[playback] Half pedal instead of 100% down; pedal MIDI value; CC 64
About piano pedaling.
It would be nice to have an half-pedal option: full pedal down (default) sounds really bad; in fact IRL the performer mostly uses half-pedaling or less.
Without going too far in realism, it would be enough to choose between half or full pedal.
This will avoid muddled sound in playback.
Even better if you can manually type a specific MIDI CC value.
It could be implemented in various ways; for example, you select a pedal line and in the object inspector you can choose between full and half or you can input the MIDI CC value manually.
Further options could be setting a personal default value, etc.
Comments
Hmm, I don't know that it's accurate to say full pedal is never used. Might be a stylistic difference, I guess, but as a professional pianist, I use it very often, not that I don't *also* use half-pedal. I certainly wouldn't say it sounds "very bad", although I suppose some particular synthesizer might have a bad *implementation* of it. But I suspect full pedal is supported by far more synthesizers.
Anyhow, an option to specify half-opedal to be used by whatever subset of synthesizers support it would indeed be nice.
In reply to Hmm, I don't know that it's by Marc Sabatella
I'm surprised that the opportunity was not taken here to point out that MuseScore's primary purpose is notation, with playback being a secondary consideration.
Still, I haven't found any issue personally with the piano pedal function in MuseScore being implemented as 'on' or 'off' - i.e., full pedal or no pedal. I think there are two reasons for that: (1) IIRC, there was *no* pedal available in playback at all in version 1.3; and (2) the first generation of digital pianos had a simulated damper pedal that functioned in exactly the same way - on or off, with no in-betweens to emulate the varying degrees of damper raising and lowering that are possible on an acoustic grand piano.
I haven't heard any blurring other than where I would expect it. If I hear blurring during playback, it's in a spot where a change of pedal should have been entered in the score - just like I would experience on my acoustic grand. In fact, I've found that MuseScore's pedal lines can be quite accurate predictors of where pedal changes in actual performance will be desirable in addition to where they will be mandatory.
All that said, it would be *nice* if gradients of pedal - certainly half-pedal, at least - could be implemented. Most experienced pianists will reflexively apply partial pedal - and likewise partial release - when we're playing a good acoustic piano. But that was never my experience in the digital world, as I wrote. I am still using my first digital - a Korg DP3000c that I bought back around 1987 - because it still works fine for my limited purposes of occasional silent practice with headphones and occasional input into MuseScore via MIDI.
In truth, I'm not even aware of the changes in digital piano technology over the past 30 years to support values for partial pedaling in addition to the most basic functionality: ON or OFF.
In reply to I'm surprised that the by [DELETED] 448831
Actually, pedal does playback in 1.3.
In reply to Actually, pedal does playback by chen lung
I had no idea. I've used Trunk builds leading toward 2.0 for so long that I either never noticed that or I forgot about it.
In reply to I'm surprised that the by [DELETED] 448831
>I'm surprised that the opportunity was not taken here to point out that MuseScore's primary purpose is notation, with playback being a secondary consideration.
I guess everyone got it as of now. I've written "[playback]" in the feature title so everyone that doesn't care about playback can ignore the discussion in the first place.
In reply to >I'm surprised that the by 255
If you seriously guessed that 'everyone got it as of now', you would be incorrect. It's a misapprehension that comes up all the time.
And, by the way, interest in playback is not a binary Yes or No (Care/Don't Care). Many (or perhaps most) of us care about it very much, but it also suits us just fine that MuseScore's primary mission is beautiful engraving.
In reply to Hmm, I don't know that it's by Marc Sabatella
I never said it's never used. I said the most used is half-pedal and less.
And no, it's not about bad implementation by synthesizers. If you use any VST with Jack, it's even worse, because CC value at 127 (full pedal down) makes all the notes last till the end of the measure, and this, in a good piano VST means quite a muddled sound, which can be what you want in some cases but not in others. If you are a professional you know that having the notes lasting in their "full sound" till the end of the measure is rarely wanted: certainly the damper pedal is sometimes used for this purpose, but most of the time it's used to just give a legato feeling, to change the color, and to "activate" the sympathetic resonance of the string. For this, just a bit of pedal (not even half of it) is enough. Anyway, every piano is different, so half-pedal on a piano could mean hearing no difference at all or already having a muddled sound. But VSTs in general consider a middle value (~63) to have quite an effect (the note lasts quite more).
Aside from the details, I appreciate that you think the option could be useful.
In reply to I never said it's never used. by 255
In order for a synth to understand values of controller 64 other than 0 and 127, it has to be programmed that way.
IIRC a lot (particularly digital pianos) now use CC#64 = 64 (0-64 = off 65-127 = on) as the change point but this is by no means universal.
There is no current information about CC#64 interpretation for Fluidsynth, so we have to assume that it recognises 0 for off and 1-127 as on.
Consequently sending values to it other than 0 or 127 is liable to cause a string of endless notes, finally resulting in crashing the synth due to polyphony overflow (not hard with FluidSynth IME).
Implementations such as you are talking about, are in fact very desirable, but they certainly won't be present in the forthcoming 2.0, as we have to work out how to implement this in such a way that VST users can configure MuseScore appropriately, whilst still ensuring deafualt playback is not affected.
I would certainly support the implementation of this feature at some future point, however.
In reply to In order for a synth to by ChurchOrganist
Nice to know.
I had this feature request with a good VST + Jack in mind anyway.
In reply to Nice to know. I had this by 255
I had no idea sustain pedalling could be graduated in this way! As already stated, digital pianos (which are obviously much better than acoustic :-) ) are completely binary in this regard, the core of the foot switch being a hermetically sealed, magnetically displaced rhodium / gold contact... It doesn't get much more binary than that!
Still surprised that a clunky great foot can precisely graduate the pressure of 88 felt hammers in a 'real' piano in the real world, given the hammers are all out of sync, differently worn, wood variously deformed by moisture etc, etc. Faced with such a dilemma I would still favour a binary approach, depressing the pedal throughout for any piece (as per Beethoven's original instructions for the Moonlight Sonata)... This can become somewhat dissonant, admittedly, but the advantage is that the sound is all echoey and full, *all* the time :-) Luv+hugz, RB