Velocity input from MIDI controller possible?

• Jan 21, 2016 - 01:03

Here's my current situation: I'm starting to write music for indie games with MuseScore, meaning that my music is designed to be played by my computer, not a real person. MuseScore is great software, but my biggest gripe is how difficult it is to add expression to the playback. One of the things that would greatly remedy this problem would be the ability to take MIDI velocity from a MIDI controller and pass that value to the velocity of the note being entered (of type User).

I'm completely fine with having to write a plugin for MuseScore, but quite frankly, I don't even know what language the plugins are written in, or if they can access MIDI controller data at all. Are there any solutions?


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In reply to by [DELETED] 5

I see it working much like every other program I've tried.

MIDI keyboards simultaneously pass 3 major pieces of information to the computer - what note is pressed, how long it is pressed, and the velocity at which it is pressed. As I understand it, MuseScore only uses the information regarding what note is pressed. I get that the developers have voiced concern over the difficulty of real-time composition (how long a note is pressed), but I've heard nothing regarding velocity.

I want this velocity information to be automatically applied as I enter notes through my MIDI keyboard. No going back to change to fix things, just a one step process.

If you could write a plugin, that would be amazing! However, that may be a little more difficult than this next work-around I have for you. I'm guessing that this idea you have comes from other programs like Ableton or FL Studio. You may or may not have these but here's what I got, and this is how I've managed to overcome this.

You need:
- midi controller
-A program that:
_ _ _ _ _ 1. connects to midi controllers (and can read velocity as you explained)
_ _ _ _ _ 2. can export midi

I use FL Studio; there may be free alternatives that can do the above, but I wouldn't know of one. Pretty much, I record with my midi controller in FL Studio (so all the notes instruments are there), fix up any messy rhythms, export midi, and import the midi into musescore (and of course I have to go in and edit for triplets and trils but that's fine) . I get stuff done a lot faster that way.

If you doo happen to figure out how to write a plugin that could detect note velocity, I would quickly use that with my midi controller, but for now, this seems like the only option.

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