Accordion playback in notation software

[EuroFolker]

Hello,

I would like to use notation software to input / import accordion sheet music into a software program (I currently have Dorico Elements 5) and hear it played back correctly.

This is in order to work on the more difficult pieces / passages that I am struggling to sight-read.

However no luck with correct playback of what I entered from a paper copy. For example, slurs are ignored by Dorico (and MuseScore for that matter).

Apparently instrument specific "expression maps" are needed. I've searched on the Steinberg and other forums but I am not making any headway.

I am not stuck on using Dorico - if you have suggestions how to accomplish the above with ANY software, I'd love to hear them.

Thank you!

 

[Ventura]

generally speaking

Notation software is best at doing notation, and you CAN have
it "play" the song because underlying the score it uses MIDI
but it's superpower is that it can give your EYES music to see
however
Sequencing software is best at PLAYING notes
so after you have imported or built by hand your "Score"
you export it as a MIDI file and load it into a sequencer
where you can more easily massage and manipulate the
playback/notes to more suit ears LISTENING to music
that is where it's superpower lies as it gives you tools to
micromanage everything about a note and ways to help
you sweep such things as creschendo's quickly across
sections of a score

nowadays, the two functions are often built into one product
you just need to switch modes or windows and find the appropo
sections of the users manual

It has been many years since i explored modern options so others will
have to advise you on what software to try

 

[EuroFolker]

It just seems odd that the software will correctly attach the slur to the selected notes, but it will ignore it during playback… Major, actively developed commercial program in 2025.

 

[Ventura]

well, the development of notation software occured much
more slowly than Sequencing, as we didn't even get WYSiWYG
in our computers until much later..

we didn't even have Print Preview when people began
crafting the future of notation on computer

so while it may seem that notation software SHOULD behave
a certain way, based on modern thought, you had to be there
when they wrote the functions over a long period of time
to let them know someday waaaay in the future people would be
expecting this to work in a modern way

they were mostly working to get things to look right, period,
and figure out how a qwerty keyboard and mouse could even put stuff
on 5 lines in the right places

 

[dak]

LilyPond can do ties and slurs (are you sure you know the difference between them?) but has fairly simple rendition: the generated MIDI is mainly intended for proofhearing, not as performance material.

 

[EuroFolker]

LOL! I do know the difference, all along I meant to say “ties”. Maybe I should give up on relying on software for anything and try to reverse the apparent brain cell atrophy by using it more

As far as "proofhearing" that is the intended use - I was hoping to get some help with the Palmer Hughes Recital Books (which for whatever reason are practically non-existent on YouTube, unlike the course books covered by Yuri Char and many others) - that's still relatively simple material and I'd like to run it through the computer and hear the textbook version to avoid mistakes in my own interpretation of the scores (If and when needed, of course).

 

[dak]

LOL! I do know the difference, all along I meant to say “ties”. Maybe I should give up on relying on software for anything and try to reverse the apparent brain cell atrophy by using it more

As far as "proofhearing" that is the intended use - I was hoping to get some help with the Palmer Hughes Recital Books (which for whatever reason are practically non-existent on YouTube, unlike the course books covered by Yuri Char and many others) - that's still relatively simple material and I'd like to run it through the computer and hear the textbook version to avoid mistakes in my own interpretation of the scores (If and when needed, of course).

Ok, admittedly notation software that doesn't heed ties in its MIDI rendition is less than impressive. LilyPond did not make that kind of blunder for as long as I know it. It also needs to be able to figure out what a tie does in order to render tablature correctly. It is more understandable if notation software is not entirely impressive with things properly differentiating things like staccato, portato, leggiero, legato, tenuto. But a tie is not articulation but notation. It is not "just" boorish to ignore it but wrong.

Are you sure you entered the tie in a manner that Dorico considers being a tie?

 

[debra]

Musescore underwent an unfortunate evolution going from version 3 to 4, and playback is one of the things that changed but not completely for the better.
Musescore 3 plays ties correctly and it has a reasonable accordion sound with tremolo (and you can use a bandoneon sound for a dry accordion-like sound). But it doesn't play everything correctly. Grace notes (without strikethrough) are not played correctly. The terms crescendo and diminuendo have no meaning. The hairpins for crescendo and diminuendo only have meaning if they end with a new dynamic term (p, f, etc.). pizzicato and arco have no meaning although they are often placed in accordion sheet music. Trills that require an accidental don't work. etc
Musescore 4 does some things better. The terms crescendo and diminuendo have meaning, and ritenuto as well. The hairpins make a difference even when there is no indication what volume they should go to. But after a few changes up and down with hairpins it's anyone's guess how loud the sound gets. When you have a measure with staccato notes and a hairpin as well then often one of the notes will not stop at all and continues to play forever. Grace notes play back correctly. Ties kind-of work: If you have a note that is tied to the next measure and so on it will play continuously its entire value, but if in the first measure it has something like a trill the note will stop playing at the tie and be silent after that. Pizzicato and arco still have no meaning...
So playback kind-of works in both versions 3 and 4 but somethings that don't work in 3 do work in 4 and some things that do work in 3 no longer work in 4... Playback is good enough for a first rough impression of what the score may sound when played, but it remains a rough impression. I heard reports from different software like Lilypond, Sibelius, Finale, and they are similar: some things work in playback and others don't. My final verdict is that Music notation is intended for music notation, not for accurate playback.

 

[EuroFolker]

"
"Are you sure you entered the tie in a manner that Dorico considers being a tie?"

I feel like a COMPLETE IDIOT now! Perhaps I should have hovered over the symbols and read the tooltips!

(They look much the same, tie is just visually thicker)

I picked the tie rather than slur and it's working as intended now!

Thank you Dak!

 

[dak]

"
"Are you sure you entered the tie in a manner that Dorico considers being a tie?"

I feel like a COMPLETE IDIOT now! Perhaps I should have hovered over the symbols and read the tooltips!

(They look much the same, tie is just visually thicker)

I picked the tie rather than slur and it's working as intended now!

Thank you Dak!

That's a problem with "What You See Is All You've Got" software: you can be fooled by the visual similarity. I remember a professor of Romance Studies getting into a lawsuit with a typist who had created a Word document from her habilitation thesis and refused doing updates because, well, all cross-references in this 1000-page or something document had been entered manually, and any text changes ended up detaching and floating "footnotes" and so on. I think the professor lost the lawsuit since the document looked reasonable as long as you did not bother to change anything.

At least I am relieved because it would have really amazed me if Dorico didn't get stuff as basic as that right.

 

[PhiliGol]

Hi EuroFolker

I'm using AVID Sibelius and it does what you're seemingly looking for.
It does correct interpretation of all kind of expressions, ties, slurs and tempo modulation e.g. swing.
It comes with a full-fledged sound-lib (ca. 30GB) which does everything BUT...
accordion.

To have realistic accordion sounds (including register changes) I uses a sound lib which is played by a sampler (in my case KONTAKT) controlled by the Sibelius player. That you can have the accordion sounds in parallel to any instrument from the Sibelius lib.

 

[EuroFolker]

Hi PhiliGol,

I should add that I don't necessarily need to use the accordion sound for the playback, just something that resembles it enough.

(The thread title is "Accordion playback..." but should have been "Accordion score playback...")

 

[PhiliGol]

The "built-in" accordion sound of Sibelius' sound lib sounds more like a reed-organ.
Just one timbre no registers/stops.

Re. Slur vs. tie - yes can be sometimes hard to decide between both of them.
In Sibelius you can always display a "keypad" (a numeric keypad for easy note-entering).
If you click on a note (beat1 in bar 24) and the "Enter"-key lights up blue it's a tie - else (if a bow-line starts from the marked note) it's a slur.

I'd assume Dorico offers a similar "tool" as it's a way newer platform.

 

[Glug]

In Musescore 2 and 3 you can use a custom soundfont, but that doesn't work last time I looked with version 4.

I use Musescore 2 with a custom soundfont made by recording my Hohner Lucia, I added register support:

Thread 'MuseScore with registers'

Apr 28, 2019

Hiya,
Ive been messing about with MuseScore recently trying to get a better accordion sound and Ive found a way to implement register switches fairly easily.

Basically you can define new instruments in MuseScore and you can have different instruments for the treble and bass staves.
So a basic accordion score would use 2 instruments - one for treble and one for bass, and you use inline instrument switches to change register independently.

Ive got the treble working fine, but need to do better bass samples (need to masking tape the reed blocks).

So if anybody wants to try it and suggest...

• Glug
• Replies: 36
• Forum: Accordion Chat

• 

It works fine for score playback when learning which is exactly why I did it.