Combine recorded musescore WAV file with written score for upload to Musescore
Hi all:
After weeks of work, I have finished a rendition of Beethoven's Ode to Joy for 24 instruments. Frankly, it turned out spectacular, and I want to upload the score to Musescore.com. The problem is, it is only sounding great because I downloaded a variety of new soundfonts into MuseScore (all free open source), and used them for most of my instruments. When the score is played using the MuseScore default .sf3 font, it just doesn't sound that good, particularly since I used a "timpani roll" font in the finale.
I thought I read somewhere that if I record the score in Musescore using all my soundfont instruments and create a WAV file of it, I could upload that WAV file to MuseScore.com to play along with the .mscz file, instead of the website synth playing the song using the default soundfont. Is that correct, or did I misunderstand? If it is correct, is there somewhere that gives me directions on how to do it?
Thanks
Comments
When doing the File > Save online (and only with that it'd work, not when uploading to musescore.com directly) also tick the box 'Upload score audio'.
That generates an MP3 and uploads it along with the score and then gets used on musescore.com for playback
In reply to When doing the File > Save… by Jojo-Schmitz
JoJo:
Thanks as always for the direction. I made the recording, and while it turned out OK, one of the soundfont instruments I used, the timpani roll from the Aegean Symphonic soundfont, did not record. It was simply left out of both the MP3 or WAV file. That is very disappointing, since I was thrilled with its sound in the finale. It really is a great timpani roll and is a highlight of the Ode to Joy finale.
Is there a way to copy that instrument from the Aegean .sf2 file (say using Polyphone), and re-save it in a format that will be recordable in MP3?
In reply to JoJo: Thanks as always for… by fsgregs
Just add that soundfont to MuseScore's synthesiter, save to score, use the Mixer to make sure the instrument is using the sound from that soundfont and export to MP3 or WAV then.
If it sounds properly there, use Save online and upload score audio
In reply to JoJo: Thanks as always for… by fsgregs
As per the suggestion above, you don't actually need to create and MP3 or WAV file to upload the audio to musescore.com - it happens completely automatically when you check the appropriate box. Even if you do create an MP3 or WAV, it will be ignored; MuseScore will generate a new one during the upload.
That said, if you're not hearing the Aegean soundfont in your own MP3, probably you won't in the automatic one either. So you would need to check all the relevant settings - be sure you've selected the proper sound in the mixer, that the staff is not muted, that you've set your "single note dynamics" options appropriately for the soundfonts you are using, etc.
In reply to As per the suggestion above,… by Marc Sabatella
EDIT: ok, that did it. I discovered that the "single note dynamics" check box in the Instrument Staff Properties panel was NOT checked for that one instrument. Once I checked it, the drum roll did record. So happy!!!!
Thanks. I will upload to MuseScore shortly. The song turned out well. Check it out.
Frank
In reply to When doing the File > Save… by Jojo-Schmitz
But how to do that when uploading using the website directly? (Uploading from the MuseScore software is often enough buggy/broken I don’t use it, and anyway not compatible with version 2.x.)
In reply to But how to do that when… by mirabilos
There is no way to do it except from within MuseScore. But I am not aware of any current bugs doing so. Did you have a specific issue from the tracker in mind?
In reply to There is no way to do it… by Marc Sabatella
Mostly the in-software form not containing all options that are now required or at least present on the site (more so for 2.3.2) and the thing with the source metaTag not being written correctly.
In reply to Mostly the in-software form… by mirabilos
I've reported issues with Save online from MuseScore 2, and have been told that these will get fixed, by retaining the old 2.x backend for those, Not sure whether that has happend meanwhile, esp. as the 3.x backend is still at 3.6.1 (as downloating a PDF reveals in its metadata)
In reply to I've reported issues with… by Jojo-Schmitz
Good… doesn’t change the thing with the dialogue though.
In reply to Mostly the in-software form… by mirabilos
Maybe it's a new development in the last few hours? I haven't uploaded anything today or yesterday but have at least a dozen over the past week or two and haven't had any issues with missing options. There was very briefly (a day or so) last week an issue where in certain unusual cases the source tag was replaced by the "nice link" instead of the permalink and would cause updates to fail, but that was literally only broken for a matter of hours, and only for a small percentage of scores (ones in which the nice link had been customized, I think).
So are there some specific steps I should be testing to reproduce a problem today?
In reply to Maybe it's a new development… by Marc Sabatella
Compare the amount of fields in the Save Online dialogue in MuseScore 2.3.2 and these on the website. That ought to be enough to spot the obvious problem ;-)
In reply to Compare the amount of fields… by mirabilos
Are you only talking about 2.3.2, then? That's a long-obsolete version, not going to get updates, so not terribly surprising if it has limitations
In reply to Are you only talking about 2… by Marc Sabatella
I’m talking about the fact that the upload form baked into the software gets old quick.
And the site clearly still considers uploading v2 scores worth actively supporting.
So just provide a way to upload a waveform (probably compressed) with the score on the website. (Yes, wrong forum here, this should be on .com, but it wasn’t me who started it here.)
In reply to I’m talking about the fact… by mirabilos
Well, that ship has sailed, hasn't it? The fact that the upload form was "baked in" to MuseScore 2 was a limitation indeed, but this as well as hundreds of other unfortunate limitations was fixed years ago, in MuseScore 3.
As for the place for this discussion, it's one that of course crosses domains (literally). Upload is a cooperation between the software and the site. So aspects of the discussion that relate to the software are to me fine to have here. But retrospectives about problems fixed long ago don't seem that productive. Again, I'm still trying to figure out if there is a perceived problem with the current version, and I'm gathering the answer is no. Only if one deliberately chooses to use an obsolete version with known limitations does one run into, well, limitations. The solution there would seem obvious.
That's the software side, anyhow. If the website side decided to also provide some way to upload audio direction, that's fine of course, but that wouldn't involve anyone here.
In reply to Well, that ship has sailed,… by Marc Sabatella
“was fixed years ago, in MuseScore 3.” It’s not.
As of 3.2.3, the website upload does:
I’ve marked the software equivalents. No, this has not been fixed, and it probably cannot be easily fixed.
Interestingly enough, I also had a hard time finding the checkbox to upload audio, but it only appears if I use a “different soundfont from the default”. Thankfully it only seems to check the soundfont filename (playback is version-specific and I tend to have a newer version of the MS_General soundfont than MuseScore itself occasionally). Haven’t used it yet, but…
In reply to “was fixed years ago, in… by mirabilos
3.2.3 is almost two years old. I forget exactly which MuseScore 3 update introduced the dynamic upload window, but it's been that way quite a while. All of the fields you mention are there, because the form comes directly from the web site (and is displayed with the web view, I assume). So, again, it's a non-issue in MuseScore 3, by which I mean, the current version, and actually all previous MuseScore versions going back for quite some time. But indeed, technically speaking, less than two years.
And yes, the checkbox to upload audio is only needed when using non-default synthesizer settings, so to prevent needless waste of bandwidth on upload, the box isn't presented when it would have no effect. No doubt a better design would be to have it present but greyed out.
In reply to 3.2.3 is almost two years… by Marc Sabatella
I believe it was 3.4 that introduced that web-based upload form
In reply to I believe it was 3.4 that… by Jojo-Schmitz
Incidentally… if there’s a web-based upload form… what’s to say we can’t just load this up in the browser? (Didn’t try it, probably won’t for now…)
In reply to 3.2.3 is almost two years… by Marc Sabatella
Ah but there’s no web view. As you can see in https://buildd.debian.org/status/package.php?p=qtwebengine-opensource-s… it only exists at all for a rather small subset of the architectures supported by MuseScore, which is https://buildd.debian.org/status/package.php?p=musescore3 except it used to work for three or four more but these ports currently have issues in Qt, so it’s BD-Uninstallable due to missing up-to-dateness of Qt there. I used to have MuseScore 2 available on all but two architectures, even.
And I just wrote that even with the default soundfont the audio generated locally can differ (different version of the software and/or the soundfont), so how can you say it “would have no effect” replying to a message in which I just pointed out the contrary?
In reply to Ah but there’s no web view… by mirabilos
I'm not sure how you are counting your architectures - by how many different product numbers chip manufacturers put on the CPU's (there are probably at least 100 different 64-bit Intel architectures at this point), or by how the debian system happens to categorize its own internal builds, etc. But I am less interested in quantifying the abstract notion of an "architecture" than I am in actual real world usage by actual real world people. Statistically probably 99.99% of users are using computers that support the web view. For that tiny percentage of users who don't enjoy this support, this does indeed remain a limitation, which is unfortunate indeed. But probably nothing we can do in MuseScore 3. Hopefully, MuseScore's 4 new design and reduced reliance on Qt will find some better solution, but to me everything about that's still an enormous open question.
And OK, yes, just as there are no doubt 0.01% users on architecture that don't support web view, there are probably also some being uploaded by users on one of these older versions that would as a result sound different enough (due to soundfont or code differences) to potentially be worth being able to upload audio, even though there were no custom synth settings. So maybe another 0.01% of users affected by that. Here the simple workaround is, make some trivial change to your synth settings. And again, no doubt there could be a clearer way of designing this.
But bottom line, the statement that uploading from MuseScore is "often buggy/broken" seems to be limited to, the very small percentage of people using versions of the software more than a year old or running on architectures that don't support web view. It's not zero, but Iat least I have a better idea of what you mean here, and then we could quibble about whether the word "often" is really appropriate here.
In reply to Ah but there’s no web view… by mirabilos
100% of the official builds work that way. In respect to soundfonts and the 'Upload score audio and in respect to the online webview dialog.