How do I offset an instrument just a bit, so it plays a few milliseconds after another instrument ( gives reality to the musicians)??

• Mar 17, 2025 - 16:35

Hi all: I have never used offsets before. Maybe it is time. I am adapting a new song to Musescore 3.62, and the flute is playing a hairs-breath after the singer. Can I offset the flute just a tiny bit to the right for a run of measures to mimic the musicians in the orchestra? If so, how? Thanks in advance

Frank


Comments

I would be thrilled on the day MuseScore 4 gets the options:

    • to delay a "track" (in milliseconds)
    • to prelay a "track" (in milliseconds)

Use cases

1) As in your situation, sometimes note onset in a library is too soon or too late. Depending on the library there may be a push/pull setting (for instance, I frequently see that option in Kontakt libraries.) In the absence of that—AND in addition to that—we'd greatly benefit from +/- ms options via a Mixer plugin.

2) To my ear there's little realism in all instruments playing at precisely the same time. Setting a temporal spread between instruments will make score playback lighter and clearer. Everything all at once is mud.

Whenever a DAW project sounds heavy I set:

    • the melody front most
    • then I delay any harmony
    • I further delay the chords
    • I further delay the bass
    • And generally, I set the percussion the furthest back

Works like a charm!

scorster

In reply to by scorster

So if I understand both your comments, Musescore's virtual player has no way to delay a track by a few milliseconds to mimic the true sound of live musicians? If so, that really is a bummer. Surely there must be a way! I am totally not familiar with DAW's and honestly don't want to get into them, even though they can delay tracks if you know how to play with them. There really is no work-through or plugin in Musescore? Ugh! Does Polyphone enable me to do so someway? (it is able to open a. .sf2 file and play with it). Is there perhaps a plugin I can use in Musescore?

In reply to by fsgregs

Two things come to mind:

  1. Any real player who played behind the beat for an entire song, even by a few milliseconds, would not have a job very long. It is the goal of every real musician to play correctly, in sync with all the other players, all the time. Sometimes there may be problems. But not for an entire piece. There are other ways.

  2. Listen to recordings of professional musicians. Then listen to a recording of an Elementary School band. Bless their hearts, the school band does all the things that over the years I've heard people say they wish they could get software to do. They may not be on the beat, or quite in tune, and much more, No thanks.

I've used three different VSTs that were supposed to be professional grade. They are all boring, and lifeless. Not much better than Basic sounds. If you guys use any of them, I'm not surprised you want to liven thing up.

Some more things come to mind.
For heaven's sake, pan your scores. This is critical. And use lots of dynamic and tempo changes. Subtle, of course.
I find Muse sounds much more "realistic". Far from perfect. But much more expressive.

In reply to by bobjp

Re 1. My thoughts exactly – but as a solo guitar player I have no experience of playing with others in a group. I did experiment with random offsets to note start times, (via a plugin), to see if it would 'humanise' the playback. It didn't: it sounded like a beginner in an Elementary School band! Humanisation actually took me a lot more manual effort in my scores, involving deliberate rubato and dynamic changes based on careful listening to different performances of the pieces.

I've been to a few classical concerts and witnessed quite a spread of violins, so maybe having several violins in a score and, as you say, panning them would help. Could there be enough front-to-back distance in the violin section that there would be a noticeable time difference, (e.g. milliseconds), in the audience hearing them?

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