Opening Pause (caesura?)
I have just learned that caesuras can not open a score, as they cannot be placed before a note/rest, only after. Really, an opening pause is much more plausible than an ending pause, so maybe caesuras should always appear before the note they are attached to? Unfortunately that sounds like a change that no one will want to make because of backwards compatibility. Then again, this is 3.0 in alpha, and now is the time to make any such change.
If not that, then I need another way to do this. The purpose is to synchronize a score to a video that has a non-musical opening. Right now I have to calculate a tempo for a dummy first measure. That stinks, and to keep doing it I need tempos to have more decimal precision, as it's currently set at only 1 decimal place for tempos.
Does anyone have an idea of how this might work in terms of the user interface, assuming that I cannot use caesuras? Or do the powers that be at MuseScore see the light and I can submit an issue to move caesuras to before the note/rest, not after? Again, a pause at the end of a score makes no sense at all. To pause before starting because of synchronization to video, or a dance performance or whatever, makes sense.
Comments
You can attach a caesura to a rest, so you can set the tempo to 60 bpm and create a 1/4 rest pickup measure to create a 1 second pause. If you prefer the default 120 bpm then it would be a 1/2 second pause. You can then enter a caesura to make this pause what you want to the nearest 10th of a second.
In reply to You can attach a caesura to… by mike320
So you're combining the two approaches, dummy tempo/measure and caesura. It's a decent workaround. It's really best done as a pickup measure, a full measure. If you've got an odd time signature there are further calculations to be done, or you must set the pickup measure to 4/4.
In reply to So you're combining the two… by sideways
First, I would only use a one note pickup measure for this all of the time. If you set the tempo to 60 or 120 bpm (in the inspector), then a 1/4 rest will still have the same duration regardless of the time signature. You will only have to use additional math if the time signature is something like 3/16 (less than 1/4), but the math for a note with half the duration isn't bad. An 8th rest takes half the time of a 1/4 rest and so on.
In the US there is an acronym used - KISS - Keep It Simple Stupid. It's not meant to be offensive, just a reminder to not make it more complicated than it needs to be. This workaround makes the math very simple all the time.
In reply to First, I would only use a… by mike320
Yes, I'm big on simplicity. That's why I'm trying to find a way to make this a feature, not a workaround. The one-note pickup measure is a good idea, but it's still clumsy to combine two elements to make one pause. And I'm still stuck with a tempo change after the first measure, though I suppose I can hide that and include system text to indicate the full pause duration instead. Visually it should be OK, but it's actually more steps and elements that I was using before. The math doesn't bother me too much, I have Excel for that.
To be clear: I am talking about the extra step of the caesura, not the one-note pickup bar.
In reply to Yes, I'm big on simplicity. … by sideways
If you want a conductor to see the pause amount in the score it takes text to show this anyway. Caesuras in music are always at the end of a note not the beginning of a measure. To change this behavior is not a nice thing to do to people who expect it to work a certain way. Since you are willing to contribute code, perhaps you can add a "Pause before" that has the precision you want. Just do something that makes the pause look different than a standard caesura so it will be easier to diagnose when people complain that it doesn't work right. Perhaps you could put a default text centered on it that says "Pause" or something that would be useful to you.
In reply to If you want a conductor to… by mike320
OK, I'm not used to scoring for winds, so I fully accept your definitions. It really is more of a "wait" than a pause. That's how I distinguish the two in a javascript animation library I just completed. Wait only applies to a delayed start time. Pauses happen after you have started. For now I'm probably going to stick to my current workaround, as I have it in place, including the spreadsheet to do the tempo calculations. I have too much else going on to peek into a whole new part of MuseScore that I've never examined internally before. I've got too many coding chores as it is. I appreciate the advice and clarifications. The simpler math workaround would have been of interest prior to my setting up the tempo calculations in Excel. Unfortunately, this is the main place I need non-musical time, at the start. It's the nature of video to have titles, etc.
In reply to OK, I'm not used to scoring… by sideways
Also note that in my case there is no conductor. That's not my audience for the score. My conductor is javascript code in a browser window. Or you could extend the paradigm to other types of external synchronization. But communicating to a human conductor through his or her eyes is not a problem I face with these particular scores.
In reply to Also note that in my case… by sideways
You had mentioned indicating the amount of pause used as a visual. I interpreted this to mean you wanted textual feedback on the score. If I misunderstood, then that's fine. I'm just sitting here brainstorming with you to come up with a good solution.
In reply to You had mentioned indicating… by mike320
Yea, I was hoping that I could switch from a tempo change to a caesura. Not happening. Currently I display the calculated tempo for that one bar. It makes sense to me because that's what I'm doing in the score itself, changing tempos, with a full pickup bar. I could switch the visuals - I was hoping to do that as part of switching the underlying mechanism too. Now I may just leave it the same for transparency.
In reply to Yea, I was hoping that I… by sideways
https://musescore.org/en/node/263040
That's the original post, from a year ago, where I learned about the caesura feature. It took me a year to try it!
Now that I cannot use it as anticipated, I am wondering about my original idea again. That idea is to allow duration to be entered instead of tempo for a selected group of note(s)/measure(s), or maybe just for one note or one measure. Duration would be in HH:MM:SS.mmm or frames in a pre-specified frames per second (fps). Those are the two I can think of off the top of my head. There is a surprisingly long list of preset frame rates for video too.
I think that's more general purpose than adding a new "wait" feature. Including frames per second (fps) might help with sync to video in a general way. Adding the preset frame rates could be a useful convenience for that. Tempos are already translated into time and ticks, so this is more of a display/conversion project than the addition of a whole new non-mainstream feature. I'm not in a hurry to do this, but I'll keep it in the back of my mind over the next while. If I'm coding anything around timing and tempo maps I'll dig into it at that time. I am familiar with some of that code already.
Not sure why you would say an opening pause would be more common than an ending pause; my experience is the opposite. I've literally never seen one at the beginning of a piece., but at the end of a movement within a work is not uncommon at all.
Anyhow, if the goal is to synchonize with a video, surely the better approach is not to start the playback until the appropriate point in the video? Depending on how you are going about things, I could see using JACK or OSC.
In reply to Not sure why you would say… by Marc Sabatella
This is not about synchronizing with video inside MuseScore, it's about sync outside of MuseScore, in exported scores. I need the timing information to be correct, and the score to look like it has a pause at the beginning.
The score begins when the video begins.
In reply to This is not about… by sideways
I'm not following what you mean about "outside of MuseScore" or "in exported scores". Are you saying some program other than MuseScore will be playing back the score? If so, I'd simply make the same suggestion for using JACK or OSC to communicate with that other program.
If that's not what you mean, it might help if you stepped and explained more about the big picture here - what programs are involved, what the use model is, etc. Chances are there is a better and less hacky method of addressing this.
In reply to I'm not following what you… by Marc Sabatella
https://musescore.org/en/node/263040
That is the original topic posted a year ago, and on which you contributed. I am exporting SVG versions of scores and animating them in javascript. Inside the browser I sync up everything, video, animations, audio. The beginning of the score is the start of the video because videos always have intros of some sort.
I use MIDI ticks and the tempomaps and all that to generate timing information.
In this case there really is no more discussion. I understand what MuseScore can and cannot do, and I'm left with two workaround possibilities. I already had one of them in place, so I'm sticking with it for now.
...until I get some time to write a new feature for duration instead of tempo, which is the UI I need for this. But I'll start a new forum topic if/when that development ever happens.
In reply to https://musescore.org/en… by sideways
I had hoped that caesuras would let me eliminate the goofy, calculated tempo changes, and my need for two decimal places in the tempo values. But no joy there because they can't be before the first note/rest, and they don't really replace the notes they are attached to, which is really what I need, from a visual sheet music perspective.
IMO, a pickup bar of some sort that indicates the duration of the non-musical introduction is the ideal sheet music paradigm. I am doing that now with goofy, calculated tempos at 1/100th of a bpm precision. That precision is one of my next PRs, as it is a one minute change and unlikely to be rejected.
I need this intro to be part of the score timing info, or I need to create a whole new feature and write some code.