Play on Selected Passes (e.g., 1, 2, and 4)

• Mar 24, 2019 - 15:15

I'd like to add my voice to those (numerous) others who have requested a "Play on Repeat" type feature. Among the things I write are many songs. It's just horribly common to have something like this: a solo vocal on the first pass of a verse; on the second pass, the same vocal + a harmony; on the third pass, an instrumental solo; and then on the fourth pass, a repeat of the version with the two vocal lines. The piano, guitar, bass, and percussion accompaniments are the same for each pass.

The sheet music needs to be as compact as possible so that page turns are minimized for the musicians, and I also very much wish, for reasons of score maintenance, to avoid duplicating sections of score. What I need is the ability to specify, for each staff, on exactly which passes it should be heard. The count should cover repeats triggered by a D.S. as well as those triggered by an "End Repeat" barline.

I know I can achieve the playback I want by shipping the score out to another program via midi and then tinkering; or by copying and pasting within Musescore; but all such methods involving duplication (as opposed to reuse) of material are exactly as productive of errors in musical scores as they are in software. Invariably, one copy of the material in any clone-and-modify scheme ends up evolving to be out of phase with another, and then you have a real mess on your hands.

Currently the best solution within Musescore is simply to accept incorrect playback -- with all parts playing every time. This, IMO, is a poor solution. Scores are complex, and it's difficult to gain confidence that a given one is correct until it both looks right and sounds right at the same time.

Many thanks to all you developers for your stupendous work!

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