Getting notes to play quieter

• Aug 19, 2017 - 15:54

Is there any way to get notes to play half as loud with voice? I need it to be as loud as humming.

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• Aug 19, 2017 - 16:04

It would be easier to explain exactly if we saw the score, but the general answer is to change the value of each dynamic type (p, mf, ff...) you want changed. The easiest way to do this is to, for each dynamic, right click one dynamic the chose select > more.... from the context menu. In the dialog check same "subtype" and "same staff" (and click OK). In the inspector (open with F8 if not already opened), change the velocity to 1/2 of its value. You can only use whole numbers so for p (default is 49) you will need to enter either 24 or 25 and so forth.

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• Aug 19, 2017 - 19:07

It sounds like you have multiple voices on a single staff that you want to make quieter, but not all of the voices. I would separate them out to different staves to make it easier to have proper playback and performance by humans. You can annotate the music for a singer/musician to understand who does what on you score, but sight reading it would probably be difficult.

Having said that, if you keep you voices on one staff, then you will need to select section of music at a time and apply velocities to each voice. There are a few things I would do. First I would apply the dynamic with the fewest changes to that section of music and use staff text for the other voices. When you use staff text, you can press F2 while entering the text, select the Musical Symbols tab and then select dynamics. This will allow you to enter a dynamic symbol without affecting playback. As with all text, you can move it where you want on the score and add additional text to it if necessary to clarify who it applies to. You will then need to select the group of notes that you want this to apply to. You can limit the voices by using the selection filter (open it with F6) and leave checked only the voices you want to edit. In the Inspector you will need to click the notes button and change the velocity to the correct dynamic for those notes. There are other ways to select the specific notes, but this is the best and quickest generic way to select multiple notes in some voices.

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• Aug 20, 2017 - 01:21

I'm guessing there are some dynamic changes in the score, like from p to mf or something like that. Suppose you want the blue notes to be quieter in a section marked p. I would start by opening the inspector (F8 if not already open). Click the dynamic if you don't know what its velocity is. If you click p you will see the velocity (think of it as how loud it is) is 49, other dynamics have different velocities. You want to set all of the notes' velocities for a p dynamic to 24, which is about 1/2 of 49. Click the first note with the p dynamic, then move to the last note before the next dynamic on the same staff and press shift while you click that note. You will notice that all of the notes in these measures are selected. You now need to tell MuseScore you only want to change some of the notes. Open the selection filter (press F6 if it's not open yet) and make voice 1 not checked. You will see that only the green (voice 2) notes are selected now. In the inspector there is a button that says notes. Press that button so only notes are selected. You will now see that velocity is set to 0. Change this number to the dynamic level you want these notes to sound. In my example of p you would want to make the number 24. You will then need to do something similar with each of the remaining dynamics in your score. If the entire voice stays at the same dynamic, then you only need to select the entire staff rather than some of the measures and adjust the velocity as described above.

Hopefully this is clearer, feel free to ask more questions.

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