TempoChanges

This plugin uses the hidden tempo texts technique to simulate tempo changes such as accelerando and ritardando in MuseScore. The technique itself is taken straight out of the online handbook.

Download and Install

For installation see Plugins.

MuseScore 3

https://github.com/jeetee/MuseScore_TempoChanges/archive/3.4.1.zip
Tested on MuseScore 3.0.5. Does not work on lower 3.x versions

MuseScore 2

https://github.com/jeetee/MuseScore_TempoChanges/archive/2.6.0.zip
Tested with MuseScore 2.0.2, should work on 2.0+

How does it work?

  1. Select the range of notes over which the tempo change has to take place
  2. Open up the plugin from Plugins - TempoChanges
    • Staff Text: Optional staff text to be created at the start of the tempo change. Leave blank if undesired.
    • BPM beat: Reference beat duration for both tempo settings below; the plugin tries to detect this from the tempo marking preceding/at the start of the current selection
    • Start BPM: Tempo of the first note in the selection (in BPM beats); will be prefilled with the tempo at the start of the selection. If no tempo marker is present in the score, the currently hardcoded tempo of MuseScore (1/4 = 120) is suggested.
    • End BPM: Tempo of the first note after the selection (in BPM beats); will be prefilled with the tempo after the selection. If no tempo marker is detected after the selection a default value (1/4 = 60) is suggested.
    • Linear/Curved How the tempo changes over the selected range. When selecting Curved you can use the slider/spinner to indicate when 50% of the tempo change should be applied. A lower value means changing most of the tempo sooner; a higher value means most of the change will be applied later.
  3. Hit Apply or press the Enter/Return key. The plugin will now create invisible tempo texts on each segment within the selection and a final visible one on the first note after the selection with the resulting end tempo.

You may cancel out of the plugin by pressing the close window button or pressing Esc

How does it really work?

See http://jeetee.github.io/MuseScore_TempoChanges/ for an interactive explanation on the plugin's internal algorithm.

Screenshots

Plugin Dialog and resulting score fragment

Applying the Plugin Result

Translations

Please feel free to create Pull Requests on github containing translations for your language. Make sure to see the README.md to find out which part needs translation.

This plugin is currently available in:

Known issues

linux

People on linux might have to manually install qml-module-qt-labs-settings (confirmed for Ubuntu 18.04 in this topic).

MacOS

Some MacOS users experience unknown character text shown in the BPM dropdown list. This is unfortunately a Qt bug I cannot fix. Luckily, the chosen value still shows correctly when the dropdown is closed.

Issue Tracker

API compatibility
2.x
3.x
Plugin categories
Playback