Understanding part scores/mixer relation
Hi
I am a Guitar Pro user who saw Tantacrul's video about MuseScore 4 and thought just the ability to use VST to preview what you are writing seemed fantastic. The other improvements seemed pretty amazing too. I was a little bit familiar with the older version also but almost never used it because GP seemed more suitable to my uses.
So I imported one of my GP files and started looking around. Seems pretty nice.
One thing I can't figure out is how to view a part score but still hear all of the parts. When I open, for example, "singer", I can only hear that part when viewing that part. In the mixer,the other parts become muted and seem disabled, so I can't unmute them.
This is pretty much the opposite of what I would want most of the time. When I view a part it is to practice that part with the rest of it as backing tracks, so most of the time I would like to either hear all parts or all parts except the open one.
Is this possible?
Also wondering if it is possible to temporarily slow down the playback like in GP, to make practice easier?
Thank you
Comments
After playing around with it a but more I could not find any way to play back parts that are also not visible. The eye icon is really also an ear...
This coupling of visible/audible makes the software unusable for the use case of real-time practice. I guess it's still not usable for me so I'll return to GP, even though it doesn't have that nice VST support.
Maybe some day...
In reply to After playing around with it… by Rickard H
You could make everything else invisible & uncheck the view invisible parts setting. Undo or select everything & change to visible.
In reply to After playing around with it… by Rickard H
The current workaround/trick is to make the Instrument eye visible, but make the individual staves inside them invisible.
In reply to The current workaround/trick… by jeetee
Thank you to both but my "workaround" will be to stick with Guitar Pro. Both are notation programs but seem to have different areas of focus. The focus of MuseScore seems to be to print as fancy scores as possible, which I must admit is not top priority for someone like myself writing scores for myself and my singer only.
Guitar Pro seems to focus more on areas like practice of parts, and also songwriting (especially stringed instruments) for people who are more comfortable doing it with notation and tabs rather than directly in a DAW. I had been looking forward to the VST support in MuseScore as that is something I was always missing in GP, but after trying it out I can not switch at this time as the rest of the program doesn't quite work for me. It kind of makes me sad because the new MS 4 just looks so damn cool overall on first impression.
But who knows, maybe some day...
In reply to Thank you to both but my … by Rickard H
Personally, I could care less what the score looks like. I care about the playback.
In your case, you seem to be writing for only a few instruments. I'm not sure you need to generate parts at all. Though that is what you may be used to. You could generate PDF's of the parts and look at them while MuseScore plays in the background. An extra step? Might be worth it if you like MuseSounds, or get VST's to work.
In reply to Personally, I could care… by bobjp
I do write songs with few instruments. Mostly pop, rock and some metal. I think this is more common than writing for a symphony orchestra, which seems to be a focus point of MuseScore.
I'm not sure either I want to "generate parts", I just want to see the score for one instrument at a time and have it scroll while it plays the rest of the instruments as backing tracks, preferably with a temporarily adjustable playback speed.
I do like the idea of having VSTs available already at the song writing stage, but it is not essential. I have managed this far without. And after all - if it sounds alright with GPs dinky synths, it will sound fire with real recordings and VSTs later :)
But I will hang around and see how MS develops, and maybe find some other uses for it if nothing else.
In reply to I do write songs with few… by Rickard H
Indeed, MuseSounds is lite on pop and rock instruments. Though I think they are still in Muse Basic. Selectable from All Instruments when you set up a score. Drumset sounds are good. Though I hate the drum palette. VSTi is supposed to be usable now. You can "break out" the play controls and there is a slider for tempo.