New to Musescore, have questions about glissando and slur/tie
I've only been using Musescore for two days and so far I like it. I did have a question about glissando. When I have a chord, and I place (drag) an arpeggio symbol in front of it, the software plays the chord as an arpeggio. But if I place (drag) a glissando between two notes, it does not create the glissando, i.e it does not play the notes between the two. It seems that it merely serves to make the music look right, but, unlike when I place (drag) and arpeggio symbol, that actually plays the chord as an arpeggio. But for the glissando, I would have to add all the notes between the first and second note to actually hear a glissando. So it seems that the glissando symbol is "cosmetic" only, but doesn't actually affect the music. Did I miss something here?
The other question is about the slur symbol and the tie. I know I can tie two notes together with the keypad "+" key, and that this causes the tied notes to be played as one note, and also automatically places a slur between the notes. However, just dragging a slur symbol from the "lines" palette merely places the slur between the two notes but does not play them as one note. So, if the tie (+) actually ties the notes and places the slur between them, why do we need the slur symbol from the lines palette? It doesn't cause the two notes to actually play as one. The tie does that, and places the slur anyway.
Any help is appreciated. Sorry if my questions are too basic, but again, I only started using Musescore two days ago. Thanks in advance.
Comments
I believe the next version of MuseScore will have some improvements on the play back of arpeggios and glissandi, try out a nightly build
Ties and slurs are different things. In the lines palette there is a slur. Play back of these doesn't work as good as it might, this is mostly a restriction of the soundfonts used. The + sign places a tie, not a slur and this does playback properly (as it easy enough to just let the same sound continue)
First, your use of the term "cosmetic only" suggest you are hoping to use MuseScore as some sort of sequencer - a program whose main purpose is to produce good-sounding computer playback, that just happens to use staff notation to achieve that goal. But this is *not* the primary purpose of MuseScore. The primary notation is the notation itself - to be able to produce a score you can print and have played by real musicians. So it will always be the case that there it will prioritize appearance over playback. Look at it this way - if the gliss symbol produced playback but didn't display correctly in the score, that would make it useless for the primary purpose. But if a symbol displays correctly in the score but doesn't playback, that's still good enough for this primary purpose.
If your main concern is playback, you'll likely find a number of other things lacking - it just isn't the main concern of MuseScore. There are quite a few markings that don't have playback effect implemented, and other aspects of playback that you can control as well as you would a program whose primary purpose was the playback (eg, a sequencer, or a Digital Audio Workstation). Just wanted to set your expectations more appropriately.
Second. as JoJo says, ties and slurs are indeed completely different things; they just happen to use similar looking symbols. Ties are used to extend the length of a single note. A slur is used to connect different* notes and tell the performer to play them more smoothly than he otherwise might. For wind instrument players, for example, it means don't use the tongue on each individual note. It has absolutely nothing to do with a tie. They don't look identical - similar, but not identical (ties have shallower arcs, and they connect from closer to the insides of the notes - so that ties can fit inside slurs).
In reply to First, your use of the term by Marc Sabatella
Thank you both for the information. As I said this is all new to me, and I am not a professional musician, but I do enjoy using this software. I will learn it's strong points and weak points as I become more familiar with it. And I'm sure there are numerous things about not only the software, but also my (limited) understanding of music that will be over my head. Nevertheless, I'm happy to have Musescore and the resource that this forum offers.
In reply to Thanks by bill2reg
For other curved lines, see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phrase_mark
as distinguished from ties and slurs.
Regards.