For music educators: Playbar controls.

• May 2, 2024 - 00:12

I teach music to kids. When I can, I bring in etudes and exercises on musescore and project them on the board so kids can sing/play along.

But musescore isn't great at this for a few reasons:
1) The page never turns soon enough for kids to look ahead. If the play bar gets to the edge of the page before the page turns, it's too late to prepare.
2) The play bar can be confusing. In musescore 3, the play bar will jump between all the note values. If you have a piece with 8ths, 16ths and quarters, then the play bar will be less of a useful guide. In musescore 4, the play bar is now smooth, which is sometimes a little better, but I find that it tends to have a jerky motion between measures that doesn't help kids keep the beat very well.

My request? Add these play bar control options:
1) The ability to choose play bar types, from smooth, jumpy, or just a measure highlight.
2) If using a jumpy play bar, I would prefer the option to have the play bar adhere to the particular notes OR to a selected BEAT. For instance, if I selected the quarter note beat, the play bar would only appear on beats 1, 2, 3, 4 even though there were other note values in the piece. The ability to put the play bar on the quarter beat, half note beat, etc. would be of great value.
2a) A potential shortcut here is to all the user to selected the specific staff the play bar will follow. For instance, I could add an invisible staff with just quarter notes. The play bar would follow that while the kids try to follow the rest.
3) The option to make the play bar turn the pages at least a measure earlier than the edge of the page. Kids can't read something they can't see.

These options would be very, very helpful.

Thank you for your wonderful work and amazing product. It has truly enriched me.

  • Milock

Comments

I also teach privates lessons and groups and I've found MuseScore 3's Play Panel useful in guiding students' practice, by affording easy control over tempo and the option of looping small sections of the score.

There are many issues to address in MuseScore 4—not least of which is the hiding of the Playback Panel's "Tempo override"—so I sketched an interface for a "Practice Panel"

The Github post starts here listing the overarching goals: https://github.com/musescore/MuseScore/issues/16723

scorster

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