Instrument doubling
Submitted by km2002 on December 16, 2009 - 6:43am.
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I would like to see instrument doubling implemented the same way as instrument muting (see mid-staff change in user manual). It would be helpful for scores that require players to change instruments (e.g., a tenor sax for a soprano sax) to be able to make these changes in the score playback as well as in the score. In the score is no problem. But v0.9.5 has no means of changing actual instruments as well as instrument properties.
I would also like to see the ability to switch instruments on a staff part-way through a piece. This is technically more difficult than changing to mute because the new instrument is often a different transposition than the previous.
I added it to the Ensemble milestone page. See http://www.musescore.org/en/developers-handbook/milestones
This would indeed be extremely useful to have.
David: are all of these going to be implemented in 0.9.6 once it becomes stable again, or will some of the non-"necessary" items be left for the next cycle?
Not all these issues can be fixed during this cycle. Some of these (such as linked parts) may take two or three cycles to complete. The purpose was to put these feature requests and bugs in context for developers that have better C++ skills than myself, and to let users know that we agree that these issues are important.
I've seen scores in which two instruments share the same stave simultaneously (one is at the top half of the stave, whilst other is at the bottom).
Just wanted to ask if this is known.
That's pretty common indeed, although more so when it's two of the same instrument. It looks like perhaps the trunk is set up to potentially allow different voices to use different instruments, although I haven't played with it to see if it actually works. It looks like you probably have to have already set things up in your instruments.xml definitions. However, it definitely works to *change* instruments using the new "Change Instrument" text elements.
"Change instrument" text ??
Where is this?
In the staff properties?
It's in the nightly builds for the next major release; not in 1.0. I believe it shows up somewhere in the main palette at left.
This would be really useful for me but I can't find it in 1.1. Am I missing something or do I need to download a development build to get it?
Youdo need thenightlybuilds for this. But I don't know that these arestable enough for real use. I'd recommend the workaround suggesed here - use separate staves, and with the Hide Empty Staves option, it will just just like the part changed in mid stream.
Hi, and thanks for the response. It's not that I want to change anything midway, it's the instrument text at the beginning of the score I'd like to change. There are three reasons:
1. When I import scores (typically via pdf to mxl to musescore) they are all called "Instrument" or similar and I'd like to be able to rename them.
2. There are instrument names I'd like to use that aren't in the predefined set of instruments (e.g. we use "Treble" not "Boy Soprano"), and some old names (e.g. "Cantus").
3. I'd like to be able to abbreviate the instrument names and give them suffixes (e.g. "A1" and "A2" for first and second alto).
So all I really need is a way of changing the text. I was wondering if I could do this by creating new instruments (or changing text used for existing ones) by editing the Instrument xml files...?
Oh, that's totally different than what is being discussed her,e but quite easy. in 1.1. Just right click the staff or its name and select Staff Properties. You can edit both he full name that appears onethe first system as the abbreviated name that appears on subsequent systems.
I need a vocalist to play Alto Sax at the beginning of a piece. Sadly, it takes up too much room to put both in the score. If there is any way to have it change the sound mid-piece, I could have it. I can change transpositions, so it would be wonderful to have a sax sound out of it.
This is not implements as mentioned above. As a work around you can add both instruments and hide the empty staves after you have finished entering all the notes (as described at http://musescore.org/en/node/7821 )
I don't know if this is what you meant, but I fairly often (mostly in older pieces) see staves on a score that have Voice 1 playing piccolo and Voice 2 playing flute, for example. Sometimes V1 is flute and V2 is oboe. Often auxiliary percussion is all on the same staff.
I guess what I'm trying to say is . . . On playback, could it be made so that individual voices have different instruments? And maybe with Staff Text you could make an individual note or phrase a certain instrument and change back? (If this is exactly what you meant, sorry . . .)
(I also just realized this thread died forever ago . . . :P)
If I remember correctly, this functionality is already implemented in the nightly builds. The thing that is missing is the ability to have one of those instruments be a transposing instrument.
Would you care to elaborate? Do you mean that it's already possible, and that I just missed it?
Already possible in the nightly builds, meaning, will probably be in the next major release, still a ways off. But you can install the nightly builds for yourself to play within the mean time Just keep in mind realize up front that this is experimental code still under development See http://musescore.org/en/handbook/comparison-stable-prerelease-and-nightl....
But I don't know that you can have different voices have different sounds - the feature I remember seeing is to change sounds mid-stream.