Copied notes from different files sounds louder/quieter than notes manually added despite the original dynamics

• Mar 31, 2024 - 14:43

I'm making a piece that frequently contains parts of other pieces (sort of mashup, but with a bunch of my work too) so I wanted to copy parts of these other pieces downloaded on the Musescore website to make my work faster. But no matter the original dynamics, the copied notes don't have identical volume like the new notes I put into the new score manually.

For example, I downloaded a score Adieu by Rammstein and part of it I copied into my score and wanted to add some chords into the copied part. But the copied notes are significantly louder when played than the notes of the chords I wrote myself. The original Adieu score has no dynamics marks whatsoever, mine score has none too, but still, my notes and copied notes have different volume. I had to rewrite the part I wanted to copy note by note to make it play the same. Adding dynamics or changing instruments doesn't help (I mean, both types of notes change their dynamics, but still, you can hear one's louder than others).

Did somebody have the same issue? I think it may be because one score may have been made in Musescore 3 while I'm working in Musescore 4. But maybe I'm wrong.

Below are the scores in question plus a little compilation to show the difference between them. Creep seems to be fine, but Adieu is not at all. But it happened to me with much more scores than just this one. I would be grateful for any help.

Attachment Size
Issue with dynamics.mscz 34.15 KB
Adieu__Rammstein(1).mscz 35.83 KB
Creep__Radiohead.mscz 31.24 KB

Comments

First of all: I don't use MuS 4, so I can't test whether it's a MuS 4 problem.

But what I already see in MuS 3: there are many/all notes of Adieu_Rammstein with the "Velocity Type 'User'". This is a fixed volume setting for the note. I can find values between 96 and 108, but I haven't looked at all of them. It's not a big difference and corresponds to something between 'f' and 'ff'. Because of this fixed value any dynamic settings (ppp ... fff) are ignored.
In a new score, the type is "Offset" with the value '0'. And then the dynamic signs also take effect.
Select all notes and set the type to 'Offset' with the value 0.

You can see this nicely in your file "Issue with dynamics.mscz". Measure 17 (your notes) has offset = 0 and measure 18 has been set to offset = 100, i.e. these notes have a higher volume.

The 'User' type sets a fixed value between 0 and 127 (ppp=16, fff = 126), which remains the same regardless of the dynamics characters. The 'Offset' type changes the value specified by the dynamic designations by an offset.

Regardless of this, notes with an "Accent above" are emphasized in the volume, as in the first measures of Creep/Trip. In this score, all notes are correctly set to type Offset with the value 0 and should therefore also sound correct in MuS 4.

In MU4, your notes are set to a velocity of 64. While the imported notes are set to 100. Muse Basic sounds read the velocities, but Muse Sounds do not. Range select the imported notes and open the "Properties" palette>playback. You will see the Velocity is at 100. Select the Reset circle just to the right of the word Velocity and it will reset to 64.

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