Explode tool doesn't work with percussion???

• Jun 21, 2018 - 19:31

Hi, gang!!!

I wonder if I don't know to use "Explode" in the right way, or...

The thing is I took an old MIDI file, which has all the percussion battery sounds into just one staff (the "standard" way to do it decades ago, with limited MIDI software).

There are 6 or 8 different percussion sounds (instruments) used in that staff. So, I added 7 staves for percussion into the "translated" music board, into MuseScore.

Then, I select the 8 staves of percussion sounds and I click "Explode" tool, expected to get MuseScore separates the 8 different sounds into the 8 staves, one by one, but...

The only one thing I got was... 8 exactly equal staves!!! All of them with all the original percussion sounds (the 8 instruments).

Even the fact that It sounds so fine, so cool... It wasn't that I wanted!!!

Did I use explode in a wrong way??? Or... MuseScore doesn't do what I wanted to get???

Blessings & Greetings from Chile!!!

JUAN


Comments

It's not that explode doesn't work with percussion - it's that it doesn't split by pitch as I think you want. That is, you'd like snare to always go to one staff, bass to another, cymbal to another, etc, regardless of when they happen. But that's not what explode does. It is designed to work on a series of chords, and take the top note of that chord and keep it on that staff, the second-to-top-note of the chord and put it on the staff below, the third-to-top note and put it on the staff below that, etc. You can see this actually happens in your score the places where have "chords" - like measure 7, where voice 1 has two notes at once. Those get properly separated - the top note stays on the top staff, the bottom note goes to the second staff.

To accomplish what you want, you'd need to first copy the content to all staves and I guess use Select / More / Same Pitch to remove notes drum by drum. Not fun, but the best I can think of. A tool to do what you want is a good idea, though! Maybe it could even make sense to change the behavior of Expldoe to work that when a drum staff is detected, because indeed currently, it's probably not very useful for percussion. it's more about chords.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

You would be better off using the 8 staves with the same notes and deleting all but what you want left. The select>more... on the right click menu gives you the option of subtracting from the selection, so if you want to leave the snare drum notes, right click a snare drum note in a selection, use the check boxes and use subtract from selection. This will leave the snare drum notes unselected and you can delete everything else.

In reply to by jotape1960

I would be surprised if MuseScore supported the explode command for percussion because of what Marc explained. Explode takes notes from a chord and places them on other staves. If you had a Cymbal hit and Snare hit both in voice 1 at the same time, explode would work for that "chord."

In reply to by mike320

Actually, while it is indeed true that Explode currently doesn't treat percussion staves specially, I agree it might make sense to. Because I can't think of any good use for the current behavior with respect to percussion, and the suggested one does make sense. Problem is it would be pretty radically different to implement - now the various parts would be totally independent rhythmically voices would probably need to be handled differently, etc. So it's almost like writing a whole new command and just giving it the same name. Still, not a bad idea some day.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

As I was typing my response I was thinking about what you said, that what would happen with a percussion staff is so different than a pitched staff, that it would require a whole new command to implement, though it's not impossible. I suppose I can see some usefulness for the explode and implode commands in some situations for a drum set. My initial thought is that doing this makes no sense, but the way MuseScore works it would make sense to write the 3 or 4 percussion parts in a symphony into a single staff then later explode them for the parts. Using thid for a Jazz piece that has a Drum set as an instrument would make no sense at all; this is the instrument I was initially thinking of.

Use an external tool:
http://downloads.fyxm.net/MidiSplit-11223.html
quote: "A simple tool that will take a (percussion/drum) track as input and Split it into different instrument tracks. MidiSplit application was designed to be a simple tool that will take a (percussion/drum) track as input and split it into different instrument tracks."

Attention: you should definitely specify which track the drum track is. Otherwise, if you choose an incorrect track, the notes on that channel may break up like a drum notes.

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