Mixer Duplicating Instrument Voices
OS X Maverick. I've noticed a few times lately that the top two lines (piano treble & bass clefs) are being duplicated once in the mixer, creating 4 piano lines. However this one I just found takes the cake: the Mixer is showing a total of 11 piano lines (instead of 2) for this song! Please see attached screen prints.
Thanks.
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
| Screen Shot 2015-06-14 at 5.27.35 PM.jpg | 191.32 KB |
| Mixer Problem.jpg | 50.2 KB |
Comments
It's impossible to figure out anything without seeing an example of a score that's causing the problem. Can you attach the actual MSCZ file here?
Here it is.
These are doing it too.
Wow, that's weird. I don't see anything I can point to as the cause. Were these imported from MusicXML files or anything like that?
Nothing imported from XML. My daughter has been working on these so she may have done something. But she doesn't know what.
The problem is that a good number of the text elements that appears to be Tempo texts are actually Instrument elements (eg, the Meno mosso in bar 4 of the first posted example). The purpose of the Instrument element is to allow a soubd change to happen there, and as part of that, a new mixer entry is created for the new sound. Instead of using Instrument changes, you should simply use Tempo elements (added from from the Tempo palette, or Add / Text / Tempo or Alt+T). Then not only would there not be additional Mixer entries, but you'd also have the opportunity to have the tempo actually change there (via the Inspector).
Ah, I figured it out. There's incorrect use of instrument change text throughout the piece, forcing duplicate Mixer channels to be created.
When you open the Text palette, the types of text you can add are displayed as "Staff Text," "System Text," "Swing," "B1" (rehearsal mark), and "Instrument" (instrument change—if you hover your cursor over an item in the palettes its name will pop up). Each type of text has different properties and is meant to serve a different purpose. In this case I believe system text would serve the purpose your daughter intended (see https://musescore.org/en/handbook/text-0#system-text). Instrument change text is meant to be used to change to a different instrument on the same staff, and of course each different instrument would need a separate control in the Mixer. In this case, since no different instrument was specified as per https://musescore.org/en/handbook/mid-staff-instrument-change, the change was simply from a piano to a piano each time.
The "Meno Vivo" at measure 4 in "Gnomus" is one such piece of instrument change text. To see how it works, you can secondary-click on it and you'll see the option to "Change Instrument…" To conclusively demonstrate that it's causing a change to a new channel, mute only the first channel in the Mixer and then play from the beginning.
Unfortunately, it will take a lot of time to replace each and every instrument change text with regular system text. I'm guessing that the reason your daughter used the type of text she did was that she liked its style better. However, it's actually pretty easy to customize the style of a given type of text—go the Style menu and choose Text… There, you can make it so that system text looks like instrument change text, but without the corresponding special properties. Each piece of instrument change text you delete and replace will get you one less piano in the Mixer. When they're all gone, you'll have one piano channel left (yes, it's correct for both staves of a single instrument to share one channel).
If you have any further questions, please don't hesitate to ask for help in the forums: https://musescore.org/en/forum
Wow. Good job figuring this out. Yes, we use the "Instrument" text because it is the exact size we need for the music style notations that are in the original score. We used to use "Swing" until we found out that it made it "Swing" in playback. For our purposes, we need to export audio files of the scores that DON'T vary in tempo from whatever we've set it at.
Under Style/Text, we can make the Staff and System text larger. But it appears that change is only good just for that score. Be want it to change for every score globally. Is that possible?
Use a template or save the style of one score and load it into the next
I do have templates, but not every score needs the text added. However, I will put in a sample of both Staff and System text in the correct size in each template, so it may be copied and pasted where needed. Or the sample may be deleted if not needed.
Thanks again.
No sample needed, just the corresponding styles set up and saved in the template
You find the text itself in a template isn't preseved anyhow - just the staves asnd styles.
I'd still recommend using tempo text, since that's what these are. Just set them all to have the same playback effect (using the Inspector) if you don't want the tempo to actually vary. Eg, after entering them all, right click one, turn off the Follow text option in Inspector, set the tempo to whatever you want. Then if later you decide you *do* want "Meno mosso" to actually slow the tempo down like it says, you have that option. And you don't need to set up custom styles / templates etc.
Actually, I think Marc Sabatella is probably right that tempo text is the way to go: you won't need to customize styles or save templates—it will look good right out of the box—and you have the option in the Inspector to actually change the tempo with it. And, like system text, if you extract parts from the score (https://musescore.org/en/node/36156), the tempo text will appear in every part. Instrument change text won't.
Still, it's good to know how to use styles. To my mind, for example, the default style for "Instrument Name (Part)" (what it says in the top left corner when you extract a part from a score) in 18-point font is way too huge. By opening the Text Styles window in any part of a given score, I was able to change the style of the part name to be 14 points, apply it to all of the individual parts linked to that score, and, by choosing "Save Style…" from the Style menu, save the style sheet ready to be loaded into any other score. Similarly, if you want system text to always be 12-point bold, just change the corresponding text style and (optionally) save the style for use in other scores.
The primary differences between saving a style sheet and saving a template are that a template also specifies things like the instruments and the page settings, and a style can be loaded into an existing score.
Regarding the use of Instrument text, we are trying to indicate a certain instrument, but don't want it to add these to the Mixer. They're just visual notes for us. So using Staff Text with the style changed to make the pt size larger in all our templates, should work.
Regarding using Tempo text, we usually steer clear except for the initial metronome markings. This is because we have a problem where the Play Back tempo works correctly (follows the metronome marking) for just the first measure at best, then it changes to something different (usually faster). This is a real problem for us, since we export audio files and need the tempo to remain constant per the metronome marking. To correct this, we end up entering a 2nd metronome/tempo marking at the end of the 1st measure or beginning of the 2nd measure to reiterate the original tempo, since it doesn't appear to hold or "take." That seems to fix the issue, but we shouldn't have to do that.
Any ideas why that is happening? Appreciate all the comments/solutions offered.
As I mentioned, you need to set the tempo for tempo texts using the Inspector. If you are having trouble with this, please start a thread in the Support forum and attach the specific score you are having problems with an precise steps to reproduce the problem.
The markings you are adding are *not* instrument text. Instrument text is specifically designed allow you to change instruments - from piano to organ, or from flute to saxophone. Terms like "Meno mosso" are by their very nature tempo indications, not indications to change instruments. So you really should be using tempo texts. As I said, you can then set their playback to not actually change the tempo, or you can actually set them to have the *right* effect (eg, meno mosso should change to a slower tempo). Again, if you are having trouble figuring out how to do this, please ask for help in the Support forum.
I understand what you mean by instrument text and how it affects the mixer. Some of the markings we add are instruments, i.e. "trumpet" or "strings" to indicate they begin playing at that point. But we just want to SEE those words and not have anything happening behind the scenes in the program. Therefore we need to use some other type of text, such as Staff and change the style in all the templates, which are already created.
Now I don't believe we should use Tempo text for words such as "Tempo I," "Allegro" because we would need to "turn off" the "Follow Text" manually in the Inspector for each one we enter. As again, we don't want anything going on behind the scenes in the program. Just want to see the words.
I don't believe there is a way to turn off "follow text" for an entire score, is there?
Whether or not you turn off 'follow text' for a tempo text of "Allegro" is irrelevant: there is nothing to follow anyway, so MuseScore won't
Actually, because it cannot follow those texts, it will instead default to whatever the tempo text is set to in the Inspector.
To set the tempo for all tempo texts at ocne, simply right click one, Select / All similar elements, and use the Inspector to set their attributes all together (eg, turn off "Follow text", set the desired tempo).
If you use Instrument text for a change to trumpet, then nothing actually changes unless you actually set the properties of that text or use the Mixer. So again, it's the right thing to do. If on the other hand you are just indicating that trumpet enters at that point, this should be ordinary staff text or system text as appropriate.
You are always best off using the right type of element and settings its attributres as desired rather than trying to coerce some other type of element into working the way you want.
We set a specific numeric metronome marking such as "quarter note = 80" at the beginning of all our scores and DO want Musescore to follow this. Are you saying that any additional use of "Tempo Text" will cause Musescore to revert to the default BPM? If so, that sounds like a good reason to stay away from using Tempo Text, except for actual metronome markings, otherwise every time we use it for "text," we have to make sure the Inspector setting are correct and we're not loosing the initial BPM setting. We literally never want Musescore to follow any verbal tempo instructions.
Each tempo marking has the ability to have its own tempo - they don't necessarily "revert to the default BPM". So you can literally have MuseScore get faster when it is *supposed* to get faster (eg, for piu mosso) and slower when it is *supposed* to get slower (eg, for "meno mosso"), or you have those tempo markings just keep the original tempo. it's totally your choice. A simple way to have the latter effect with no effort is to simply copy and paste that first tempo marking then change the text.
But I'm also saying that no matter what else you do while entering the tempo markings, after you are done, it takes all of five seconds to do what I descriebd above to make sure they are all set to the same tempo if that's what you want.