Hide Multiple Voices
I would like to request a feature to overlap voices or to multiply the number of instruments playing a part (for example have one flute part written, but play the music back as if there were 10 flutes) in a score of music because when I would like to listen to a score of music as it would sound with a full band, multiple notes and stems is confusing and not appealing to the eyes. I could set all of the other voices except for one to invisible, but that is not convenient.
Thank you for your consideration.
Comments
I believe playing two flutes instead of one will sound exactly the same but 6dB louder.
The only way to get this effect is to use a different sound sample. For example General MIDI has sound samples for violin and sound samples for string ensemble. However General MIDI does not have a sound sample for flute choir.
I'm guessing one way to sound like a full band is to have 10 flutes, each played back using slightly different "humanized playback", i.e. use random to change the timing of each beat slightly, as well as the volume (velocity) of playback slightly, and the percentage of time the playback occurs (vary from 85% slightly), and if we want more, we can even change each flute's timbre, reverb and other settings... Also, we may need to reduce the volume of each flute when it is played in orchestra manner so that 10 flutes won't sound excessively loud.
This can be done by explicitly modeling 10 flutes, but that is a lot of work. I've seen it done on Sibelius. But it would be much better if it's automated just like T. J. said.
I've also heard that you don't really need to do all the detailed humanized playback as mentioned above when you're modeling 10 flutes. You can get 90% of the same effect by simply doing a simple time delay for each flute randomly.
In reply to Don't know if this was requested... by newsong4life
Similar to Newsong4life's suggestion, perhaps what could be done is to install a function in the toolbar that will allow you to select a group of instruments and change the qualities such as volume, timing, timbre, etc. either manually or automatically. It could be done automatically by specifying a lower limit and an upper limit for certain qualities, and then have Musescore randomly select a value between the limits for each instrument.