Mixer

The mixer allows you to change instrument sounds and adjust the volume, panning, reverberation, and chorus for each staff. From the main menu choose Display → Mixer to show the mixer.

Mute and Solo

Use the Mute check box to quickly silence certain staves. Alternatively use the Solo check box to silence all staves except the staff you mark as "solo".

Dials

To turn a dials clockwise click and drag upwards. To turn a dial counter-clockwise (anti-clockwise) click and drag downwards.

Sound

The sound drop-down menu lists every instrument supported by your current SoundFont. This feature is not implemented in version 0.9.4 or earlier for Windows, but fixed in version 0.9.5.

Change instrument

Although you can change the instrument sound, staff name, and staff transposition separately, versions 0.9.6 or later allow you to change all of these properties at once.

1. Right click on an empty part of the measure and choose Staff Properties...
2. Click on Change Instrument
3. Choose your new instrument and click OK to return to the Staff Properties dialog
4. Click OK again to return to the score

Mid-staff change

In MuseScore some instruments can change sounds midway through a piece. For example strings can switch to pizzicato or tremolo and trumpet can switch to muted trumpet. The following instructions use muted trumpet as an example but the same principles apply to pizzicato or tremolo strings.

1. Select the first note of the muted section
2. From the main menu choose Create → Text → Staff Text
3. Type Mute (or an equivalent indication such as Con Sordino). At this point the staff text is for humans and does not affect playback in MuseScore
4. Right-click on the staff text and select Staff Text Properties...
5. In the Staff Text Properties dialog mark the Channel checkbox
6. In the Staff Text Properties dialog select mute
7. Click OK to return to the score

Every note after the staff text you added now sounds muted. To return to an unmuted sound later in the piece follow the same guidelines as above except type Open in step 3 and select normal in step 6.