Optimizing Playback: Piano Roll

• May 8, 2024 - 01:40

Okay. I want to start by saying musescore 4 is absolutely amazing. We users appreciate the work going on to accommodate all kinds of users, notation styles, and more. Musescore really feels like a tool to make professionally engraved scores for many different possible uses out of the box. I love it. Muse sounds is absolutely fantastic and is amazing for having a realistic idea of how things sound (that rivals VSTs) and is really an amazing free software. Thank you.

Furthermore, I really have to applaud the new 4.3 update! Getting audible changes from staff text is a wonderful addition to aid the notation process. Being that musescore is a notation program, it only makes sense to put notation first and use the improved playback to aid that process.

However, since musescore 4 was first introduced and Musesounds came about, its potential and abilities as a tool for Previews, Mock-Ups, and full audio tracks has grown and I'd like to draw a little attention to something.
Musesounds is truly amazing, but to utilize it's full capabilities, you have to basically abandon notation... which is counter intuitive... but when you think about it, it makes sense, since every performance is merely interpretation of notation.

Some references:
1 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vOY-JSkrok
-------- Perhaps some of the best playback you can get from [a score you intend to use within] musescore right now requires [by default] the score itself which may be sent or shared with others to play and a separate second score where you rewrite things so that musescore plays them properly. While that does make sense for notation, the most flexible and more obvious solution to this would be a functioning piano roll rather than a separate score.

2 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HYEGwQ-JQrA
Of course this applies to Orchestral Mock Ups as well.

So far, everything happens in the score which naturally is harder to edit than a piano roll which typically allows things to be moved and modified ultra visually with simple drags and and 'automation' relative to that in a window right under the note.

To have maximum control over VSTs, and to make customizing the output musesounds in a most convenient manner, this is necessary. I would think Musesounds could take in midi input in the same way it takes in note input. That way all these features that streamline musesounds with notation can have midi as a middle-man for that playback. The more MS4/Musesounds is developed without midi in mind, the harder I fear it will be to implement [well] later.

I know Mark McKay has been trying to get involved with having the Piano Roll in MS4 but in its early development with other issues and priorities he hasn't gotten much of a response back from the main team.
He is still working on development in [newer] previous versions. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CemYFBE_vS4

While this is quite ambitious, I would note that FL Studio has the best 'feeling' piano roll I've ever felt as far as navigation, click/drag zones and behavior, and such things go. Every note feels tangible somehow whereas in most other daws they somehow feel flat and either too accurate or note at all.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stRlgM4Lah4
The quantization / humanization tools they have are quite nice, and I'd hope musescore would eventually be able to allow for some sort of user scripting to automatically humanize/modify phrases and whatnot in ways that match the style they're going for. FL studio uses python scripting for those capabilities now... And reaper has always been very scriptable.

But I feel like cubase's midi CCs are a great example for automation
https://youtu.be/HxnDIuQiWzc?t=164
The midi event editor itself isn't great, but the behavior is has after he turns it into automation (where it can be recorded over, drawn in, or clicked on/dragged as points of a curve are wonderful

Being able to see multiple at once is also a great/ helpful feature to have and usually this happens under the notes.

With Midi 2.0 coming along as well as the wonderful development of musesounds I just wanted to bring attention to this, before it's a complete headache for VSTs to be as capable as musesounds. I don't think there's any harm in having midi as a middleman from notation to musesounds as that would also empower VSTs. Thanks. Great work.

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