muffled chord

• Jul 3, 2012 - 16:18

Hi guys... I need to make a chord sound muffled, equal to song more than words.
how to simulate this effect? I tried all ways but could not


Comments

In reply to by ChurchOrganist

The guitar, perhaps? This is fairly common on guitar, and often achieved by resting the edge of the right hand on the strings as the notes are plucked. This deadens the sound a bit and shortens the note duration -- sort of a dampened staccato; not sure what it's called on other instruments, or how it could be achieved in MuseScore. It could be likened to speaking with your hand over your mouth when making an aside to someone close by, so that you won't be overheard by others.

I'm writing for guitar. I need to simulate the effect of the beat of the rhythm of the More Than Words (Extreme). I replaced the head of the note to x, but do not know how to simulate a muted effect.

In reply to by marquinho

Neither do I, marquinho. It would also be useful in one of my own pieces, where I'm trying to suggest a cat sneaking around ever so quietly. Staccato gives me some of the effect, but not enough of it, because it doesn't suggest the softness of a cat's paws when his claws are retracted.

BTW, my piece isn't for guitar; it's for piano, which makes things even more difficult.

I agree, X noteheads would be a good way to notate that, whether in MuseScore or any other means of notation.

As for playback, if the soundfont you have installed includes a muted guitar, then you should be able to get MuseScore to use that sound. You would start by editing your instruments.xml file (you'd just do this once, not every time you want the effect) so that the guitar instrument included both sounds - see how the trumpet instrument has both normal and muted versions to see how it is done. Once that is set up (and you restart MuseScore), you should be able to switch between normal and muted sounds using Staff Text, which you can make invisible if you like. In 2.0, it should be possible to switching instruments more directly, I think.

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