Changing Musescore playback pitch

• Mar 20, 2013 - 04:04

I am transcribing a piano piece from a video recording. A midi keyboard was used and the performer did some post production editing of the audio which raised the pitch halfway through the performance. So I can see in the video that after that halfway point, he appears to be playing in the same key, but the pitch is raised. I can transpose the pitch on my midi keyboard so that what I see and hear the performer play at that halfway point, matches what I see and hear on my keyboard when I play. I would also like to raise the pitch of the audio playback output of Musescore so that it matches the pitch of the video recording and my (transposed) keyboard, but the notes in my Musescore file stay in the original key (just as the video shows the performer playing in the original key). Any information and ideas about whether I can raise the pitch of the Musescore audio output a half step? Thanks.


Comments

You can, but not midway through a piece - it's would be all or nothing. You could either change the master tuning in Display / Synthesizer, or else set the transposition of the affected atave(s) in Staff Properties (right click menu).

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

Here's my objective. I want to use the visual cues of the video to help with the transcription of the second half (where the video has raised the pitch a half step, for dramatic effect). Also, I want to use Musescore playback to verify what I have entered.

From what you are saying, I think I can create a separate file for the second half, raise the pitch of the audio playback as you have described, notate in the original key, and then copy/paste back into the file that has the first half of the performance.

... and then when I have the whole piece entered into the original file, in the original key, I will transpose the notes of the second half up a half step to reflect the drama of the key change.

I know I could just listen to the audio and transcribe the second half that way, but I would not be able to use the visual cues of the recording as effectively that way.

Does that make sense, or am I missing something?

In reply to by glentek

I'm a little hard to understand : you would like that from half the score MuseScore plays the notes in a different tone their writing ?

In this case : we can do this by selecting all measures in question and right-click on a note>Notes properties>Tuning Offset.
( Just make the necessary adjustment ). Only the selected notes will change their tone without writing be amended...

In reply to by Miré

This is fine for increasing pitch by up to a whole tone (200 cent). For larger increases you can use one of the non-standard Clefs, change the key sig, hide it and then paint in the original key sig. using symbols (that don't affect the playback). Look at the attached with Display -> Show Invisible checked and then unchecked.

This gives you a higher increase that you can "fine-tune" with the offset. I'm not sure that ALL increases or decreases could be accommodated but probably enough for what is requested here.

Attachment Size
Increase_pitch.mscz 2.09 KB

I need to raise the pitch of the second half of this piece by 100 cents, so using Note Properties/Tuning Offset will do the job. It would be more convenient for me if I could set this up in measure properties, but no big deal.

In reply to by glentek

As 100 cents is a semitone it would be simpler to simply adjust the transposition parameters in a separate stave, and use "Hide empty Staves" to remove the blank bars.

Only downside to this would be you would have to make sure the transition happened on a new line otherwise the empty stave would not be hidden.

HTH
Michael

In reply to by ChurchOrganist

I changed the master tuning from A=440 Hz to A=466.2 Hz. (Display/Synthesizer/Master Tuning). It's working great for the specific task that I want to accomplish. Once I have the second half of the piece transcribed, I will transpose the notation up a half step, change the key signature of the second half, and change the master tuning back to A=440.

I think I might use Marc's suggestion of changing the master tuning (Display/Synthesizer/Master Tuning). That will work great for just focusing on transcribing the second half of the piece. The only downside is audio playback of the whole transcription won't reflect the video recording, but that is not absolutely necessary. I just liked listening to the whole thing from time to time.

A note about Marc's other suggestion of doing the transposition in Staff Properties/Play Transposition. This changed the key signature, which I do not want. Also, as a side note, once the key was changed using this method, ctrl-z did not reset the key signature to it's original state. Maybe a bug?

In reply to by glentek

Good point that transposition changes key signature, although you can certainly then re-enter the correct one. Doing it as two separate scores and then gluing the audio together is certainly as good a solution as any I can think of. Using the note properties offset is a clever idea I hadn't thought of, but that doesn't help while entering the notes - only after the fact. So maybe enter with the master tuning set, then when done, reset the master but use the offset to adjust the second part of the piece.

And yes, I'd consider the failure of undo to work with the transposition a bug. Only seems to happen if you are in transposed mode (as opposed to concert pitch) when you make the change. Well, at least, certainl sequences seem to trigger the bug, others don't. I recall some of this being doscovered and reported before, and I know a lot of the handling of this has changed and is still in the process of changing for 2.0.

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