Flute notes are too short and slurs don't always help

• May 18, 2022 - 11:06
Reported version
3.6
Type
Functional
Frequency
Few
Severity
S4 - Minor
Reproducibility
Always
Status
by design
Regression
No
Workaround
Yes
Project

As discussed here https://musescore.org/en/node/320462, flutes are not holding their sound to its full length.
1. This can sound very off for long notes. The pause should stop being proportional to note length at some point.
2. You can get full-length playback using a slur. But this doesn't work when the slur starts at the last note of a tied group of note. Starting it from the first tied note can work, but is often unnatural notation.

Attachment Size
flute_bug.mscz 8.88 KB

Comments

Status active by design
Reported version 3.x-dev 3.6

As explained in https://musescore.org/en/node/320462 Flutes have their duration set to 95%, to allow for a subtle effect when being slurred.
This is wanted, on purpose and by design.
Another workaround than using slurs is to use the Piano Roll Editor, to lengthen every single note to 100%. or to use a custom instruments.xml or template that doesn't have that 95% setting.

Check the attached

Attachment Size
flute_fixed.mscz 8.94 KB
Status by design active

I understand that the 95% duration is by design -- I have seen the discussion in https://musescore.org/en/node/320462 and linked to it above.
My claim is:
1. It's a bad design decision: for long note values it's not a subtle difference between slur and lack of slur, but a jarring pause.
2. It doesn't work as intended: If the intent is to differentiate slurred vs non-slurred, it doesn't work in the attached example (measures 9-10) -- the gap exists regardless of slur.

Status active by design

Still by design, so not a bug, not even a minor one.

Might be worth a Suggestion AKA feature request, to get it changed (meanwhile several workarounds exist). But before doing so check on MuseScore 4 first

I find it hard to believe that the behavior with a slur is intentional (the gap depending on whether the slur starts on the first or second of the tied notes).
I just checked on MuseScore 4 nightly, and it does respect the slur consistently, so that part is fixed (but playback in general is very choppy and full of static, which I guess is probably a known issue). Should I just change this issue to a "Suggestion"?