For hairpins without dynamics, change velocity one dynamic level

• Nov 16, 2015 - 01:20
Type
Functional
Frequency
Few
Severity
S5 - Suggestion
Status
active
Regression
No
Workaround
Yes
Project

As requested at https://musescore.org/en/node/87261.

Current behavior: a hairpin without a specified velocity change will have no effect on playback unless there are dynamic markings before and after it.

Requested behavior (incidentally Sibelius behavior): if there is no dynamic marking after a hairpin, volume should change by one dynamic level "(e.g. a crescendo hairpin that starts at a
prevailing mp will go to mf, while a diminuendo hairpin that starts at a prevailing ff will go to f)."


Comments

The thing is, there is almost never *no* dynamic marking afterwards. At some point - whether a beat later, a measure later, or a page later - there almost always *will* be one. And that's what MuseScore uses. So in order for something like what is suggested to be effective, it couldn't just work this way if there is literally *no* dynamic later. There would have to be some arbitrary limit on how far away a dynamic could be to be taken into consideration.

What about cases where hairpins follow hairpins without intervening dynamics? Suppose from pianissimo, there's a crescendo, a decrescendo, and another pianissimo. The assumption to increase to piano with the first hairpin would be pretty accurate (and at that point the current behavior could take over again with the second hairpin).

True. But still, it's only a partial solution, as would any scheme that attempted to impose an arbitary limit on how far dynamics can be from hairpins in order to affect the playback of the hairpin. Again, not saying it isn't worth doing, but still, there isn't going to be any getting around sometimes needing to set playback parameters manually.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

In the range of a PP-P for example, there would have to be a velocity range and within that range in a PP the crescendo hairpin could increase, no more. It would be necessary to introduce the concept of microdynamics.

Frequency Few
Regression No
Workaround Yes

For which the workaround is simple: set the hairpin's velocity change to something like 16