Tempo changes without a marking

• May 20, 2017 - 01:48

Hi,
I'm new to the forum.

I've created a new score.
I had downloaded the Temp plugin and tried to use it, but I changed my mind and deleted all its changes for a certain measure.
I don't know if that's the cause of this problem.
There was to be a ritard, then a return to tempo.
Now the measure where the tempo was supposed to return to tempo is where the entire score slows down and stays slowed down.

Is there any way to see if there's some sort of hidden tempo marking? Nothing is visible.

Thanks,
Ross

Comments

• May 20, 2017 - 02:28

Nothing I tried so far let me see a hidden tempo, but I'm not finished looking yet. You can fix the tempo by inserting a tempo mark. Set it to 88. At this point I started "play" on the last note of the previous measure and ended it before the end of that measure and then deleted the tempo. The tempo plays correctly now.

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• May 20, 2017 - 02:40

For any programmer looking at this, there is a strange tempo mark in the XML for measure 14. That's why entering and deleting a new tempo mark fixed it.

@rd4muse1 somehow when you deleted the tempo markings the last one just delete the text line without deleting the tempo change in the file. Can you reproduce this problem and explain the steps to do it on this forum?

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• May 20, 2017 - 02:52

Thanks @mike320.

When you write this:
"At this point I started "play" on the last note of the previous measure and ended it before the end of that measure and then deleted the tempo. The tempo plays correctly now."

I'm not sure what you mean by "then deleted the tempo". How was there a tempo visible to delete?

As to your question about how I created this, I don't think I can give a straightforward answer. I was hacking around a bit, trying to figure out how to alter tempo (I really wanted a ritard in measure 13 and then "a tempo" in measure 14).

I discovered the Tempo plugin and downloaded that. I futzed with it quite a few times, doing and undoing, redoing, then realized there is no "a tempo" feature in the plugin or Musescore, and decided to delete all my attempts, which left me with no visible tempo marking, but an altered tempo nonetheless.

Ross

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• May 20, 2017 - 02:57

Duh, I just figured out what you meant.

I added the tempo marking for 88 BPM on the first note of measure 14, played from the last note of the measure 13, stopped play in measure 14, then deleted the 88 BPM tempo marking.

You are right. It plays correctly now.
Thanks!

Ross

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• May 20, 2017 - 10:33

I've had a quick look, and there was indeed an invisible tempo marking still present at m14, but it also had an empty text, which is why it seemed to be not-selectable: its (in)visible display size becomes 0.

To reproduce:
1. create a new tempo marking
2. go in text edit mode on the marking
3. delete all text

I've reported this as a bug in #203346: Prevent empty text on Tempo Text

@rd4muse1: An a tempo option has been considered for inclusion in the plugin, but I'm currently not too fond on implementing it. Allow me to elaborate;
As soon as I add an A tempo some people will expect an A tempo 1 or the like; because only you know to which tempo you want to return. The tempo from just before the rit/accel.? Or the tempo from the start of that section? Or from the start of the whole score?
People will also want to change the text related to that marking (because languages and personal style).

In the end result imo, I would have to make a programming effort while for the end user, the number of actions (s)he needs to take to have the A tempo be inserted as they want would be equal to (or likely even more) than if they simply add that tempo marking using the normal built-in MuseScore command.

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• May 20, 2017 - 23:14

It was possible to create empty text elements in older versions of MuseScore, but this was changed quite some time ago - like during the beta period for 2.0 I believe - and it should no longer be possible in 2.1. Can anyone come up with more precise steps to show otherwise?

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• May 21, 2017 - 20:30

I can't. Based of what I saw in your score I made an assumption, but spoke before my time.

The odd thing about the empty element in your score (which was made with 2.1 it seems) is that it is not *technically* empty, it still contains some styling markup (<b></b>) and it is the only invisible marking in the score.

I've tried to create combination in which this style information together with invisible would leave the marking in, but upon leaving editing mode, it indeed is removed.
Resaving the score with the invisible/empty marking doesn't fix it however. So far, it remains a mistery to me as to how you've got the marking in that state.

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• May 21, 2017 - 23:13

It's possible the score was *originally* created with an older version - perhaps a beta version of 2.0 - and then saved using 2.1. Or that it was imported from some other format. Either could explain the empty text. I also seem to recall a bug in some earlier versions where some specific series of steps involving using the text toolbar and setting text to be bold or italic explicitly could then result in the tempo text remaining even after all text was removed. I believe that bug was fixed, but I can't find record of whatever it is I am remembering.

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• May 21, 2017 - 01:39

@jeetee,

I appreciate the difficulties of trying to decide "which a tempo?" And I certainly do not know the programming side of it.

My only thought off the top of my head about it, is that the "a tempo" option could take a measure number and use the BPM from that.

If no measure number is given, it defaults to the "a tempo" measure minus 2. That does assume that the change in tempo lasted only one measure. But it seems a reasonable default. Of course, some may disagree.

There may be tons of use cases you could present where the above is not practical or too klutzy to program. I don't know. Just throwing out an idea.

Thanks,
Ross

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