Changing instrument sound mid score – success and failure

• Mar 27, 2019 - 20:16

OS: Windows 10 (10.0), Arch.: x86_64, MuseScore version (64-bit): 3.0.5.5992, revision: 58dd23d

Hi all
Using the mixer I have the guitar part playing palm muted notes. A few bars later I wanted to change the guitar sound. This I did successfully as I’d not done it before. BUT I wanted and couldn’t get the distorted guitar sound (that was also in the mixer). The only guitar sound offered was “electric guitar” from the usual instruments list. my failure.
Later in the composition I wanted to go back to the palm muted sound but again couldn’t find a way of doing it. Is this even possible?


Comments

Not sure how you made the change - again, we can always offer far better help and far more quickly if you attach your score. My guess is you added instrument text from the palette then right-clicked it and used "Change Instrument". But, you're not really wanting to change instruments (like from guitar to flute) - you just want to change sounds for the instrument you already have. Electric Guitar already comes preconfigured with several different sub-channels - click the arrow at the top of the channel strip for the instrument to see them. What you need to do is add a regular staff text instead of an instrument change, then right-click and use Staff Text Properties to change the channel to "distortion".

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

Hi again Marc just passed midnight and back from rehearsal.
I have added staff text,
right clicked and then clicked Stave Text Properties. That leads me to the pop-up that I don't understand as there are no instruments at all...see attached .jpeg
I'm hazarding a guess that maybe I'm supposed to change a channel but as to what to do after that, I'm afraid I'm at a loss.

Attachment Size
MScore changing guitar sound 02.jpg 37.51 KB

In reply to by onscuba

Click voice 1, then click the dropdown that currently says "normal". If that doesn't work, once more, *please attach your score. We waste much time guessing at problems when we can only work from verbal descriptions and pictures. Things go much faster for all of us if we have an actual score.

In reply to by onscuba

As I wrote before, "Click voice 1, then click the dropdown that currently says "normal"" (emphasis added).

Except, it doesn't work on this score, either because it was started in a version of MuseScorew that didn't yet support multiple channels for guitar out of the box, or was started using a template that was created in such a version (and I can see now that the Jazz Combo and Jazz Big Band templates fall into this category). So thanks for attaching the score, it saved us all a lot of time and guesswork!

Easy to fix though., first right-click the guitar staff, Staff/Part Properties, Change Instrument, and re-select Electric Guitar. Now you can go back to Staff Text Properties and set it to use the distortion channel, by following the original instructions above.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

Marc
wow thanks. I would never have figured that out. Just in case anyone has a crack at this as well, when you are finally setting the Stave text properties to "whichever guitar/instument sound" you also HAVE to click on the number 1 (ie the channel number) otherwise even tho 'you' change the sound in the drop-down menu, nothing actually changes.
Thanks again Marc. I'm now having too much fun changing the sound of the guitar way too much. Partly because I want to get the sequence in my head (it's not very intuitive) and partly because (as long as no one is going to hear the result) its fun!

In reply to by onscuba

you also HAVE to click on the number 1

This sets the sound to voice 1. If you are going to use multiple voices, you need to select the numbers for every voice you are using. It's not too unusual on a guitar to hold a note on one string while you play an arpeggio on other strings. To have this play back properly you would need at least 2 voices, one for the held note and another for the arpeggio.

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