musescore / musescore/MuseScore

Playback of expression marks

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feature request
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C++
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Description

Your idea

I suggest implementing an appropriately interpreted playback of expression marks such as legato, staccato, espress., etc. Combined marks such as marc. e feroce, legato e espr., etc. should also be taken into account (not to mention such subtleties as molto, poco, and the like).
To do this, I suggest creating a separate palette, which will contain at least the most commonly used expression marks in practice.
Appropriately interpreted playback of expression marks should apply to both MuseSounds and MS Basic.

Problem to be solved

At the moment, the user can manually enter any expression text he wants. But this text will have no effect on the sound. And it's okay if it's an espressivo, for example. But for signs like marcato (or staccato) this is already a somewhat painful issue.

I understand that the implementation of all these things may be impossible or incomplete, since this is a rather difficult idea, but I believe that at least some of this and at least a minimum implementation is still possible. For example, the playback of marks such as marcato or staccato. At the moment, there is a workaround, which is to add and then hide the corresponding articulation. It takes time.

Here are some expression marks that I believe could be implemented first:

  • espressivo (or espress. or espr.)
  • marcato (or marc.)
  • staccato (or stac.)
  • dolce
  • legato (or leg. when combined with another mark)
  • sostenuto
  • cantabile
  • leggiero
  • rubato

Another interesting point concerns legato. At the moment, such a text exists in the palette. But 2 things are unclear:

  1. why is this text presented as a staff text and not an expression?
  2. Does this text play any role in terms of sound at all? Not in MuseSounds, not in MS Basic either. In both cases, everything is played as legato by default and without this text.

Accordingly, it can be concluded that this text is absolutely useless there. It's worth considering removing it from the palette.

Prior art

No response

Additional context

No response

Checklist
  • ✅ This request follows the guidelines for reporting issues
  • ✅ I have verified that this feature request has not been logged before, by searching the issue tracker for similar requests

Contributor guide

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First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

The issue names no files, tests, or entry points. Start by tracing how expression text, the legato palette item, and existing articulations reach MuseSounds and MS Basic playback; define a limited first set of marks and combined-mark behavior, with tests or playback checks confirming that supported marks affect sound and unsupported text remains safe.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
cpp
Domain
desktop
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Needs clarification
Newbie friendliness
20/100

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