Combine MS Basic instruments into a single drumset
Hi,
My son has composed a percussion piece starting from the Battery Percussion template but wants to collapse this down to to single player staves. For example the first player would take Bass and Snare simultaneously and the Second mainly tenor and cymbals but the first player might mind the Tenor Drums for a period while the second moved to the woodblock. (I not a percussionist or octopus so I don't know if he is trying something physically possible or not). He has used some of the other sounds like Rimshot and Buzz. I can't work out how to edit the drumset for this as you only see the sounds for the either the tenor or snare, not both. Looking at the Battery Template XML the instruments map to instruments individually rather than the GM/GM2 mapping. Any hints to where I even start looking to get a drumset that includes multiple instruments with the "special" sounds? I suspect MuseScore may not be able to engrave and play what he wants.
Comments
Is there a way to do this by editing instruments.xml? It looks like each instrument can only have one entry in the tag.
Is there a way to do this by editing instruments.xml? It looks like each instrument can only have one entry in the tag.
Solved it at last, stepwise instruction:
1) Download and use Polyphone to open the MS Basic.sf3 soundfont form the instruments folder
2)Export the percussion instruments I needed from the MS Basic Soundfont
3)Drag and drop the samples into a single instrument and note the keyrange number for the samples of interest
4) Save the new soundfont
5) Add the folder to list of soundfonts in preferences
6) Set up the drumset using the keyrange
7) Change to the new soundfont in the Mixer
Obviously this won't work with the lovely new MS Sounds as Polyphone sadly doesn't handle the new STS /SPX format. I don't know what is planned for the percussion update but I wonder whether you would consider how to use sounds from different instruments within the same "drumset" or even how to drop in odd samples (such as recreating "The Typewriter" by Leroy Anderson) without having to go out to a soundfont editor? It would also be great to be to consider how you might score individual instruments but then combine them into a player stave in a way that allows you to recombine them in different ways (e.g for a different size group or stage layout).