NEW: Tab Ring plugin for improved "Let Ring" guitar playback — Please post feedback here!

Fabulous! Even neater and more powerful than Tab Tools.

Viva Laissez Vibrer!

Here’s an example score that demonstrates the effects of the new TAB Ring plugin.

( I’ve attached an image that shows the settings I used. )

https://musescore.com/user/35880724/scores/13282477

It's probably surprising to hear a piano sound emanating from a guitar score, but generally I resort to that because MuseScore 3's guitar sounds are pretty cheesy. (More about the audio ahead ... and why I was unable to post the example score from MuseScore 4 with a high quality VST guitar.)

The TAB Ring plugin and controls

TAB Ring's purpose is to ring each note's "playback duration" until another note is played on the same string ... as naturally occurs in styles like guitar finger-picking. Think of it as "spray on" guitar realism, or canned Laissez Vibrer!

Not surprisingly, depending on its settings, TAB Ring occasionally extends durations overzealously. To rein in a small amount of excessive ring in the Kathy's Song example score—i.e to eliminate dissonances a guitarist would not normally produce—I placed five Ring Tokens in the score. And that did the trick.

Ring Tokens are Staff Text objects, like $O and $5.

This recording highlights the effect of the TAB Ring Plugin.

You can listen at Audio.com: https://audio.com/audius/audio/kathy-s-song-intro-tab-ring-comparison

Notes on the audio rendering

I processed the first 16 bars of the recording with TAB Ring. At 24 seconds the song reverts to MuseScore’s default face value durations. At 36 seconds it switches back to TAB Ring processed durations. The difference is significant, and the result is often unattainable with "Let Ring"—which is actually just MIDI sustain.

The audio uploaded to audio.com was rendered in Logic Pro ... where I imported a MIDI export of the score.

NOTE: From scratch, i.e. starting with face value duration, you could achieve the same result in MuseScore's Piano Roll Editor, or in your DAWs Piano Roll Editor, but for a normal length score that could easily take an hour.

In contrast TAB Ring renders realistic durations instantly, with a click. Afterward you can refine the results with a few Ring Tokens, And for a finishing touch you can hand edit durations in the Piano Roll Editor. The results produced here did not require any Piano Roll editing.

Unfortunately these results are not possible currently in MuseScore 4.

I wanted to export audio with a good VST guitar from within MuseScore and since MuseScore 4.2 supports VST instruments in (and I've successfully worked with guitar libraries in v4.2) I was quite hopeful. So I expected I'd be able to upload from MuseScore 4 to MuseScore.com with a pristine VST guitar sound. BUT there was a major hitch.

Due to its own shortcomings (regressions) MuseScore 4 can't use the TAB Ring plugin. So I devised a workaround. I created the score in MuseScore 3.7 (aka MuseScore Evolution) and planned to open it in MuseScore 4.2, set the VST guitar and upload. But when I opened the v3.7 score in MuseScore 4 I heard the default face value durations, not the play duration set by the TAB Ring plugin.

A simple test score proved that MuseScore 4 discards altered play durations as explained here.

Sadly this means we can't have extended play durations and VST playback in MuseScore 4 until the Piano Roll Editor is reinstated, or until MuseScore4 will read and honor altered play durations—my guess that means honoring the Len property of individual notes. Ideally we'll get both before too long. Then MuseScore 4 will be an even more popular place to score for guitar and to creat guitar tablature notation.

scorster