Drumset edits get lost

• Jul 6, 2020 - 05:03

Hi, I'm a new to MS, coming from Sibelius and did read the relevant chapter in the manual.
I edited the drumset:
- modified some noteheads (e.g. Ride Bell to triangle),
- changed stem directions (e.g. Bass Drum 1 to Up) and
- voice groups (e.g. Bass Drum 1 to Grp 1).
- Pressed Apply,
- Saved As MyDrumset.drm, then
- OK and...

nothing...

After chosing Bass Drum 1 and entering a quarter note, its stem was still pointing down.
Then tried some other drums/cymbals, too, but none of them reflected my changes.
Then reopened Edit drumset and found everything reverted to its original state.
Then Loaded MyDrumset.drm, which made no difference.
Then repeated the whole process, but this time pressed Apply after every move. No difference.
Then closed MS, reopened it and went through all steps again, no difference.
Then reopened MS and went straight to Load drumset and loaded MyDrumset.drm, no difference.

Is there any way to make this work as expected?

v3.4.2.9788
Win10 64

Thanks.

Comments

• Jul 7, 2020 - 03:06

Thanks for the link, my case is actually worse than that, even pressing OK has no effect. In the meantime, I was able to create a new project which works as expected. MS's behavior is really flaky in this area, I got different results when repeating the exact same steps, I'll try to shoot a video about it.

Reply

• Jul 7, 2020 - 05:14

Here's a video that's not much fun to watch, but shows most of the things I tried. It's been put together from two takes, one showing a project that doesn't work and a second one where drumset editing works as expected.
It's important to note that occasionally I managed to make testN4.mscz work correctly, but I have no idea how, because I repeated the exact same steps over and over and sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't. Once it worked after I erased all previously entered notes, another time it worked after I left the first note intact and erased the rest. Unfortunately I couldn't reproduce this when screen capture was running.

Note: You might notice that the name of the project that I opened first (testN4.mscz) is different from the name of the inactive (leftmost) project at the end of the video (testN2.mscz) -where I'm showing the correctly working project. testN2.mscz and testN4.mscz are basically identical, I just saved the various stages of my attempts under different names.
https://youtu.be/Xe5weQ-VvLk

I also attached testN4.mscz in which drumset editing doesn't work.

Attachment Size
testN4.mscz 8.02 KB

Reply

• Jul 7, 2020 - 17:24

I think I understand something of the problem. It appears you have used an instrument change at the very beginning of the score - the text "INTRO 4" is actually creating a separate instrument with a separate drumset definition. Was this intentional? This is causing a mismatch, your edits are going to one drumset but it's the other that is being used. Anyhow, delete that text - add it back as a staff text or something else that doesn't create a second drumset - then try again, and it should work as expected.

That said, it is supposed to be possible to change drumsets mid-score by using instrument changes as you (perhaps inadvertently) did here. But it seems this is glitchy and sometimes edits to one affect the other. Actually, more specifically: edits to any drumset on the staff only affect the first, I think.

Reply

• Jul 8, 2020 - 02:43

Thanks for spotting this. No, it was not intentional and because there's absolutely no visual feedback about the effects of an instrument change, I would have never guessed that the insertion of an object classified as "text" could have such a dramatic effect (esp. because in this case a drumset was changed to a drumset). Not to mention the fact that regardless of the number of (un)intentional instrument changes, one would expect the drumset editor to apply to the drumset of the currently selected part.
Thanks for your help again.

Reply

• Jul 8, 2020 - 03:01

Glad to have helped. FWIW, as of 3.5 adding the instrument change text automatically pops up the instrument selection dialog, so there will be a clue above and beyond the actual text itself.

But it’s still a bug that a change applies to the wrong drum set. I encourage you to submit an official bug report to the issue tracker (see Support menu above, or Help / Report a Bug from within MuseScore).

Reply

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