Too many instruments.

• Dec 12, 2009 - 06:35

How do I remove instruments from the instrument panel. I doubt seriously I will ever need to write or transcribe anything for occarina or krumhorn, etc. It is a bother to have to scroll through such an exhaustive list to find the common flute, clarinet, etc... I do applaud the thoroughness, but I think there should be a special place for the common, modern orchestral instruments (maybe just the 128 MIDI instruments?), and period or folk instruments could be sought out of a more exhaustive list when and if they are needed.

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• Dec 21, 2009 - 02:07

Yes, some of the less common instruments can get slightly annoying. If you want to get rid of some instruments on your own installation, find the musescore data directory. I know on my GNU/Linux machine, it is /usr/share/mscore/. On a Windows computer, it is probably in C:\Program Files\MuseScore or similar. Go into the "templates" directory, and edit the file instruments.xml. Then, delete each instrument (between the <instrument></instrument> tags) that you don't want. Yeah, it's a lot of work, but if you delete all of the uncommon instruments, you might want to consider posting your new instruments.xml file here for others to use to.

Hopefully this helps some.

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• Feb 16, 2010 - 23:00

I've just begun using MuseScore with my class of 30 beginning theory/composition students. One of their first assignments had them create scores "realizing" a portion of a previous listening to the environment assignment they had. We'd been using Logic Fun before this and all the 128 MIDI sounds were easily accessible. Getting to the Sound Effects in MuseScore however necessitated their changing the sound in the Mixer - not a most difficult thing to do but still an extra persnickety step in an already persnickety project.

So, all of this is to say that I went into the instruments.xml file and edited it to conform more specifically to the general MIDI instrument set for the free FluidR3_GM.sf2 sound font we're using. I've taken some little liberties in the organization from that in the regular MIDI instrument list (like grouping all the Synths in one category), but now there's no necessity of having to change the sound in the Mixer. And oh, I've gotten rid of all of those wonderfully arcane period instruments. It'd be great if there were real sound fonts for those, but calling upon a saxophone sample to emulate a crumhorn doesn't quite do it.

I'm new to this forum so this is a first attempt to respond. I'll try clicking on the "File attachments" below and see if I can upload the file for anyone who might be interested. Notice that it's named "instruments2.xml" to distinguish it from the default list.

-Norman Lowrey

Attachment Size
instruments2.xml 69.93 KB

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