Changing time of grace notes

• Oct 8, 2012 - 07:36

I need to shorten the time of grace-notes especially when its attached to a long note
I tried the the other grace notes than acciacatura and apppogiatura but they dont sound at all
Is there any way?

Comments

• Oct 8, 2012 - 12:01

Hi Rusi,

We need a bit more to go on - can you attach a picture of what you're trying to achieve?

Also grace notes do not play back in version 1.2

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• Oct 8, 2012 - 17:08

On my system, most of these play back more or less as expected. Given that there really is no universal standard for this sort of thing. In 1.2, these play back such that the main note is on the beat and the grace note comes earlier, which is indeed one common way these are interpreted by human musicians. Only the last one seems out of character. I believe the algorithm used in 1.2 is to make the length of the grace note dependent on the length of the note it is attached to, which might be a convenient way of making sure grace notes attached to eighth notes are sufficiently fast, but it leads to crazy slow grace notes on long note values. There should probably be some sort of scale (logarithmic?) where shorter notes get shorter grace notes, but not in linear fashion.

Anyhow, in 2.0, the default has apparently been changed to put the grace note on the beat, and the last measure sound more like how I'd expect. Plus it is already possible to design your own playback for ornaments. So I'd consider this one of the many things that is already pretty much solved for 2.0.

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• Oct 8, 2012 - 17:36

I remember my Beethoven sonatas book edited by Tovey giving some complex rules about when the grace notes are on the beat and when before, though I would be surprised if it could be algorithmically determinable.

So for now I guess I just have to delete the grace notes and put in 32nd or whatever by hand. Sigh!

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• Oct 8, 2012 - 18:47

It seems you are valuing playback more than appearance? f so, I would suggest you are using the wrong tool for the job. MuseScore is primarily about getting good notation Playback is definitely very secondary. A MIDI sequencer would be a far better tool for tweaking the playback. You can use MuseScore to initially enter notes, then export a MIDI file and load it into a sequencer for further editing of the playback.

Also, while "rules" do indeed exist for how to onterpret different ornaments, you need to realize they aren't univeral. Wat rules you see in that edition would likely be contradicted by someone else's edition, or one textbook versus another.

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• Oct 9, 2012 - 03:19

I would certainly be interested to know what other tools exist

I teach singing to folks who would (otherwise) not think of themselves as singers or musicians
If it were not for tools like musescore, such people would never give a second look at staff notation.
In my estimate 80% of the population have some musical inkling/tastes etc but think music is 'beyond me'
1% of the population are unterrified of staff notation.
Its my experience that with a tool like musescore non-musicians can start doing in days what would otherwise take them years.
IOW it seems to me you are underestimating the power of musescore in moving some of that 80% into the 1% :-)

I need to say that on the whole it does an excellent job. Just a few glitches and features -- it would be a great help to have non-western key-signatures.

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• Oct 9, 2012 - 03:42

Well, again, 2.0 already provides the refinements to ornament playback you are asking about. And I absolutely agree MuseScore can be useful in teaching music. I might question just how important it is to have 100% accurate playback of ornaments in order to achieve that goal, though, and to what extent making your music harder to read - and thus more frightening - just to tweak playback a tiny bit is a good tradeoff. Still, sure, it would be nice not to have to make that tradeoff, and luckily, in this case at least, the problem is already fixed.

But as I said, if you really want that kind of fine control over all aspects of playback, then at some point long term, you really need a program that is designed from the group up to facilitate this, and that's what a sequencer is. If you do a web search, I'm sure you can find options for whatever OS you use.

As for non-western key signatures, you can have whatever you like - just bring up the key signature palette and drag accidentals around however you like.

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• Oct 9, 2012 - 19:53

Might help to define what you mean by saying the playback is "worse". I thought your grace notes came out much more in line with what I think you seem to be expecting.

Editing of playback is done in the "chord articulation editor". Documentation sketchy, but play around a while and you'll probably figure a few things out.

No idea where the key signature designer is, but I assume it's there, or will be returning. Do realize 2.0 is just for experimentation at this stage - don't expect to actually be able to work with it yet (although within certain limits, it *can* be used, I find).

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• Oct 10, 2012 - 03:25

Sorry... Dont mean to complain -- As you say 2.0 is for experimentation at this stage

Here are some things I see/hear:
Sound: It sounds strange -- I guess its related to getting the message
"Unable to open file "/home/ws/sfont/FluidR3.SF2" ??

The cursor following the note as its playing is completely out of sync

When doing nothing its taking 100% CPU

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• Oct 10, 2012 - 09:33

Alsa and jack were both checked.
When that is removed and only jack selected the 100% seems to go and also the following of the note played with the visual line/cursor is improved

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