Feedback on Solfege Soundfont idea

• Dec 31, 2018 - 20:12

Hello,
Since I can't find any online, I am working on a Chromatic Solfege soundfont for ear training and other educational purposes. Others have proposed such a soundfont in the past (https://musescore.org/en/node/267430).

By chromatic solfege, I mean Do Di Re Ri Mi Fa Fi So La Li Ti Do, when ascending/sharpening, and Do Ti Te La Le So Se Fa Mi Me Re Ra Do, when descending/flattening solfege. Since it is not possible to designate different sounds, in this case syllables, for flats and sharps (they are treated the same in midi), I plan on offering two default soundfont presets--one for flats, the other for sharps, in otherwords a soundfont with two-velocity layers. Once I have released the initial soundfont, which will just be in the key of C and have single accidentals, I plan on adding solfege scale presets for all the keys and for double sharps and flats.

In situations where both solfege flats and sharps are wanted in the same measure, I plan on having the default accidental velocity be between 0-125 (e.g., flats) and 126 for double accidentals, and 126-127 for harmonic equivalent accidentals (e,g, sharps and double sharps). The idea being that if a Musescore user wants to have mixed solfege sharps and flats, they will have to forgo dynamics: change all the default note velocities to 125, and then increase the velocity by 1 or more to the desirable change in the accidental syllable.

Eventually, it would be great to have a Musescore plugin to automatically adjust the velocities based on the accidental type--e.g., change all natural and flat notes velocities to 125, double-flats to 126, sharps to 126 and double sharps to 127, for instance. Velocity changes in the narrow 125-127 range are probably too subtle for most to notice and the preset volume of each velocity layer can always be attenuated (e.g, -5db) in the soundfont to compensate. Also, considering that the default velocity of mezzo-forte is 80, it is rare for a score to be pumping up velocities above 125.

Does this seem like the easiest strategy to allow solfege flats and sharps in the same measures? The other possibility is to change the "instrument" of the soundfont temporarily in mid-staff, but that seems much more arduous. Please share any suggestions.

Thanks for the help,
Sam


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