Playback for Fall, Doit, Plop, Scoop, and Slides
MuseScore does not currently play back any of the pitch bend inflections under "Arpeggios & Glissandos" on the Palette. But it seems that that feature could made avaible with just one minor adjustment to the interface for "Bend" under "Articulations & Ornaments." The dialog box for that feature only allows pitch adjustments upward from the reference note. Simply extend the dialog box to allow adjustments downward from the reference note as well. This way, the same code that MuseScore is now using for playback of "Bend" could play back all of these other effects as well. The only thing remaining after that is to link that plugin to the Fall, Doit, Plop, Scoop, and Slide symbols as well as to "Bend."
On a minor note, you might want to put the Slides, Fall, Doit, Plop, and Scoop in some place other than "Arpeggios & Glissandos" since they involve bending the pitch rather than a series of discrete notes as arpeggios and glissandos are. They should be under the same heading as "Bend" - under "Articulations & Ornaments," are maybe a separate heading for all of the pitch bend effects.
Comments
You wrote:
The dialog box for that feature only allows pitch adjustments upward from the reference note.
Actually, pre-bend (bending to a lower pitch ) is possible.
See:
https://musescore.org/en/node/116731
Regards.
In reply to You wrote:… by Jm6stringer
Thank you for your reply; but that is not quite what I am after. The example in the thread you linked to does "bend to a lower pitch," but the "lower pitch" is the reference pitch itself; in actuality, it is bending from a HIGHER pitch down TO the pitch of the reference note (I guess I should say the "nominal pitch"). What I want instead is a way to bend the pitch down FROM the nominal pitch itself. So for example, in the first example attached below,
the Fall symbol on the second note tells the musician to play a "C" and then bend the pitch downward at the end of the note, toward a Bb for example. But the way MuseScore plays it back with the "Bend" feature on the second note is to start the note with the pitch of "D" and then bend down to the "C" at the end of the note.
I can get it to play back the way I intend by writing the affected note a step lower than the nominal pitch, as in the second example,
but that is not the way music is normally written for wind instruments; a musician reading that score, instead of starting on a "C" for the second note and bending toward a "Bb," would start on a "Bb" and bend toward an "Ab."
There is one way to get the MuseScore playback to match what the written score says, as in my third attachment,
that is, write the second note as a "C," but then add an instrument change designating a Bb instrument (assuming the score's instrument otherwise is a C instrument) to just that note. But that is a terribly clunky workaround to use every time I want to use a Fall or a Scoop when the feature that I described above would be so slick.
In the "Bend" dialog box, the line on the grid representing the "nominal" pitch is the bottom line, so the only bend possible is to bend the pitch either from or to a pitch HIGHER than the note written in the score; there is no way to bend to a pitch lower than the written note other than this very awkward workaround. This is of course appropriate for guitar bends since it is physically impossible to "bend" a guitar string to a pitch lower that the string's normal position. But it would be useful for wind instruments. So I am simply suggesting a change to the interface so that the line representing the nominal pitch is in the middle of the grid, allowing adjustments below as well as above the nominal pitch - maybe reserve this interface for the Fall, Scoop, and Slide icons and keep the interface the way it is now for the Bend icon in order to keep things authentic for the instrument. Actually, in doing this, all of the icons for Fall, Scoop, Plop, Doit, and Slides could be reduced to just two menu items on the Palatte: one that puts the symbol before the note for Plop and Scoop and one for after the note for Doit, Fall, and slides); then when one or the other is added to a note, its appearance (whether an upward or downward curve or straight line) and play back (direction and degree of pitch change) could be specified using the Inspector.