Articulation playback & soundfont good for chamber music
How good is MuseScore's implementation of articulation playback (notes without articulation marks vs. slurs, staccato, accents, etc.)? Can this be easily achieved? (I remember using a trick in Sib where I set legato duration to 110% of note value, and it worked reasonably well).
I've worked with sound fonts before, so I'm aware of their general pluses and minuses. Can any of you recommend one or more sound fonts that sound reasonably good for chamber music (piano, strings and woodwind), songs and choral pieces). I've got 8 gigs of RAM on my PC (Win7), so I probably can use one of the bigger, better ones. My goal is "reasonable facsimile thereof," not to fool anyone into thinking it is a real live performance.
I plan to try "Sonatina" as recommended in the Handbook. But since my needs are more towards chamber music rather than John Williams/Richard Strauss orchestrations, I want to dig a little deeper.
Thanks!
--Peter
Comments
MuseScore does only rudimentary playback of slurs - it slightly lengthens the note. It won;t fool anyone into thinking the note wasn't tongued or bowed. But staccato and accents and a few other markings play back as well as Finale or Sibelius. Still, because of the slur issue, also maybe some things with crescendo on a single note or gradual tempo changes, I'd say that if maximally human-like playback is extremely important to you, that's probably one of the main reasons to stick with Sibelius I guess. Although frankly I like the default soudnfont in MuseScore quite a bit better than the default soudns in Sibelius, so except for people willing to spend a lot of time/effort/money on the problem, realistically, playback may still sound better overall in MuseScore (at least it does to me).
Sonatina is indeed not ideal for chamber music - missing too many solo instrument sounds. There really aren't any soundfonts I think are enough better than the default to be worth the effort, but I haven't explored commercial options - only free ones. That said, there are definitely some good sounds to be found in Timbres of Heaven, even if other sounds are only so-so.