Rubato: ritardando and accelerando

• Feb 19, 2011 - 12:49
Reported version
3.0
Priority
P2 - Medium
Type
Functional
Frequency
Many
Severity
S5 - Suggestion
Status
active
Regression
No
Workaround
Yes
Project

Lots of musical styles use speeding up (accelerando) and slowing down (rallendado or ritenuto). It would be great if a musescore could, from a selection of beats, say "slow down from this tempo to that tempo" or "speed up from this tempo to that tempo" or even set a percentage.

Right now Anvil Studio does allow setting tempo (not accell, or rall.) and Finale does support all these, but its hard to do.


Comments

You can put several tempo indications and then set them invisible.
You can then write the text "Rubato" on the passage.

I'd almost change that to "won't fix"

>I'd almost change that to "won't fix"
Putting several tempo indications and making them invisible is clearly a workaround.
I support this feature, especially since MuseScore 2.0 has playback improvements as its goals.

I've created a user account JUST to post a comment about this.
Trying to create a piece of music for my two sons (aged 10 and 8) to play as a duet in the school talent competition, and I want to finish the piece with a rallentando. Or rall.

In the UK, ABRSM Grade 1 lists rall and rit as essential theory knowledge.
Surely the software should support such basic playback options, e.g.with a tempo 'swoop' between two user specified tempos.

Even a coarse one (e.g. only 1 intermediate tempo) would be workable.

Otherwise wonderful bit of software. Loads of features, which is why this one missing came as such of a surprise.
O

It is important to realize the primary purpose of MuseScore is *notation* - to allow you to create scores you can print and play yourself. The fact that it also happens to have some sort of rudimentary ability to playback the scores itself is very secondary.

So, you already *can* place a rallentando marking, or any other marking you like, and it will appear in your score on screen and on paper when you print it, and your sons will be able to play it just fine, and MuseScore will have performed its intended function. If for some reason you also happen to want to want to hear the computer playback include the rallentando, you can set that up manually as described. Which isn't to say that such a playback feature might not be added some day, but it is important to keep this perpsective - the essential features are those relating to notation, while playback is very much secondary.

Awesome! So awesome I'm tempted to call this issue fixed. Can I make one small suggestion? Use the "Technique" text style instead of the plain "Staff Text" style. It's italicized and slightly larger—corresponding to, for example, the new text line dynamics ("cresc.     _     _     _     _") coming in MuseScore 2.0.3.

Also, of course, it would be nice to be able to specify the start and end tempos in different types of BPM—quarters, eighths, halves, and the dotted augmentations of the same. But that may be a more difficult problem to solve. (I'm not a programmer.)

I'd think we'd best leave this request as active, awaiting the real integrated fix using the new text line dynamics.

I love the idea of using the "Technique" style, but from what I can see it's currently not possible to assign a text style from a plugin. Perhaps this could become a feature request against the plugin framework?

Keep in mind that this plugin is written merely as a convenience workaround until the new text line dynamics are incorporated. I'll probably even have the plugin prevent itself from running in versions that have the new elements.
Using the new elements should always be preferred over polluting your score with invisible tempo markings.

That being said: Changing the reference beat (1/4th 1/8th) shouldn't pose a big coding hurdle, so I might have a go at trying that out over the next weeks just for the fun of it.

To be clear, the new text line dynamics are basically disguised hairpins—nothing to do with tempo. As yet, I don't think there's been any attempt at implementing a gradual tempo change feature. You're the best we've got for the foreseeable future.

So, keep up the good work, and see how far you can take it. ;-)

Job's a good'en.
Boy's didn't pass the audition, but they had fun anyway.
Chasing Cars on the Piano and Clarinet was never going to be an easy marriage for a 8 year old (piano) and a 10 year old!

Plug in works nicely.
Cheers,
O

I don't know if this is the right place, but can the "rit.", "a tempo", and the other related tempo markings be added to a palette? I don't care if they have no actual playback implementation, but I think it would be good for "reference".

(I'm marking this for 3.0-dev because when I've submitted my reply it explicitly requested the version)

A partial first step implementation might only add the corresponding lines to the lines and/or tempo palette (i.e. without playback). Needs to be a system line though, similar to voltas, so they propagate to all parts