harp and piatti on playback

• Nov 14, 2018 - 13:35

I have found several ways to muffle (damp, stop) the harp in notation but none of these have effect on playback. Is there a clever way to stop the sound with another tool?
Same with concert cymbals (i piatti).

Comments

• Nov 14, 2018 - 14:01

I've not found a good way to stop any ringing sound. Placing a staccato mark on a note doesn't sound right, and that's really the only tool I know of to shorten a note.

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• Nov 14, 2018 - 15:47

I understood what you mean. Using the pizzicato channel allows you to change the sound played, but the default sound, pizzicato strings, is worse than having the notes ring. The staccato will shorten the note, but I would still rather allow the note to ring than to put a staccato on a half note for example.

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• Nov 14, 2018 - 16:23

If you want the note particularly short, you can go into the pianoroll editor and manually shorten the note. That way it won't ring out. You just have to shorten it considerably (a staccato only reduces it to half length); trial and error is your best bet.

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• Nov 14, 2018 - 20:49

Thank you both.
I was not specific. I was referring to the end of a lengthy ff sostenuto where I wanted all to shut up at once, including the harp tone and the suspended cymbal roll (sorry,not piatti.)
The staccato channel helped shorten the tied eight note a bit,but not completely. (I used the + sign because I new the cross -in - circle bullseye did not work on playback).
Mike was right, too. A staccato let bare in s solo would sound pallid.

Ispil recommended the elusive piano roll editor which I'll try. Alas...The past hour's frustration has resulted in the following poem, a tongue-in-cheek rendition...

It's been recommended to me twice
My replies were quite concise:
"Thanks for the advice"

After combing through the handbook...
no dice!
Searching through the forums...
did not suffice.
Right clicking here and there...
did not entice.

Please tell me where to find it...
(That would be nice!)

 :-(

It's probably right in front of me.

Attachment Size
harp-suspcym.pdf 27.79 KB

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• Nov 17, 2018 - 01:53

Coincidentally, I was just listening to your 2 part invention ( Tweestemmige ). Nicely done!
Your harmonization workouts brought back fond memories, too.

To be sure, I am not a software oriented person. I am, rather, what folks around here presume to refer to as a "noob". Therefore, I need to read about the PRE in a handbook where I could learn to use it from scratch. My major accomplishment thus far has been my having finally FOUND the thing. When I saw it I was clueless on how to use it. I just needed to shave time of the final harp note of a piece so it would not continue to ring. I balked* because the last crash I had resulted in my having to re-score half a piece. So...
I could not possibly give anyone any feedback until I learn how to use it. (I'm going to watch the YOUTUBE presentation as well.) Still learning ver.2.3.2, I'm avoiding ver. 3 and all its new hazards which blanket the forum for now.
But I do appreciate this help and that you've given me in the past.
And I hope to see another of your compositions.

*balked: american baseball term = chickened out (if you knew, pardon me)

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• Nov 17, 2018 - 12:10

I'm glad you liked my compositions. Thanks for the kind words.

About 3.0, you can have both version 2.3.2 and the 3.0 development versions independently on your computer. They will not interfere in any way with each other. You just should take care not to save a file you created on 2.3.2 in a 3.0 build, because that will make it impossible to open the file in 2.3.2 again. You should use Save as after you open the file in 3.0 to save it under a different name. Other than that, you shouldn't have problems at all.

PS I did know the term "balked", but I didn't know that it was a baseball term. Always something new to learn ;-)

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• Jun 7, 2019 - 00:04

I have exactly the same problem with harp and cymbals. I cannot find any way to muffle out their sounds. Seemingly these are instruments which have no note-off capabilities. Somebody has mentioned a staccato channel for the harp, but I couldn't find it, the arrow above the harp strip in the mixer is simply grayed out and doesn't enable any internal channels, as is the case for string instruments.
The piano roll doesn't seem to be a solution either, since the duration is correct but the patch simply doesn't react to note-off messages. I even tried to insert a fake note with the same pitch and zero user velocity (to be made invisible and replaced visually with a rest from an auxiliary voice), but it seems that the first note's slow decay is unaffected by the onset of the new one (it should, as it does in a real instrument).
I think this issue could be easily solved, at least as a workaround, if a second harp patch were added which would be just the same sound with a release and responsiveness to note-off MIDI messages. Then just an instrument change text would suffice. A more complete solution would be if this patch were included as an internal channel so that the change instrument text were readily available form the palette as custom symbols for harp or cymbals.

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• Jun 7, 2019 - 23:30

If the template is going to be fixed, there are also other areas for improvement. for instance to add a template for an orchestra with three woodwinds of each class, and probably more percussion. It is simpler to delete an instrument than to add it in the right place. The template could also have a page with the list of instruments. For large orchestra scores it would be useful as well that the space could be automatically scaled to fit the chosen page size.

However, these are suggestions, but not as necessary as harp and cymbals channels responsive to note-off messages. And probably there are other instruments, like tam-tam or bells that would require the same kind of patch.

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• Jun 7, 2019 - 23:51

There are problems with this. First, you can't keep text in a template, so the idea of an instrument list isn't possible in a template.

The Harp & cymbals being responsive to note-off messages is related to the synthesizer more than the sound font.

I'm not opposed to a template with 3 instruments for each woodwind and more percussion, but from what I've seen, most conductor's scores for these pieces usually have 2 instruments on one staff and 1 on the other.

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• Jun 9, 2019 - 22:25

I believe that is the default if you don't enter a title into the new score wizard. I believe if you create a custom template, "Symphony Orchestra" will be replaced with the name of the .mscz or .mscx file.

So what I think is that MuseScore provides this info from the program, not the template per se.

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• Jun 8, 2019 - 05:14

Another improvement to the template would be that the string instruments were actually the "plural" versions, I mean, the orchestral rather than the solo sounds (e.g., violins instead of violin).
I feel that this discussion doesn't belong any longer to this topic, does it?
Should i present these improvements as a suggestion in the issue tracker?

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