Feedback thoughts

• Oct 25, 2017 - 03:22

This is more in the nature of feedback on the product than a specific feature request, though a suggestion or two may be found here. I'm working with the Windows product.

  1. Neither in the product itself nor in the online handbook have I found a place to offer feedback that is not intended to be either a bug report or a feature request, but more in the nature of a suggestion or a comment. That omission may be deliberate, but if it is an oversight you might consider providing for two kinds of feedback: on the product itself and on the online handbook.

  2. When saving files it would be nicer (in Windows at least) to have the default file names have spaces rather than underscores between the words in the name. You may have good reasons for the underscores; I don't know what those might be. But if it's just a carryover from Linux, for example, and you could make that difference in the Windows product, it would be nice.

  3. I play the musical saw, and I sometimes write for it. In checking the voices available under All Instruments I find a musical saw listed under Pitched Percussion, but it is the sound as played with a mallet. That is indeed one way the saw is played, but it is more commonly played with a bow and that's the sound I'd prefer to use. Only no such sound is in the lists. So I went through the lists checking several other sounds, including these: Musical Glasses; Kazoo; Virginal; Harmonium; Bowed Synthesizer; Saw Synthesizer; Theremin; Erhu. None is right, though Erhu comes closest. I was surprised particularly that the Theremin sounded almost like a percussive instrument, with a strong attack. I've never heard one that sounds that way. They sound much more like a Hawaiian guitar (without a plucking sound), and a well-bowed saw sounds similar. (By the way, I didn't find a Hawaiian Guitar in the list either.) If you ever expand the lists it would be nice to find the Hawaiian Guitar and Bowed Musical Saw added, and perhaps the Theremin sound replaced with a more realistic one. (That might require renaming the existing Musical Saw item.) There might even be merit in adding a category named Esoterica or some such for instruments that don't fit well into the existing categories.

Regarding the musical saw pitch range (for showing out-of-range notes in red), there are quite a number of custom saws out there with a variety of ranges, and therein may lie a problem for determining what range to assign (unless you create multiple voices for saws with different ranges, which I doubt you'd want to undertake). The most common range for off-the-shelf hardware store saws (of which very few now exist that can do good music, Sandvik/Bahco being one of the few remaining), is from C4 to F5. Saws claiming to be tenor or baritone saws will go lower but not as high. Longer saws will have a wider range. The effective range is determined partly by the length of the blade and partly by the width of the blade at its wide and narrow ends. Wider at the wide end goes lower; narrower at the narrow end goes higher. I did note that the musical saw item in the Pitched Percussion list showed E4 and below and F7 and above out of range. I would contend that those are inaccurate. Yes, a saw can be forced into harmonics that go up toward that upper note, but very few players know how to control that for real music; it just isn't practical. (Some saws do that more naturally and easily than others.)


Comments

Ad 1) you found that place right here.
Ad 2) spaces in filenames cause more issues that they are worth, and not just on Windows or Linux. If f you want them you can have them, but it is IMHO a good idea that MuseScore doesn't create them by default.
Ad 3) there is only a limited list of sounds in General MIDI.

In reply to by Jojo-Schmitz

Thanks to both you and Mike for your comments.

I apologize for the duplicate post. I couldn't find a way to edit my initial post to add the last paragraph, and then I couldn't find a way to delete the original after adding it.

I've been writing software and working with and managing computers for over 50 years. I've worked with spaces in Windows file names since Windows 95, where long names were first introduced. I'm aware of the issues with them, especially in scripting, but they're much more prevalent in Linux than in Windows. For most purposes it suffices in Windows to just put the name in quotes. For MuseScore's purposes even that isn't necessary. So it seemed to me innocuous enough in Windows to use them.

To Mike:

Actually, I would not WRITE a saw score with such glissandi. I'd write it with just the notes on pitch as for a keyboard or something. Let the player interpret that. (I actually play very much on pitch, unlike most players, who slide all over the scale. People often say I'm the best sawist they've ever heard.) My thought in the comment was to have a sound that more nearly represents the kind of sound a bowed saw makes for a given note. But I understand that restriction to the General MIDI list of sounds may preclude doing so.

I do know where to make a range edit, and have done so. My comment there was that the default range for the Musical Saw item was way off from reality and perhaps should be adjusted.

In reply to by Gerald Reynolds

My comment about the glissando had to do with the horrible sound it produces and would do no better for what I have heard of bowed saw music which is generally very flowing from note to note. MuseScore would almost make it sound staccato by comparison.

I don't know your knowledge of MuseScore so I thought I'd throw that in if it would help. If you want more saws add and there is a way to distinguish one saw from another, such as Saw in F and Saw in Bb or lumberjack saw or something like that, then you can put in a request in the issue tracker for the instruments to be added and someone will usually add it for the next release. Include the range of the saws and your suggested abbreviations for them as well. The ranges for most instruments are based upon internet research, so it is not unheard of for them to be off. An accomplished player such as yourself would be a good source to correct mistakes in the current version.

In reply to by Gerald Reynolds

I would say it is specifically your extensive experience with computers that makes you able to avoid and/or deal with the problems inherent in having spaces in filenames :-). Unfortunately most MuseScore users are no so experienced and don't know how to handle these problems. And remember, it's not just (or even primarily) about the filename on your own system - it's about what happens when sharing the files via email, uploading to web sites, etc.

Still, the issue does come up from time to time and a control (buried in an Advanced tab of the Preferences window, perhaps) could some day be added, if a sufficiently motivated / experienced person were to want to contribute this feature :-)

  1. If you've listened to anything like a violin or trombone playing glissandi you will understand why a bowed saw would be difficult to make a reasonable score for a bowed saw. And if your saw has a different range than the defaults you can always adjust the range with a right click and chose staff properties.

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