Changing from 3.2.3 to 3.4.2 made major changes to score

• Mar 20, 2020 - 14:04

I've been working on an orchestral score, now up to 22 pages. It had taken me a while under 3.2.3 to get everything right: correct transpositions, key signatures, etc. It was sounding good.
Someone recommended updating to 3.4.2. I did so. My score is now a nightmare. At first, I thought it had only changed one thing, so I tried to fix it. Then I found another, and fixed that. Then I finally realized the entire score is screwed up. Unfortunately, I had saved the score after each "fix," so I don't have the original to go back to.
How can an update do so much damage to a score? Shouldn't it be able to read things like key signatures and instrument transpositions from an earlier version in the score and keep those things? What happened???

Comments

• Mar 20, 2020 - 22:06

For the record, though, virtually nothing actually changed regarding the apearance of a score between 3.2.3 nf 3.4.2. A handful of bugs, yes, but that would only make small differences, and they'd improvements. Most likely whatever you are seeing is not related to the update at all, but something else - like maybe you accidentally opened the wrong version of the score, or accidentally hit some keyboard shortcut that made some change to your score. Hard to say without more information, like what specifically you believe change (some key signature somewhere? changed how?). And as mentioned, in order to do more than guess, we'd need the actual score, or at least a relevant excerpt.

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• Mar 21, 2020 - 00:44

I only had one copy of the score, so I didn't open the wrong one. The changes were significant enough that I can't imagine any single keyboard shortcut making them.
Original score had horns in G and horns in D. Took some tweaking to get them right, because the transposition Musescore was doing wasn't right. (ex. up a minor second, or down a major 3rd, etc.) But I got it, and it sounded good. The new version changed it back, and changed the key for both. Original score was in G minor (two flats). When it opened in the new version, all concert pitch instruments had changed to key of C. Key signatures of other transposing instruments were also altered. 22 pages of screwed up music.
jm6stringer suggested maybe I accidentally toggled concert pitch. Now, I can see how that might do all of this, so it's a logical suggestion. But I know about that, so I don't use concert pitch ever and am careful to stay away from it. But that brings up a question: Is concert pitch by any chance on by default in the newest version? If so, wouldn't the fact that I always save scores with concert pitch turned off have overridden that? But opening up the messed up score, I can see that concert pitch is not selected. But again, if concert pitch was G minor, how did it get switched to C???
I'm baffled. I had previously posted the corrupted score here, but that post seems gone. When I first discovered an error in the new version, I corrected it, and saved it. Ditto for the second error. The result is that I no longer have a copy of the original. The thought of redoing everything gives me a headache, especially since the full score is 52 pages... I wasn't even halfway through.
Not the end of the world. Wouldn't be the first time I had to abandon a score part way through for one reason or another. But my main concern now is to figure out how the heck this happened. I have dozens of other scores I am now afraid to open in the new version. I would go back to the previous version in a heartbeat, but what prompted me to get the new one was that ottava wasn't working properly in the old for some reason.

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• Mar 21, 2020 - 01:44

Literally millions of scores have been opened in 3.4.2. I can absolutely assure you there is no bug that is going around destroying tons of scores; we’d have heard about it long ago if there was, since 3.4 has been out for months already. There must be something very unusual going in this particular case, but without the score and precise steps to reproduce the problem, we can’t investigate further.

So I encourage you to try with another score. Make a copy of it first to be safe. If you detect any sort of problem, send us the unaltered copy and tell us what steps you took after loading it that led you to believe there is some sort of problem.

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• Mar 21, 2020 - 02:06

OK, just opened a score. First problem I find is that the strings all sound like piano played a couple of octaves too high. I've attached both the original and what it became when I opened it in 3.4.2. Note that the "copy" file is actually the original version, not the new one. This original one played perfectly in 3.2.3.
I didn't search for more problems. Just hearing what happened to the strings was enough for me. All I did, after making a backup copy of the original, was open the score and hit play. Nothing more.

Attachment Size
Confutatis.mscz 36.49 KB
Confutatis (copy).mscz 36.49 KB

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• Mar 21, 2020 - 02:50

I loaded your "copy" score into 3.4.2. The strings are playing like strings for me, and at the correct pitch. Is it possible you've loaded a non-standard soundfont? What do you see listed in View / Synthesizer, on the Fluid and Zerberus tabs? Should be MuseScore_General.sf3 in Fluid, nothing in Zerberus. If that's what you are seeing also, can you tell me which specific note of which specific staff is sounding wrong to you? I tried the first note, the "A", on all of the string staves, and they are exactly as expected. I checked each note of the first measure individually, and all sound correct. I then soloed those three staves and hit play. It's strings all the way through, in the octave written. The "copy" score reports that it was saved with 3.4.2. So I then tried again with the other version, which says it was last saved with 3.2.3. Same exact result.

My guess is at some point between the last time you played this score and now, you tried loading a non-standard soundfont, and that is what is responsible for any playback differences you are hearing, not any difference in the program itself. Again, while there have been literally hundreds of bugs fixed, and some interface improvements to how the palettes work, nothing should be different about either playback or display of the score.

EDIT: maybe you're being confused by the pipe organ, which is doubling the cello part, and although it's in the same octave, the harmonic might make it sound an octave higher than it is?

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• Mar 21, 2020 - 03:41

OK, I give up. First, the soundfont is correct. But I just reloaded the SAME score, and it played perfectly. My conclusion? My computer is possessed and needs and exorcism! Tried opening another score, and it also played perfectly. So still don't know what messed up the Danse Macabre so badly. Not worth losing sleep over, though, as long as my other scores are OK... except for that occasional demon in the playback! LOL
Thanks for all your help everyone!

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• Mar 21, 2020 - 14:27

My best guess from your description of the problem - " horns in G and horns in D. Took some tweaking to get them right, because the transposition Musescore was doing wasn't right" - is that this "tweaking" was in fact the source of the problem. Normally no such work should be necessary, because MuseScore generally knows what it is doing with respect to transposition and changing anything about it would be a mistake. There have been occasional bugs where some particular instrument's transposition is set incorrectly (we just fixed one for G clarinet, in fact, fix will be in next update). But I just checked and both horn in G and horn in D are transposed correctly by default. I also checked and this was also true in 3.2.3 (and indeed, it's been correct going back seven years). So it could be you were misunderstanding something about how transposition works that led you to think something was off even though it wasn't, and in your experimentation, you might have actually messed it up in some way that wasn't apparent until later.

Anyhow, if you see anything going wrong again, please let us know, but really, other than bug fixes and some nice new features like easily customizable palettes, you shouldn't be seeing or hearing any differences in your scores.

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