Some percussion notes don't sound
I'm trying to figure out some percussion issues. I can get drumset sounds to play, but in this example I can't get them at the same time as "regular" percussion instrument sounds.
Puzzled!?
https://musescore.com/user/31393815/scores/8546816?share=copy_link
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| Percussion example 10.mscz | 18.04 KB |
Comments
You have entered most of the notes on the single-line staves incorrectly - they don't have MIDI pitches that go with the instruments. Did you maybe try copying and pasting notes from one staff onto another? That won't work in the way you might be expecting - it doesn't magically change the pitch into something appropriate for the other staff. it just keeps the same pitch.
In order for the timbales to actually sound anything like timbales, you need to enter to the notes actually defined for timbales, as explained in the Handbook. That is, either type the pitches using the shortcuts shown in the drum palette, or otherwise use the palette directly to enter the pitches, or select the correct MIDI pitch for the sound you want if entering via MIDI keyboard. But if you simply copy notes from one staff to another, the pitch is part of the note and you get the original pitch and hence the original sound, not the pitch/sound that you probably want for the new staff.
Luckily that's easy to fix, just select the notes on the staff and press Up or Down to "transpose" them. This will automatically coerce them to one of the pitches defined for the staff.
In reply to You have entered most of the… by Marc Sabatella
That's very helpful - thanks. I'll check this out. I may have done some staff to staff copying - though I can't be sure now - so what you are saying is that that doesn't work with percussion. I'll try your suggested fix, otherwise take more care not to do this in future.
If this happens again - how do you check? Do you cross correlate with the inspector, or is there some other way to detect this kind of MuseScore "error". Presumably it's not an error as far as MuseScore is concerned, but the human who initiates the problem may be unaware of it as it happens, so apart from not copying onto single line staves, are there any other checks or warnings which can be used to avoid this happening again?
Is this perhaps something which MuseScore could provide warnings for if it's not actually going to prevent it happening? Something for MS4 maybe. I'm not sure that I've ever seen any warnings about anything significant in MuseScore, so perhaps that's something which could be considered. The only indicators I've noticed which are fairly slight warnings are the different coloured note heads if one copies pitched instruments from one stave to another line.
In reply to That's very helpful - thanks… by dave2020X
It's not quite that copying "doesn't work" for percussion - it's that it works in a way differently than you might expect. Copy/paste preserves pitch, obviously - otherwise it wouldn't be worth much. But the way MIDI percussion works, pitch is what determines the sound. This goes back to the 1980's, it's not some obscure MuseScore quirk. So, if you have a note of a given pitch (and thus a given sound) on one staff, it remains of that same pitch (and thus that same sound) when copied to another staff. This is exactly what you want when copying between different drumsets, but might not be when copying between different single instruments. Or maybe it is - some single instruments support multiple sounds. It's not really something MuseScore should be preventing or warning about. That would be like it putting up a warning every time you pasted and there were already notes there that are going to be replaced - presumably, most of the time you paste, that is your intent, and it would extremely annoying to see dialogs telling you this. It's kind of up to the user to not shoot themselves in the foot normally by doing something they didn't intend.
But as mentioned, a simpler Up or Down coerces the pitch to something that should work better for the instrument, so it's a trivial fix if you do shoot yourself in the foot this way.
As for how to check, the obvious way is, just listen to the sound of the note. If you hear a triangle on a snare drum staff, then obviously, you entered a triangle and copied it over. So use Up or Down to fix it. If for whatever you can't hear the pitch, you can also check the status bar - only the sounds actually defined for the instrument in question will show names for the pitches, since it's the drumset that defines those names.