Chord Playback
It would be great if you could hear the chords when you play back the music you have created.
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It would be great if you could hear the chords when you play back the music you have created.
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Comments
It does that already, if enabled in Preferences → Note Entry.
Unless you are talking about Chord Symbols.
In reply to It does that already, if by Jojo-Schmitz
I would like to be able to hear guitar chords play when I place them above the notes- like G, A, Bm, etc. I looked at Preference-Note Entry but I don't understand what that means. Everything is enabled but I don't hear anything different when I playback music.
In reply to I would like to be able to by tuckertulbert
This is not supported. There are other programs that speciailize in that sort of thing - Impro-Visor being one open source example. MuseScore instead focuses on the notation itself. It's possible some day we will integrate with a program that specializes in computer-generated accompaniment.
In reply to This is not supported. There by Marc Sabatella
I see Impro-Visor can write MusicXML so it probably can read it as well. MuseScore can write MusicXML so perhaps the poster can save his score to MusicXML, then open that in Impro-Visor
In reply to This is not supported. There by Marc Sabatella
It's not only for accompaniment, it is also for prooflistening to make sure your notation including the chord symbols are right. It would be nice if this playing of chords just would be added in MuseScore (if you have to use another application for every little other feature, it becomes very annoying).
In reply to I would like to be able to by tuckertulbert
Playback of chord symbols has been requested and discussed frequently, but not yet been implemented.
See https://musescore.org/en/search/site/chord%20playback
In reply to Playback of chord symbols has by Jojo-Schmitz
That URL 404's, any idea how to find that discussion if it's still going on? Thanks, S
In reply to That URL 404's, any idea how… by ssteiner
Just type "chord Playback" into the search bar yourself - that's the above URL was trying to do anyhow.
In reply to That URL 404's, any idea how… by ssteiner
Strange, I'm sure it worked when I pasted it
In reply to Strange, I'm sure it worked… by Jojo-Schmitz
Well, there has been a slight change to the backend over these past two years: https://musescore.org/en/search/site?keys=chord+playback seems to do the trick now
In reply to Well, there has been a… by jeetee
Actually this is due to the migration to Drupal 8 in August. We will make sure the legacy search url will redirect to the new scheme.
In reply to Actually this is due to the… by Thomas
Ah, I didn't notice the age of the post
I think you would have to add the chords into an extra staff as sets of notes, rather than using the chord text notation feature. If you just have a few chords, you could copy/paste them as needed reasonably easily. Assuming block chords are sufficient and duration isn't all that important it should go fairly quickly.
The problem with implementing something like this is that you would have to write some sort of AI to generate the chords.
eg A C major chord can be played in 4 different ways on the guitar - how is MuseScore going to know which one you want? And how is it going to know which strum pattern to use?
This would add yet another layer of complexity on an already complex program, which would require maintenance alongside the other areas of the application, thus slowing development and bug fixing in other areas.
The MuseScore development team is tiny - there are only 2 full time programmers. The rest of it is made up of people who provide their expertise as and when other commitments make it possible.
Once score layout and basic playback issues have been resolved then of course it may be considered for inclusion in a future release.
In reply to The problem with implementing by ChurchOrganist
Hmm, fretboard diagrams could serve as the UI, maybe.
And for strum patterns we have rhythmic slash notation
In reply to Hmm, fretboard diagrams could by Jojo-Schmitz
Yes, but then you only get get playback if someone actually uses fret diagrams and provides strum rhythms. The vast majority of lead sheets do neither. And realistically, a somole repeating "strum rhythm" is almost never how chords are actually in many of the styles of music that use chord symbols. You need a while AI system that is "style aware" so it can voice C7 differently for folk versus funk versus jazz, and come up with appropriate rhythms for each style - also patterns appropriate for guitar versus piano versus bass versus other instruments that play from chord symbols. Plus in most styles, you'd expect to hear drums too. Getting anything remotely usable as accompaniment from chord symbols is a monumental undertaking. Given that other programs have taken this task on, why reinvent the wheel?
In reply to Yes, but then you only get by Marc Sabatella
a C7 contains the same notes in any case, a C, E, G and Bb, seems simple enough to me to just play those, all in the same octave.
Many of the voicings are available in MuseScore/share\styles/chords.xml, they are just not used anywhere in the code.
I once did create a sheet, see attached, if you find mistakes, let me know.
In reply to a C7 contains the same notes by Jojo-Schmitz
Sure it's *simple* to just play those in that order in that octave. But it's not the way music is actually played - not on not on guitar, not on piano, not on bass, etc. Naive approaches to chird playback like that sound absolutely terrible and end up being not really worth the trouble to implement. But doing it well is far from simple.
There is a reason there are entire applications out there that specialize in trying to solve these problems in realistic ways. Rather than do a terrible job of rolling our own crude and limited / naive form of playback, I'd much rather see us do a good job of integrating with a program that itself does a good job of generating realistic accompaniment.
In reply to Sure it's *simple* to just by Marc Sabatella
Just having that simple and stupid playback might be enough to give the impressenion on whether you picked the correct chord.
In reply to Just having that simple and by Jojo-Schmitz
True. So an extremely limited form that made no attempt to be realistic and didn't go to the trouble of dealing with rhythms etc could be worth the effort for that purpose alone.
In reply to True. So an extremely by Marc Sabatella
yes, not for a realistic playback, just for an audible checking option (and of course with an option to turn on and off).
If there is a chord symbol, just build the chord as per music theory and play, if there is a fretboard diagram however, we could go a step furter, then we know the exact voicing/fingering, so can make it sound correct.
In reply to a C7 contains the same notes by Jojo-Schmitz
For an audible checking option, instead of playing the canonical version of the chord, it might be better to play all of the notes of a chord over the range of the piano. Some sort of volume envelope centered on the first octave below middle C, and the tonic, would seem needed. Presumably that's what they do for those synthesized chords on digital keyboards. Sounds saccharine for sure, but for checking and testing progressions it could be best.
In reply to For an audible checking by MikeN
For the record this facility in Finale 2003 used to drive me crackers until I worked out how to turn it off!
The chords from the melody/vocal line were rendered as root position triads from the middle octave of the piano, thus clashing horribly with many passing notes or suspensions! Particularly if they were secondary 7ths, half diminished or diminished chords :(
Rather than expect the computer to do this it would be better to put some effort into aural training so you can hear what you're notating.
In reply to For the record this facility by ChurchOrganist
Here's another vote for "stupid" chord symbol playback, just to help me make sure I wrote what I meant. It would be great just to hear each chord played once in root position. Maybe one nice addition would be to allow the user to choose the playback instrument for the chords, so it wouldn't clash so much with the melody.
In reply to Here's another vote for by jondreyer
Interestingly, I came across a historical version of this feature request from a very credible source: http://dev-list.musescore.org/MuseScore-the-perfect-lead-sheet-editor-t…
In reply to The problem with implementing by ChurchOrganist
"AI" lol
@tuckertulbert is the playback of chord symbols something you would purely use as an audible verification of the just entered symbol?
There is another notation program, EasyABC which uses ABC notation and it supports playback of chords with lead lines. It is primitive but it does play the chords as expected in a very basic way.
EasyABC takes MusicXML files as input (and also has an experimental MusicXML Export feature which seems to work at least on simple charts) so you can notate in MuseScore, export to XML, then import to EaseABC and play with chords on (make sure you go to the Settings and click "Play Chords" as the default is off).
You can make changes in EasyABC using ABC notation (much more tedious than MuseScore IMHO but workable) and then you can reverse the process (export to XML from EasyABC) and import in MuseScore to see any changes you made.
It all seems to work nicely if a bit awkwardly.
Fwiw, I've done the following experiment to generate a playalong to Sonny Rollins' Tenor Madness:
1. Write down the chords in ChordTrane (http://www.chordtrane.com/)
2. Generate a MIDI file of the accompaniment
3. Import the MIDI file back into MuseScore
Here's the original tune: https://musescore.com/infojunkie/scores/2028751 and here's the playalong: https://musescore.com/infojunkie/scores/2028781
ChordTrane seems to work well enough - but it's packaged as a web app and it's written in Scala. Ideally, the core logic of the playalong generation would be re-written as a MuseScore plugin.
In reply to Fwiw, I've done the following by infojunkie
Here is chordtrane code https://github.com/larryoatmeal/ChordTrane
In reply to Fwiw, I've done the following by infojunkie
Thanks so much for the hint regarding chordtrane, what a great tool!