Ability to make a note's dynamics visible? Perhaps by hovering over it (?)
I often find when I need to adjust dynamics that I don't remember what an instrument is presently at, and need to scroll back to find out so I can adjust it up or down, and depending on the score it can be tedious / difficult / time-consuming.
It would be nice to have the ability to quickly see what an instrument's dynamics are set to on a certain note to avoid having to scroll back. I thought hovering over it could be a way, but there are probably any number of approaches that would work.
Apologies if this feature already exists. Thank you!
Comments
It should be easy enough to add this to the status bar, which shows up at the bottom of your screen if you have it enabled under the View menu. That's where you will find details for your current selection. In theory, your dynamics are also displayed in the inspector, but I think that value is only shown there when you edit it.
In reply to It should be easy enough to… by toffle
Yes, good point. I like your idea better.
Now that you mention that, it would be a nice improvement just to have the ability to choose which data displays on the status bar at all.
In reply to It should be easy enough to… by toffle
It’s actually very difficult to do that. I looked into that.
Basically, you only know the dynamics of any given note if you actually play through the whole piece, repeats and jumps included, until you arrive at that note.
I gave up on trying to do it… even if it might be possible (unsure since 3.x seems to break up the piece into chunks and plays those one after the other), it wouldn’t be performant enough for the status line. Maybe as a separately invoked command, but not for something people use in fast succession like the status line or the Inspector.
In reply to It’s actually very difficult… by mirabilos
I am surprised by this, but that is probably more of an indication of my own ignorance than anything else. I would have thought that the volume of any given note would be a definite value between 0 and 127 based on the MIDI protocols of velocity.
Is volume information in MS applied separately from other quantifiable data? There must be a point, before the note data is passed to the playback device, where whatever modifying factors are applied to create a value for the device to interpret.
Please feel free to correct my assumptions. I am quite interested in how MS deals with this crucial data.
In reply to I am surprised by this, but… by toffle
You can't put a definite velocity value on a whole note with a functioning (de)crescendo on it that goes from say f to p. At the start of the note the velocity is 96 at the end it's 49.
In reply to You can't put a definite… by mike320
Thanks, Mike. I get that part. I considered mentioning the monkey wrench that SND would throw into the equation, but purposely left that out.
In reply to I am surprised by this, but… by toffle
Yes, that is correct about the velocity of a note.
Tricky is how this velocity is determined.
In musical scores, you have dynamics which apply to the note below (above on nōn-vocal scores) and all following notes. Furthermore, dynamics are relative (think crescendo/diminuendo). Therefore, to produce the MIDI absolute velocity [0‥127] for a note you first have to convert the entire score to MIDI to see which velocity that note will have.
The internal data structures do not carry velocity information for each note. They carry the information in the score, that is, velocity changes when there are some.
(You can also have differing velocities for a single note: take a score which consists of “forte” +
||:+ note + “piano” +:||for example.)In reply to Yes, that is correct about… by mirabilos
Ah... the Schroedinger's Cat of musical data.
In reply to Ah... the Schroedinger's… by toffle
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