Instrument doubling

• Nov 30, 2009 - 05:07

Is there any way to double instruments in MuseScore? It's possible to mute an instrument with staff text and use the staff text to select a muted instrument on playback (p. 34 in the manual). But jazz scores frequently call upon players to double instruments (say, tenor sax and flute). And while I can put the staff text into the score, I don't get an option to select the doubled instrument for playback in the program. I don't know if this is a support/bug question or a feature request; but here it is. Thank you one and all.

Comments

• Nov 5, 2012 - 19:25

For me at this point this is the main feature musescore misses. I use to write scores for big bands and often the saxophones change to flute and or clarinet. Besides the transposition issue (you can ignore if you do not want playback your score) there is the staff name problem. The same occurs in orchestral scores if you have for instance clarinets changes (Bb and A).

Reply

• Nov 6, 2012 - 03:22

2.0 will allow this, at least for playback, but as of last time I checked, it didn't affect transposition in the printed score. I'm hoping that will change before release.

Meanwhile, the method I use in 1.2 is to create two separate instruments and the "hide empty staves" function in the part. Or I just don't worry about playback. It hadn't occurred to me to want the staff name to change when the instrument does. I don't recall the published scores I conduct from ever doing this.

Reply

• Jan 29, 2016 - 17:00

If you mean, a part that switches from Alto Sax to Clarinet mid way through the piece, and currently the transposition does not work update so you can either have it look right or sound right but cannot have both at once other than by using a separate invisible staff, then a fix is indeed in place for the next release.

Reply

Do you still have an unanswered question? Please log in first to post your question.