Modifiers

Musink pays attention to marks and text when playing back or exporting a score to MIDI. Alternatively, you can use MIDI marks to directly insert MIDI instructions into your project.

  • Ties combine notes' durations when they tie notes of the same pitch.
  • Staccato and Snap Pizzicato marks will moderately shorten a notes' duration.
  • Staccatissimo marks will strongly shorten a note's duration.

Noteheads and marks affect which sounds percussion staves create. For a look up of all combinations, see Tips for Percussionists.

In MIDI, velocity refers to how hard a note is played, whereas volume refers to how loud a note is. Velocity affects both the volume and timbre of a note. For example, a guitar strummed strongly sounds different to a guitar played softly but amplified to the same volume. To best simulate an actual performance, Musink sets the velocity, rather than volume, of individual notes. You can consider the terms Dynamics and Velocities to be more-or-less interchangeable here.

To calculate velocity, Musink takes into account marks, such as accents, as well as text, and crescendos. Musink supports the General MIDI velocity standard range (0 to 127). If you wish to alter the velocity, but not have a mark appear in the published score, you can exclude the mark from publishing.

To create dynamics using text:

  1. Create a text mark. It does not matter which type of text mark you choose.
  2. Double-click the text mark to edit it
  3. Change the text to one of the expressions listed below
  4. Click away from the text mark to deselect it

You can specify dynamics (velocity) by creating a text mark that contains one of the following expressions:

Expression Velocity
ppp Minimum
pianissimo Very Quiet
pp Very Quiet
piano Quiet
p Quiet
mezzo piano Moderately Quiet
mezzo-piano Moderately Quiet
mezzopiano Moderately Quiet
mp Moderately Quiet
mezzo forte Moderately Loud
mezzo-forte Moderately Loud
mezzoforte Moderately Loud
mf Moderately Loud
forte Loud
f Loud
fortissimo Very Loud
ff Very Loud
fff Maximum

Accents and Marcatos increase the velocity of their notes.

Crescendos and Decrescendos allow a gradual change in velocity. To use a crescendo:

  1. Create a crescendo mark
  2. Set its text on the left to the velocity you wish to start at (e.g. “forte”) (Optional)
  3. Set its text on the right to the velocity you wish to end at (Required)

Musink sends sustain pedal (Hold Pedal 1; Controller Type 64) messages when it comes across Pedal Up and Pedal Down marks. To add these marks, see Standalone Marks. This functionality was introduced in Musink version 1.1.0.1.

The tempo of your score can be set using text marks. See Tempo.