"Overlapping" notes inaudible in playback

• Feb 6, 2023 - 00:38

In a score I am working on, I have some notes which are meant to be played while the same note is being held down. When the notes are in different voices, they play back just fine. But when they are all in the same voice (in this case voice 2) the "overlapped" notes don't sound.

The screenshot shows what I am talking about. The dotted half note in the screenshot is also part of voice 2. If I change it to voice 3, then the two selected notes play correctly.

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64877918924627356.png 109.82 KB

Comments

This tightly-cropped image leaves out important information. Is this a piano instrument with treble & bass clefs? Are these two staves assigned to different instruments? Would you attach the score itself for those who wish to help can look at (whatever # measure) this occurs at?

In reply to by Are Jayem

My apologies, I should have attached the score with it. It is scored for one piano with treble & bass. The score I attached to this comment is slightly different from the one in the original post, but the problem is the same. It affects the first 3 beats of measures 5 and 6.

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urar.mscz 32.77 KB

In reply to by kegfeng

Thanks, the score explains all. Let's talk about your first two measures. I think the graphic explains what's happening. Any place further in the score where a sustained note has a SAME NOTE being played with a different rhythm, just can't work.

It would be possible with 2 pianos, 2 pianists, and a modified score for both piano players... But now I suggest the absurd. :)

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first_2_measures.png 87.77 KB

In reply to by Are Jayem

I disagree—the whole note there is just to show the melodic line. It isn't really required for the pianist to hold down the note for the whole measure (the pedal takes care of that). I think this is quite common in piano scoring; for example in this concerto, the circled notes are technically "impossible" to play but that didn't stop Rautavaara from writing them!

Changing either of the notes to be in a different voice will immediately fix the problem, so definitely seems to me like a bug, not a feature. Additionally, I don't believe this was an issue in MuseScore 3.

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In reply to by kegfeng

Notation like yours is also used in Gymnopedie no. 1, for another example. I've been having this problem as well, or maybe an even more annoying variant. If two voices on a staff have voice overlap, one of the notes (sometimes?) will not play. Example of voice overlap: voice 1 and voice 2 play F and A and then A and C. The A is likely to be silent. Certainly that is possible on piano.

In reply to by Fredx2098

The problem here is that writing for recorded sound is totally different from writing for a real player. So you have to decide. If you are writing for real players, then write what you feel you must. But if playback doesn't do what you want, it isn't a bug. There are limitations.

In reply to by bobjp

The purpose of the recorded sounds is to imitate what a real player would sound like, especially if you're composing classical music—which is usually intended to be played by real people and not by a computer. This means that the artificial sound is being used as a sort of "sketch" of the real deal. It's almost indispensable for digital composing. So if I tell the program to do something (i.e. play some note), and it doesn't do that thing, then I'd consider that a bug or at least a missing feature. It's not like MS4 is incapable of playing overlapping sounds, since you could easily move that second line to a new piano and it would sound just fine. It's something that needs to be fixed, in my opinion.

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