Note heard during playback is different from note displayed

• May 3, 2020 - 15:04

Hello,

I have copy-pasted the problematic bar into the attached file. The first note used to be a B3, then I dragged and dropped it to become a G3. Usually this works fine, but it sometimes occurs (as was the case here) that I'm able to move the position of the note around freely (i.e. it's not pegged to valid note positions) without it impacting the sound actually played during playback.

So in this case, the first note looks like a G3, but it sounds like a B3. Using the inspector, I can see that in the "Chord" section it has a Y offset. When I set that to 0, it's indeed a B3 which is displayed (so that's in line with the playback).

Maybe this is not a bug, and maybe I did something wrong, but then I think the user interface can be improved in order to prevent this from occurring. Because sometimes dragging and dropping notes works just fine, and sometimes it doesn't, even though I'm always doing it in the exact same way as far as I can tell.

Thanks in advance,
Tanguy

P.S.: Here's my version information:
OS: Windows 10 (10.0), Arch.: x86_64, MuseScore version (32-bit): 3.4.2.9788, revision: 148e43f

Attachment Size
playback-bug.mscz 2.89 KB

Comments

The Z and Y offsets for that chord (note) are off. Did you hover the mouse over Inspector at any point and accidentally move the scroll wheel? See if you can reproduce this behaviour and report back with the exact steps that cause the problem.

The general advise is: "don't drag notes to change their pitch, use arrow keys or note name keys instead".

The difference you didn't notice is that dragging normally indeed changes pitch. But if you double click the note, you put it in (visual) edit mode after which dragging indeed changes the offsets instead.

Just so I don't get any more confused than I already am, x86_64 is the 64 bit version of both Windows and MuseScore. And you are running the 32 bit MS. Yes?

@underquark @jeetee thanks for your replies. Both things you said are indeed things which I may have accidentally done and, judging by the behaviour of each, it seems what I did is double click a note.

In my opinion, both of those are points where the UX can be improved:
- Regarding the scrolling: I find it much too easy to start scrolling in order to see a different part of the score, while you're actually accidentally hovering over the inspector. And after doing that, it may take a long while before you notice something went amiss. Maybe I'm just clumsy, but I wonder whether the gain that some people get from being able to scroll to change values in the inspector is greater than the loss for people accidentally changing values. Maybe the former category of users wouldn't be against having to turn on a setting in order to change values by scrolling?
- Regarding the double click: as far as I can tell, there's not a single visual hint telling me that I'm in visual edit mode when I've double clicked a note. I would expect something quite visible to tell me that, but instead I just have to trust that my double click was indeed correctly interpreted, or have to try performing an action which will confirm I'm in visual edit mode.

Just my 2 cents as an occasional MuseScore user...

In reply to by TanguyP

The accidental changing of values in the Inspector when you are just trying to scroll is fixed for the coming 3.5 update.

As for a visual indication you have double-clicked, there is a slight hint, look at the bottom right of the screen, it will say "Edit mode" on the status bar. But note as mentioned that dragging notes is never recommended in the first place, better to use any of the other methods of entering and editing notes. They are far more efficient and precise.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

Thanks for your reply. Good to hear about the inspector scroll!
Ok, I now see the "Edit mode" hint indeed.
So one of my complaints is already addressed in v3.5, and as for the other complaint, if the edit mode were made more visible then I believe that would avoid some confusion for some new MS users.

As for me, I'll remember to stop dragging and dropping notes to change their pitch.

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