Portamento scaling

• Apr 7, 2021 - 01:10

Let me start by saying I'm really impressed with the level of control we have over glisando, bends, arpeggio, etc., as compared to only a few years ago. I appreciate that there are almost always more pressing things that need improvement in every version of MuseScore.

Adding Portamento to the gliss effect is really awesome, but to me, it stops just shy of being really musically pleasing.

Applying portamento without setting an ease-in value gives exactly what you might expect - a smooth slide from the beginning of one note to the beginning of the next. In a real performance setting, this is sometimes, but not usually appropriate. The most pleasing portamento effects are often when the shift between notes is at the last possible second. This is almost possible by setting the ease-in value to 100, but to my ears, the shift is too slow, and too prominent.

This issue is compounded by the fact that the rate of the pitch change is tied to the time value of the starting note. A portamento from a whole note is going to be painfully obvious every time you hear it. Portamento from a quarter note is much better, but still jarring to the ear.

A workaround is to convince MuseScore that the starting pitch is much shorter. You can do this by replacing the starting quarter note with a dotted eight, tied to a sixteenth, and adding the portamento to that note. Not pretty, but at least the speed of the portamento sounds more like what a live performer would play.

The attached score demonstrates the issue on both bass guitar, and violin. I have recently encountered this issue with both these instruments, and in each case, have opted to skip the effect rather than have the playback snatch me out of the moment when I hear it.

My question, then, is this... does anyone else find the speed of portamento shift distracting? If it's just me, then it's my own problem, and we can leave it at that. If this is an issue which is worthy of note, then I wonder whether is it possible in future development to allow the ease in setting to more closely approach the split-second time between two notes?

If you've read this far, thank you.

Attachment Size
Portamento test.mscz 6.42 KB

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