Chord Symbol playback overlaps even when Duration is set to "next symbol"

• Nov 28, 2021 - 02:48

NOTE: Links updated 11-29-21

I wrote this piece last Wednesday morning for a student I would see that evening. And somehow it has some slight anomalies with the duration of Chord Symbol playback. NOTE: Though my intent was to create a lead sheet for ukulele I set the ukulele part to "piano" because the built-in ukulele patch sounds unpleasantly like harpsichord. Just to be clear: that's why there's no ukulele sound and why I assigned the chord symbol/harmony part to a piano sound.

Now, on to the issue itself ...

An esteemed college and astute listener noted a detail that had escaped me. In this score Chord Symbol duration playback overlaps the next chord symbol, usually by a beat ... and by an eight note when there are two chords per measure. I hear this even when the symbols' Duration properties are set to "Until next chord symbol."

In order to easily hear it obviate the overlap by setting the Mixer's "harmony" chord symbol sub-channel to Reed Organ (or an alternate patch with infinite sustain.)

Unfortunately neither my colleage nor I can recreate this Chord Symbol duration anomaly from scratch, but I'm suspicious that the issue is an artifact of:

   a) the addition of parts
   b) editing of one or more parts
   c) changing chord symbol visibility properties in the main score
   d) changing visibility properties in the Parts
  
Does anyone else hear the overlap and have an explanation?

scorster
  
  
  
NOTE: My initial post here included the following points, which were in error so I moved them below so they don't distract from the main point:

 e) pasting the chord symbols to the Ukulele part from the main score

Regarding d) be forewarned:

  • when I deleted a few chord symbols from the Ukulele part, the situation grew more bizarre ... in ways I'm not inclined to attempt to characterize.

  • the deletion a chord symbol in the Uke part also deleted it's counterpart in the main score! I find that odd considering that MuseScore does not initially imbuePart with chord symbols, so I'd never had expected some sort of linkage would exist after pasting chord symbols into a Part.

Comments

• Nov 28, 2021 - 04:23

The presence of chord symbols is content and as such synced between main score and parts.
Their visibility is layout and as such not synced.

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• Nov 28, 2021 - 05:06

Jojo wrote > The presence of chord symbols is content and as such synced between main score and parts.

Ah, right. When I saw the bass part without chords I thought it was because chord symbols were unsynced. But actually it's because I had not copied the chord symbols from the uke part to the main score's bass part. On doing that I indeed see the chord symbols in the bass Part too. Sorry for the red herring.

Any thoughts on the chord symbol duration issue?

scorster

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• Nov 28, 2021 - 07:15

Just to refine Scorster's description, under the conditions that produce this anomaly, typically one note of the symboled chord stops at the expected point in time but the others stop later.

We can't hear this if the sound in effect for the symboled chords is piano (since the sound dies out before the end of the play duration of the note), but if we assign a sound with a persistent envelope (I always use Reed Organ for testing these things), we can easily hear the anomaly.

In the score Scorster discusses, the conditions that make this happen seem to be that the two percussion tracks both have notes in the area of interest and both are hidden (I couldn't make this up).

Doug

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• Nov 28, 2021 - 19:16

Late yesterday I noticed that the example score I uploaded to MuseScore.com (which I provided a link to) was set to Private.

I've corrected that. So now people should be able to see and download the score. Sorry for any inconvenience!

John

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• Nov 29, 2021 - 05:03

Hi Marc,

Thanks for the heads up!

I know the following is technically a MuseScore.com question, but I'll ask anyway.

After uploading a score with Privacy set to Unlisted, and with "Disable the Score Download" unchecked, I thought I could provide a link and the recipient would be able to download. Does that match your understanding?

Maybe try again. If that doesn't work I'll change privacy to public.

scorster

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• Nov 29, 2021 - 14:32

If disable score download is checked, it is not downloadable, period. If it is unchecked, it should be downloadable assuming the score itself is accessible (unlisted / secret link / not specifically disabled by the admins for copyright reasons).

I can't prove whether or not you checked the disable download box, but I still cannot download the file, so I'm guessing you did check the box inadvertently.

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• Nov 29, 2021 - 16:44

I checked thrice, including this morning. Privacy = Unlisted and Disable the Score Download is unchecked, as shown in the image below. I guess I'll need to raise the download issue with MuseScore.com

Later today, to further this discussion, I'll create a revision of my score with the Chord Symbols (harmony sub channel) set to Reed Organ and upload it with Privacy = Public and Disable the Score Download unchecked ... in other words, I'll just change the Listing setting and we'll see if that works.

Thanks!

scorster

Samba - MuseScore Listing and Privacy settings.png

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• Nov 29, 2021 - 17:01

Hi, Scorster,

While you wrestle with this forum's evil twin, perhaps you should just post the score file under discussion here so the members can get on with the technical issues.

As to the other milieu, is it possible that the "Unlisted" classification is part of the access problem? (It probably shouldn't be, but . . .)

Doug

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• Nov 29, 2021 - 21:21

@Doug Kerr

Thanks Doug.

Discussion here on MuseScore.com has produced feedback stating that this link will download my Samba.

I extracted the link from Share>Embed (the first link in the HTML span.)

I updated the Title/Composer field, but otherwise did not change any settings to make it work.

I hope the link above indeed works for those interested in examining the chord symbol duration issue. If that fails I'll attach the score in a post. I've persisted with the .com link because I'm new to MuseScore file sharing and wanted to use this as an opportunity to learn there ropes.

scorster

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• Nov 30, 2021 - 00:25

Thanks for the report Doug. My stats currently say:

24 views
12 downloads
  4 plays

So the new link is working.

I now know how to get a viable link ... and I'll update the opening post working link.

Hopefully attention now returns to the original point of this post: Excessive durations on chord symbols.

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• Nov 29, 2021 - 18:41

An additional issue as I made various tests on Scorster's score to localize the cause of the anomaly Scorster reported is that often, after I had modified a working copy of the score file in some way and saved it, then later attempted to open it, I got this DOS-style error message:

MuseScore_errmsg_chords-01.jpg
and MuseScore had abended.

After restarting MuseScore, I was able to open the file in question without incident.

Doug

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• Nov 29, 2021 - 18:51

A further observation with regard to Scorster's score is that if I delete all notes from both percussion tracks in measure 1 (only), and then make those tracks invisible again, the anomaly does not occur with regard to the first chord symbol (the Dm at M1:1).

The anomaly still does occur with regard to the second chord symbol (the A7 at M2:1).

Doug

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• Dec 5, 2021 - 09:12

Any comments about the core issue here?

Doug Kerr and I have heard overlapping chord symbol playback. Anybody else hear that?

Any ideas what's causing it or how to workaround it?

Thanks!

scorster

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• Dec 5, 2021 - 09:57

Hi Jojo,

Did you hear Chord Symbol overlap in the example score, attached in the initial post?

As mentioned in that post, I haven't been able to recreate the issue in new scores. If you can confirm the issue in the attached score I'm wondering if the cause is obvious to you and if there's a remedy.

Thanks!

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• Dec 5, 2021 - 10:03

Jojo wrote * the sound decays faster than a new chord symbol comes up*

Yes. The decay is adequately fast because the score's chord symbol "harmony" subtrack is set to Piano.

When listening to the attached example score did you set the chord symbol "harmony" subtrack set to Organ?

scorster

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• Dec 5, 2021 - 17:30

Indeed. A week ago Doug Kerr wrote:

In the score Scorster discusses, the conditions that make this happen seem to be that the two percussion tracks both have notes in the area of interest and both are hidden (I couldn't make this up).

Just seems truly bizarre that changing the view impacts playback.

scorster

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• Dec 5, 2021 - 17:35

Jojo wrote: > the playback issue is only with the main score

Indeed. Playback in MuseScore is entirely a function of the main score. The only thing ever heard IS the main score or its parts.

Even Play Part Only plays from the main score, by omitting other parts from sounding, (i.e. by soloing the track main track pertaining to the Part. The Part itself never sounds ... which can be verified by editing note velocity or dynamics.

NOTE: Above I use capitalized Part to refer to a generated Players Part, and part to refer to the corresponding part in the main score.

scorster

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• Dec 21, 2021 - 02:49

I suppose there's a chance this is related.

The attached score has a couple of instances of chord symbols sometimes playing less than "Until the Next Chord." Though intermittent, sometimes it happens on the first play.

The affected symbols are highlighted in Measure 11 and 30. As intended their duration property is "Until the Next Chord".

If I copy Measure 15 to Measure 11, the problem goes away ... for a while.
Same if I copy Measure 34 to Measure 30.
All to say, I haven't found a cure or workaround.

    Chord symbol duration too short - Bell's 02.mscz

scorster

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• Dec 21, 2021 - 14:56

I'm not sure what you are saying here - in measure 11 the chord lasts until one full measure as far as I can tell, which is when the invisible chord in measure 12 then plays and also lasts for one full measure. The playback sound is a piano so it naturally decays of course, but if I change the playback sound to something that sustains like reed organ, it's clearly sustaining correctly.

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• Dec 21, 2021 - 15:48

Marc Sabatella wrote > in measure 11 the chord lasts until one full measure as far as I can tell,

As mentioned, I see that too ... sometimes. The problem is intermittent. I rarely hear the one-beat chords symbol on first pass, but yesterday but that did happen a few times. And today, while playing the whole score, I also noticed the short chord symbol play affecting Measure 21, sometimes.

Maybe play the whole a couple of times through. Or start from the middle somewhere and let it play. Seems like the issue always becomes more predominant as play continues. I just played it now, from the start, and the problem didn't occur until after Measure 18 (i.e. Part B, 1st ending.)

Also make sure you haven't unhidden any other staves—that was the step that remedied the issue of overly long chord symbol playback.

I find it particularly interesting that measure 15 appears to be identical to Measure 11, but its chord symbol always function perfectly. And yet if I paste measure 15 into Measure 11 the problem persists, though always temporarily fixed.

Thanks! I know testing intermittent issues can be frustrating.

scorster

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• Dec 21, 2021 - 16:22

Well, since there isn't any further development planned for MuseScore 3, and MuseScore has an entirely new playback system, probably best to see if you can reproduce in one of the nightly builds, and if so, just submit a bug report to the issue tracker with your best stab at steps to reproduce (including things like "try steps 4-7 over and over until it fails"). Then the folks actively working on MuseScore 4 can take a crack at it.

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