Alto saxophone note "A" often doesn't play correctly or at all.

[RexDjere]

Issue type

General playback bug

Bug description

I'm writing a book of alto saxophone etudes, and I noticed a very frustrating bug. Often, after I play back an etude after writing it, the note A (in the middle of the alto saxophones treble clef) and the A an octave above it do not play correctly. This happens for all variations of A: A, A# and Ab. It seems completely random: sometimes it happens, other times not. Sometimes the higher octave A will sound one octave lower. Sometimes, the middle of the treble clef A won't sound at all. Sometimes the bug appears when you transcribe a score that didn't have the bug to a new key. For example, I transposed an etude from Eb major to F major. In the Eb etude, all of the As played fine. When I transposed it up a step, almost all of the As did not play correctly. I used to try to go through and fix all of the As manually, but this consumes a tremendous amount of time, so I'm going to leave them as is for now, and hope that a MuseScore fix fixes the issue in the future.

Steps to reproduce

1. Create an alto saxophone score in MuseScore that has the note A, A# or Ab.
2. If you do this enough times, you'll find that, randomly, some note As do not play properly.
3. I have observed this many many times in MuseScore 4.0.2.
4. I don't believe that this happened in MuseScore 3.x.

Screenshots/Screen recordings

No response

MuseScore Version

4.02

Regression

Choose option...

Operating system

Pop!OS latest version.

Additional context

No response

[MarcSabatella]

Please ZIP and attach the specific score with the problem, and say which specific notes (which measure) have the issue.

[zacjansheski]

@sammik I think this is the same as #18473

This is reproducible by putting a sharp key sig that switches to flats (I'll share a video in a minute)

[zacjansheski]

2023-07-07.15-07-53.mp4

[zacjansheski]

@RexDjere, Could you confirm that this is the same as #18473
?
Then we will close this and refer to that issue for all transposing instruments.

[RexDjere]

@sammik and @zacjansheski: I don't think that it's exactly the same issue because I've experienced it in many different keys signatures, and it's always on the notes A, A# or Ab, in the treble clef, or one octave above. I'll post a few example files in a second.

[RexDjere]

I wrote this etude (Etude 234) today, and this was one of the worst cases I've ever seen: almost every Ab/A in the piece didn't play correctly (actually, I created it by transposing Etude 233 up a whole step). Etude 233 is here: https://musescore.com/user/18100066/scores/11392117
Etude 234 (the one with the issues) is here: https://musescore.com/user/18100066/scores/11392129

In Etude 234 I went in and manually fixed most of the problem Abs/As. How I manually fix? Select the note, use up arrow to raise it a half step, and then down arrow back down a half step. Before this, clicking on the note, it's doesn't play. After doing this, the note plays when I click on it. Here is a link to Etude 234: https://musescore.com/user/18100066/scores/11392129
In Etude 234, the Ab in the last measure of line 1 (measure 4), doesn't not play at all when I play the etude in Musescore 4.02. On MuseScore.com, it seems to play the note, but it doesn't sound right (an octave too low??). In measure 17, the Ab5 (the 3rd of 5 notes in the measure) plays an octave too low in MuseScore 4.02. It sounds like it plays 2 octaves too low??? on MuseScore.com, but I'm not 100% sure: it's definitely doesn't sound right.

If you listen to the entirely of Etude 234 on Musescore.com, you'll hear that there are still several Ab errors, they really stand out audibly.

I write 3 etudes every day, and this issue seems to occur in more than half of the etudes at least once. If I went in and manually fixed it every time it occurs, it would waste a tremendous amount of my time. I used to fix it every time it occurred, but I've stopped so that I can get this etudes book out in a timely manner. Fixing this bug would be GREATLY GREATLY appreciated. Thank you in advance!!!!

[zacjansheski]

We will work on resolving ASAP

While we work on that, if you need to fix immediately, you can select all and press up and down to reset the notes.

video1212650610.mp4

[RexDjere]

@zacjansheski Thank you so much!!! I'm hoping to finish the book by this Fall and to publish it on Amazon.com. The music community will probably help me to fix all broken notes in etudes, if need be. I eventually plan to publish all 500 etudes on GitHub so that anyone can fix problems, and submit pull requests. If MuseScore eventually fixes the problems automatically, that would be awesome!!!

[RexDjere]

@zacjansheski I just watched the video that you posted. Thank you so much!!! I'm going to go through every etude I've written, and fix them if needed using the method that you demonstrated.