Musescore ate my drums?

• Jan 23, 2024 - 19:48

I had written some scores on Sibelius before they went evil empire on me, and so I converted them to .musicxml documents and have been working with them in Musescore. Most of it is working fairly well (some instruments randomly changed to pianos in playback, but that's easily fixed), but I can't understand what it's doing with my drum set staff.
The notes play back as whistles and all sorts of weird things, they're on different lines than they used to be (e.g. a triangle notehead on the B5 line is now on the G5 line), and I can't get them to input differently. For instance, if I try to move a note up or down the staff, it will jump to an entirely different line with a different notehead, and only has a select few lines it will jump to. If I input a note with the letters on my keyboard, it will show up as something entirely different.

I'm guessing what I have to do involves adding a drum set from Musescore as an instrument, but when I copy-paste the old drum line onto the new one, it copies over the same wrong notes instead transcribing them as the old correct notes (as it sometimes does when, for instance, I change a clef).

I've attached the drum legend I was using: this is what I'm trying to get the drum kit to do now on Musescore. But I'm not sure all of these noteheads exist on Musescore.
Is it possible to get this to behave without having to rewrite all of these scores? (This is a piece with over 40 scores in it.)

Attachment Size
Drum Legend.pdf 35.09 KB

Comments

• Jan 23, 2024 - 20:03

The concept behind drum notation in MU4 is totally different than that of Sibelius. And I much prefer the Sibelius concept. I'm doing some testing, but I'm not very hopeful.

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• Jan 23, 2024 - 20:06

Mainly seems that the "notes" do not align with the default drumset (as you seem to indicate already).
The note heads do not seem to be an issue. Without having the score (or at least a part of it), it is hard to tell what is happening. It may have assigned a percussion set instead of the drumset.
For drumest customization, you can check this: https://musescore.org/en/handbook/4/drumset-customization
and following the link to the MS3 handbook for more details.
Once you got a drumset defined, you can import the set into score you need.

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• Jan 23, 2024 - 20:36

OK. I created a two measure kick, snare piece in Sibelius. Then in MU4, I did an edit of the drum palette to match the notes and voice. I.E. Only a kick and snare note in voice 1. I exported the part from Sibelius as mxl. Then opened it in MU4. As expected everything opened all on the top line. And, yes, my two drum palette was active. The two systems are just too different, I believe.

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• Jan 24, 2024 - 06:53

Can you post the exported musicxml file from your test?

In the past I converted some scores from Capella to MS and had to so some remapping of the notes to make it correct. As long as the musicxml file contains the individual notes, it should be possible to get it close to the same as in Sibelius.
Not sure if Sibelius has the option, but another trick I used in the past was to create separate staffs for each required drum "instrument" and then join them together later into 1.

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• Jan 27, 2024 - 16:34

Thanks!
They seem to be wrong in the xml files as well when I open them in MS, so I'm not sure if that's a problem with how Sibelius exported them a few years ago or with how MS opens them. Unfortunately, MS doesn't allow me to save anything as a musicxml file, unless I'm missing something, which I might be.

Here's the drums as they currently are (MS), along with the full musicxml file. I was going to upload the .sib file as well, but it appears those can't be uploaded here. I've made a few revisions to the current MS file, so I'm not sure to what extent this will actually be helpful.

Thanks so much for taking a look!

Attachment Size
I 3 c -- Next Time - drum only copy.mscz 25.42 KB
I 3 c -- Next Time.musicxml 2.62 MB

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• Jan 28, 2024 - 10:57

Hi,
Hmm....the sibelius file isn't actually a sibelius file. It is also a musicxml file. There is only one difference between this file and the musicxml you posted. In the Violin ensemble, the Sib file has an option enabled: show-rythms = false. While the musicxml file does not include this. Not exactly sure what this option does….or how it effects the display of the part.

I found why all "notes" are displayed in 1 line on the staff. The musicxml file does not contain an instrument definition per note, therefore it places all notes at the same line.
It seems the MS3 is a bit more forgiving in this scenario, as the notes are placed onto the different staff lines.
The sound is not correctly match though (it is piano but displayed as drum set). I was hoping the easy solution was to save the Drum Set part in MS3 and then open in MS4. Tried this, and when opened in MS4 it looks okay at first but then when I copy all into the imported musicxml file, the result is the same notes on a single line.

After checking in MS3, I noticed the drum set part does not contain that many notes/information. It might be easier/quicker to manually re-enter that part in MS4. Unless you need to convert many files....

If you still do have the original Sibilius file, it might be possible to getter a better export (using a trial version).

Hope this helps.

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• Jan 28, 2024 - 11:01

Rename the .sib (back) to .xml or .musicxml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding='UTF-8' standalone='no' ?>
<!DOCTYPE score-partwise PUBLIC "-//Recordare//DTD MusicXML 3.0 Partwise//EN" "http://www.musicxml.org/dtds/partwise.dtd">
...
   <software>Sibelius 20.12.0</software>
   <software>Direct export, not from Dolet</software>
   <encoding-description>Sibelius / MusicXML 3.0</encoding-description>

Try Dolet to export from Sibelius to MusicXML

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• Jan 28, 2024 - 11:07

@jojo, do you happen to know if Sibelius actually write in musicxml format by default?
I assumed sibelius would have their own format.....
Having said that, I tried using Capella 7 and when i try to save as music xml, there is an option to optimise the music xml for Sibelius 5 or above OR for Sibelius 4. So it could be that Sibelius files are actually music xml files.

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• Jan 28, 2024 - 11:11

I'm 99.999% surfe that .sib is a propriatary closed source format and not MusicXML

And ISTR that Sibelus' "regular" MusicXML export is mainly good/meant for transfering scores from one Sibelius version to another, and in order to get "real" MusicXML (to share with other promgrams) you'd need the Dolet plugin

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• Jan 28, 2024 - 11:15

Capella's .capx format is simular to MusicXML, as is MuseScore's mscz, both are compressed XML formats, but not directly MusicXML

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<score xmlns="http://www.capella.de/CapXML/2.0">
    <info>
        <encodingSoftware>capella 7 7.1 - 28</encodingSoftware>
    </info>

It actually seems better (and officially) documented as MuseScore's, check https://www.capella.de/CapXML/

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• Jan 28, 2024 - 18:48

Thank you so much!
I'm pretty sure I used Dolet 3 years ago when I first converted all of these to musicxml files. (That said, it was 3 years ago ...)
With over 600 pages of music to convert, (and being less than tech savvy) I think time will be better spent if I just rent Sibelius for a month or two than if I keep trying to make technology cooperate on this and end up possibly having things transcribe wrong anyway.
I really appreciate you weighing in on this!

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