What does "velocity" do?
Musecore 3.6.2 on Mac OS 10.13.6 High Sierra.
I have a five part score and am trying to make the leading voice audible over the accompaniment. In older versions I used to do that by adjusting "velocity", adding 20 or so points to the leading voice. This seemed to do the trick. But now I have added 20 points to the top line and deducted 50 points from the accompanying voices (as "offset") and I hear zero difference to before (with all offsets = 0).
is there a better way to achieve what I am trying to do? Was I just fooling myself when I heard desired results in the past? Or has something changed?
I am attaching the score (a fragment as yet); the passage I am concerned with is right at the beginning.
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
| Mayer_quintet_d_minor_1.mscz | 44.57 KB |
Comments
I myself am not sure why, but the expressive instrument sounds seem to be messing with your dynamics. By changing each instrument to its corresponding non-expressive patch, dynamics now work as expected. You can read https://musescore.org/en/node/290616 and https://musescore.org/en/handbook/3/mixer#patch for more information about expressive sounds and switching sounds using the Mixer. Unfortunately, using the non-expressive sounds means that single-note dynamics will not work.
When trying to get a balanced playback for a chamber work like this, I have found it useful to pan the instruments left to right using the Mixer. This allows each instrument its own space, rather than having all the instruments centre stage.
To bring out one instrument (or to make an instrument less obtrusive) I prefer to adjust the volume levels in the Mixer. Maybe I just don't have the patience to adjust individual Velocity levels, but I find the Mixer a really useful tool.
The attached version has Velocity levels back to the default value (0), the instruments panned left to right, and Violin I slightly louder in the Mixer than the other instruments.
Velocity is the traditional MIDI way of representing dynamics - literally it refers to how hard you strike the key of a synth, which is measured in terms of the time it takes for the key to become fully depressed. Through most of the history of MIDI synthesizers, that's how you controlled volume - by how hard you struck the key.
But, that isn't compatible with the idea of single note dynamics - the idea of changing the volume after the initial strike. So instead, "CC" (continuous controller) messages are used to change the volume dynamically after the initial strike.
So for instruments that respond to single note dynamics, your change the velocity might affect the note for the first millisecond or whatever, but then immediately you are hearing the result of the CC messages that control the overall volume after the note is struck.
You could choose to sacrifice single note dynamics to get the old behavior behack, but in most cases, it makes more sense to simply change the velocity of the dynamic makrings themselves (this is what translates into the CC info).
In reply to Velocity is the traditional… by Marc Sabatella
Thanks! This is very interesting.
In reply to Velocity is the traditional… by Marc Sabatella
I tried changing the velocity of dynamic markings and it works nicely. In this context I found that crescendo lines and hairpins give the option to adjust "velocity change" with default = 0. Can you define "velocity change"?
In reply to I tried changing the… by azumbrunn
How much louder it should get. 0 means to follow dynamics before and after automatically, if there are any
In reply to I tried changing the… by azumbrunn
Indeed, literally. "velocity change" means "change in velocity" - the difference between the start and end velocity. So on the exact same scale or 1 to 127 as is always used in MIDI. As mentioned, the actual velocity of the notes themselves are not relevant in the presence of single note dynamics, since CC messages are used instead. But again, in the case of hairpins, the velocity change values are translated direct to those CC messages, so the effect is the same.