Fortepiano (fp) and sforzando (sfz) playback on musescore 3.2.3

• Sep 12, 2019 - 16:53

Hi there,

First of all, thank you developers so much for the amazing work on musescore, specially during the last year or so. This is a really useful and professional tool, so thanks a lot!

I recently upgraded from musescore 2.3.2 to musescore 3.2.3, and noticed that:

  • sforzandi (sfz/sf) now change the dynamic level by default to 112, with a subsequent slight let-off of -18. However, as far as I'm aware, sforzando is an emphatic accent within the dynamic context - thus "sfz" on "pp" dynamics should have a very different absolute velocity than "sfz" in "f" dynamics.

  • fortepiano (fp) now also affects velocity (a nice new feature), by providing an initial value of 50, which subsequently drops down by -49, which effectively renders the part inaudible until another dynamic marking comes in. This is way too quiet, "fp" marking should not fall below "piano" dynamic level.

Obviously, all these settings can be manually modified at the inspector, for every single instance. But this is very inefficient. Is there a way to change the default velocity behavior of these dynamic markings - i.e: some setting, a plugin, etc...?

Thank you for your time

H.

Comments

• Sep 12, 2019 - 16:59

You can customize one to your liking then add it to a custom palette. The current procedure is documented in the Handbook under "Custom palettes", but it's about to get much easier for 3.3.

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• Nov 3, 2019 - 02:44

Hi, Marc.

First of all, sorry for not replying in due time to your prompt response.

Actually, shortly after posting here, I figured out this problem applied only when opening an older score (written on version 2.3.2) into Musescore 3. Of course this is easily fixed by manually replacing all "sf" and "fp" dynamic markings one by one, which however can be time-consuming for scores with numerous "sf" or "fp" markings - like orchestral scores...

I know playability shouldn't be "perfect" for a piece of music-notation software (it's not intended to be a sequencer), however, the fact that the instrument/part becomes practically silent (MIDI dynamic level 1/127) after any "fp", or quite loud (over 110/127) after "sf"/"sfz", makes quick play-throughs impractical for checking if all voices sound as intended. So far I've just replaced all the markings in scores where I cared about playability, but I wondered if this minor retro-compatibility issue might be worth pointing out in the bug-report forum.

I waited to version 3.3 before commenting on this, and can now confirm this minor issue persists in the latest version. Should I bring it up the bug-report forum?

Thanks

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• Nov 3, 2019 - 14:38

The defaults for dynamics like sfz are not good in every situation, but probably the most common expectation. Version 3 makes it simple to change the options on several items at once, like several sfz's in this example. If you want all sfz's in an area to have the same settings you can select that region of the score and a blue box will appear around it. You can then right click any sfz in the region and choose Select>More... You can then check the sfz box and the box that says in selection and all of the sfz's in that selection will be selected. You can then change all of the velocities and velocity offsets to the same values at once rather than one at a time. If you want or need to, you can also select several items by using ctrl+click to add an item to the selection. You can then change properties on all selected items in the same way.

On the part about the sf making the score loud and fp making the score soft. Are you setting the dynamics to staff rather than part? If so I've seen this and know there is an existing bug report. If this is not the case, can you attach a sample score and explain what we need to listen for?

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• Nov 3, 2019 - 16:22

Thanks, mike320 for the feedback.

I figured out what was the problem. It has to do with manually modified MIDI settings in my old scores. I'll describe it below for the benefit of anybody experiencing a similar problem.

I think I must have manually modified the MIDI velocity level for fp and sf markings in my older scores, because back then in Ms2 these markings were not assigned any velocity value. So then, when importing these old scores into Ms3, the manually modified velocity is then lowered by the -47 instruction in fp, -18 in sf.

I must probably have attributed level 50 to fp in Ms2, which after being lowered by -47 in Ms3, renders the part inaudible. And presumably, I must have given a rather high velocity to sf, because even after the -18, the passage kept sounding louder than fortissimo. Unfortunately, I can't give you now the exact values, neither can I tell whether such velocity changes were set to staff or to part, because I already replaced all these markings to default fp and sf and saved them to score days ago. (Sorry, I should've kept a backup for the record)

I just figured this out when I set to make a sample score in Ms2 so submit it here, and realized that fp and sf markings played normal when I imported the file into Ms3 - so obviously it wasn't a default setting, but something I must have modified in my older scores (can't really remember what, that was months ago).

Thanks a lot for the tip about changing multiple dynamic markings simultaneously, this is really time saving. From now on, any case of manually modified velocity levels in a Ms2 score can quickly be amended for Ms3.

I have to go through the documentation to learn all the new features before posting useless threads. Sorry about that :/

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• Nov 3, 2019 - 16:55

When a score is imported from midi, each note is assigned a midi velocity (aka volume) and any dynamic marks are overridden. https://musescore.org/en/node/277424 is instructions (based on my previous multi-selection info) to fix this and allow dynamics to work properly.

The documentation my not have some features properly explained and the explanations are generic rather than specific. The handbook is already huge, so it doesn't need to be any more specific, but it does need to cover all of the features. This is the reason the "How to" and "Tutorial" links in the support menu exist.

Having said this, don't hesitate to ask if you can't find something. If it's explained in the handbook, someone will likely point you to it, if not someone will explain it.

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• Nov 5, 2019 - 00:46

Useful to know about quickly re-setting MIDI dynamics, thanks!

(Although, just to clarify, I wasn't importing MIDI files, but mscz files created in Ms2 into Ms3, which plays correctly all dynamic markings including cresc. dim. fp, sf, etc..... only problems were those manually modified velocities).

Overall, thanks for the prompt and detailed support! Much appreciated!

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