Inconsistent playback of arpeggios

• Aug 19, 2018 - 10:11

I was about to investigate a bit the behaviour of arpeggio playback, mainly to be able (as a workaround for the frequent unexpetedness of the arpeggio playback speed) to set a parallel invisible score to get the correct playback in a predictable way.
To that end I wrote a score like the attached one, where I reduced consecutively the duration of the chord. The first surprise is that the behaviour is the same for a half or quarter note chord. Then the eighth and sixteenth yielded ever faster arpeggios as expected. In all cases I used a pedal to sustain the short chord, if necessary.
But what concerns me the more is the comparison of bars 6 and 7. In both there is an eighth note chord tied with next chord, in one case an eighth note chord and in the other a dotted quarter note chord. The surprise is that in the latter the arpeggio is very fast. The only difference is that the tied chord is longer. If any difference would to be expected is that the arpeggio were slower, though the real expected behavior would be that the arpeggio speed did not change at all based on what follows.
I think this is a bug.
I have a sort of plan B, to use no arpeggios in the fake part but a fully written-down version.
However, the best solution would be to finally give access to the user to a parameter in the inspector that allows to select the duration of each note of the arpeggio, both regardless of tempo or relative to tempo. I think this is a long awaited and requested feature. May be for 3.0? :))
It doesn't seem a very difficult programming task, the only concern would be to set limits so that the user couldn't set a duration incompatible with the duration of the note

Attachment Size
Test_arpeggio.mscz 18.13 KB

Comments

There are a number of bug reports and feature requests related to arpeggios i MuseScore such as #269492: Incorrect playback of arpeggio with tied notes, #113051: Arpeggio playback should not depend on tempo, #65806: Allow correct playback of cross-staff/voice arpeggios and several others. When you look at the ones I have linked to, you will now see they are also linked to your post. Fell free to look in the issue tracker for additional reports on arpeggios. You may be able to contribute concrete examples that will help a programmer make arpeggios work better.

Do you still have an unanswered question? Please log in first to post your question.