Instrument testing upon choice

This came up before, I just can't find it currently

In any case there are thousands of instruments in the MuseScore instrument list, and only about 128 sounds in the default soundfont (a bit more with the banks). So a preview will never give you the sound of the instrument. If you don't know what an instrument is at all, and how it sound in real life, then don't use it or google it to listen to it.

I made a file myself for people (because I was and still am the same way when I started using musescore. lol) to be able to hear a sample or measure of notes played by each instrument for all of the pitched percussion instruments, all of the keyboard instruments, and all of the electronic instruments (except for the percussion or last electronic instrument listed for musescore). The same notes are repeated again for every measure but is played by a different instrument each time to hear a short audio sample of what each instrument sounds like.
The notes C and G are played twice with the second C and G being an octave higher followed by a chord as the sample you'll hear for every instrument.. this way you can hear a broader range of note pitches and get a better idea of what range of notes an instrument can play. As each measure is played, you'll see the notes as well as the name of the instrument part playing those notes...
What I did was added a part that uses a treble clef, a second part that uses a bass clef, a third part that uses both treble and bass clef, and finally a fourth part that uses a treble clef and two bass clefs. Then, I had these four parts muted, but added or copied the notes played from each instrument part onto one of these four muted parts, so you could see what notes are being played for an instrument... in order to not have a huge long line of different instrument parts that goes off the page (because there are too many instruments used to be able to fit on a page), I instead checked the actual instrument parts to be not shown in the score... this way, you only see the four muted parts that show the notes of the unseen actual instrument parts which are the same. You're able to see the instrument notes this way more easily in a simple layout that's less confusing...
Once you play the file, you'll see what I mean... not to mention, seeing what the instrument name is as the part is being played....
this sampling of pitched percussion, keyboard, and electronic instruments is way less confusing than the samples I did separately for plucked stringed instruments, bowed stringed instruments, etc that I had done earlier that show the actual instrument parts being played (and all of the instrument parts at that)... hope this helps

A rough draft to test instruments for all the brass instruments... keep in mind, it's a draft and I need to change things like the names written under each instrument.... obviously, half of the instruments aren't called "brass" or "bugle" and there aren't instruments called "snazzed" or "Balloon" that I'm aware of, so ignore the names in this one... also, for some of the instruments I need to change the octave down or up an octave so the pitches of notes are better for that instrument's range. (Like bringing down the notes one octave for a bass instrument like tuba for example)... so it's not a good or perfect document or sample of all the musescore brass instruments but until I get it made, it's better than nothing....

I made a few documents, but only the first one is pretty decent...the second is rough draft where the names are wrong so ignore the names written under the instrument (it's easier to copy and a paste the same name and change it later rather than to create a new name for every instrument, so half of the instruments are called brasss in the second one which is not correct obviously). the third is ok but confusing in terms of seeing which instrument is playing since it shows a huge long list of instruments that doesn't fit on one page so ya gotta scroll down to try to see the instrument name playing (confusing putzy shit)... but the last two are better than nothing to hear. hope it helps

Rough draft for Woodwinds

Rough draft of to hear all of the plucked and bowed string Musescore instruments as well as all of the free Reed Musescore instruments