Plans for the Play Panel

[scorster]

Revamp the Play Panel for MuseScore 4

No matter how I look at MS3's Play Panel it seems roughly cobbled together. I recommend a review of the design intent of MuseScore's Play Panel before reinstating it in MS4 and addressing the current behaviors that fail to meet those criteria. Additionally, reconstruct the Play Panel into a substantive and efficient Looping tool for composers, arrangers, and particularly for practicing musicians and students.

I've posted some ideas on .org's issue tracker and forum.

If others on Github express interest I'll gladly update the v3 Issue Tracker post and consolidate points made there, combine them with addition observations and suggestions, and post the result here.

Problem to be solved

The MS3 Play Panel mainly houses instances of controls found elsewhere in the UI:

• Play/Pause • Rewind to Start • the Loop Playback toggle • a Playback Position slider—doesn't seem like a great feature, AND it doesn't work well. • Count-in click toggle • Metronome toggle • Master Volume • Metronome volume field and slider (you'd think we'd get those by double-clicking the Transport's Metronome icon, or via a right click contextual menu. And possibly the only MS3 control was in the Play Panel. Nicely MS4's mixer has a Metronome channel.)

In all, MS4's Play Panel houses only two unique features:

• Tempo Override • the flag buttons—which are essentially superfluous because the user can more reliably define the selection by performing a range selection in the score.

So really v4's Play Panel ONLY offers the Tempo Override ... at the expense of undocking the Playback from the tool bar, with the result of wasting screen real estate. (As mentioned, MS4 has Metronome volume control via a Mixer channel.)

I'd like to see the Play Panel house more transport controls, like transport locator options never yet available in MuseScore, making it worth undocking.

A new design intent specification might benefit from a review of some of the Play Panel issues and requests discussed on .org. Here's another search.

Requested enhancements: The addition of new Play Panel "Study Guide" features would aid students in practicing. It would also attract to MuseScore educators and students who wish to use such features.

Examples of existing study guide software

Transcribe (seventhstring.com) has strong looping features. I can provide a concise screencast that demonstrates

MakeMusic has made large efforts in the direction music practice, but having never used it, I can't report on its efficacy.

Study Guide Mockup

Here's a mockup of a Play Panel study guide. The example shows Measure 7 selected (and therefore looping during playback). The student can click to move to another section in the list. Or if the student selected an Automated Study Guide then the Play Panel serves up the loops as designated by the scorist or an instructor, playing them in a particular order, for a certain number of iterations, possibly with increase levels of tempo, followed by review regimes:

     

And when the tempo reaches three to four notes per second the "script" could overlay an opaque rectangle atop the looped notation, or make it otherwise not readable. This means that once the speed is sufficient to established the memorization in working (short term) memory the script requires the student to play by heart. And looping by heart at three to four notes per second produces long term memory. A system like this teaches memorization techniques, it can escort students through various approaches, and encourages students to adopt effective practice techniques due to rewards naturally and reliably garnered.

Another option: Toggle sound output every other time through the loop. This would test the players ability to maintain time, and allow them to hear their instrument "soloed."

scorster

[scorster]

Nine months later ... here's a mockup of an expanded Play Panel concept!

And I've posted an image on.org the shows a study guide concept.

     

scorster

[scorster]

Here's a related proposal for a making a tempo override field visible in the main Toolbar's Playback panel. [oMrSmith]

(https://github.com/oMrSmith)'s proposal would expose the tempo override as a combi-button ... as opposed to a real estate hungry horizontal slider. Without this users have to undock the Playback panel to override tempo.

I see oMrSmith's proposal as nicely compatible adjunct to the Practice Palette I proposed above—and hopefully a welcomed precursor!

[irwir]

There are quite a few controls for a relatively small panel space. To reduce the clutter, possibly zero values could be used to eliminate checkboxes (also less work for programmers). For example, Wait... and maybe Offset... settings.

Edit. Should it be Play and Practice in both titles - panel and this FR?

[Activebits]

This looks very promising and would be a huge help for rehearsing.

[scorster]

Is there a way I can further assist with the design?

[irwir]

One more suggestion for tempo items - remove checkbox and rephrase it as: Raise tempo by 3% after every 4 repeats

This is shorter and says this is not a one time raise. Zero raise value turns increase off.

[Activebits]

As someone who uses MuseScore mostly for practising, I am very interested in this. I don't understand the function of 'Offset all loops [backwards] by x bars' - it sounds like a count-in, but...

I think it would be very useful to be able to control whether the count-in was for the metronome, playing, or both. Like this:

If both checkboxes were ticked and the two numbers were different, the playback would start at the earliest point with music or metronome as required and then start the second one later. The UI could be simplified by using a zero entry to disable instead of a checkbox. (Although sometimes, it's convenient to toggle a checkbox rather than think about what number to enter. I think I would be happy with either option).

I don't know how difficult that would be to implement?

[scorster]

Thanks for all the feedback!

I've revised the design, with some posted comments in mind.

I think the layout is improved and now better organized.

And now the text labels make more sense. I changed Offset all loops to Shift loop flags—the make it easy to switch from looping whole measures to starting loops at a pickup note.

@Activebits, Good point about zero values substituting for checkboxes. But checkboxes allow the user to retain a "preference"—recently used value. And I think that's beneficial.

Continuing feedback welcomed!

[irwir]

Should a skilled designer take a look at the dialog layout? A few controls in the dialog are unaligned, and entry fields differ in size. Spin boxes inconsistence - one uses vertical arrows, while another - horisontal.

[scorster]

Had I used Xcode or QT for the UI design there would have been less inconsistencies, but I would have had less flexibility. So I created it with vector graphics in Affinity Designer. This is just a concept model I definitely welcome feedback from experienced designers.

See the next post for the latest revision.

[scorster]

[scorster]

Are we currently unable to replace images in posts? I've done that many time before, but in the last few days, during an edit, I don't see the "Paste, drop or click to add files" option.

Anyway here's the latest upper panel with beats bow listed as 1 (there were erroneously at 0)

[irwir]

This is noticeably tidier. Yet this desing style remids the days of squeezing a lot of controls into small dialog space. The current trend is a table-like layout and could be seen in the current Preferences or Format->Style - and other dialogs. So in MuseScore (4.3.2) this would be: Text is on the left, input field on the right. Probably, no input fields in the middle of a phrase; checkboxes and input fields use separate lines. Spin boxes use vertical arrows, not horizontal.

[scorster]

Thanks for your continuing input!

@ irwin wrote

this design style reminds the days of squeezing a lot of controls into small dialog space.

Yes the purpose is fit everything into a small panel so to allow a stay open panel that doesn't require a lot of real estate.

Spin boxes use vertical arrows, not horizontal.

The horizontal "spin" arrows on Shift Loop are not for incrementing the value. They are buttons for activating the direction of the shift: forward or backwards. Maybe not the ideal design, but you get the idea.

[scorster]

Here's the current design, with terse documentation

[scorster]

I'm just posting a slight update today. More organization and improved label editing. And the previous versions were unintentionally low-res.

Plus now there's a couple new features like:

     • Shift loop (forward or backwards) by loop length      • the option to invoke PrePlay before automatic tempo change