter or whole note, then I wouldn't worry too much about that.