[MusicXML] Export is missing Instrument-sound Tag

• Jul 22, 2022 - 21:26

Dear all,
in 2020 I wrote an app that relied on the instrument-sound tag, as it was output from MuseScore.
Today I loaded some of my recently exported scores from MuseScore and with my surprise they do not work in my app. I did some debugging and discovered that the problem is in the MusicXML export of MuseScore.

The removal of that exported tag makes it more difficult to identify the instrument associated with a score part, since the instrument name can be different from language to language.

Could you please reintroduce that feature or let me know how to reactivate it in case this be possible.
I am using MuseScore 3.6.2.548020600 revision 3224f34 on Mac OS 11.6.8

Thankyou

Comments

• Jul 23, 2022 - 08:57

Hallo Jojo, Thankyou for your prompt followup.

I don’t recall the version of MuseScore however was certainly Mac, and last time I tried it was early 2021.

That feature in the export is really useful since then in my app I was using the instrument-sound Tag as Language independent reference for things that my app did … like spectrotone analysis.

Without that tag is now difficult to figure out for which Instrument a specific part is written. If there is a way, without trying to guess from the instrument name, I would appreciate learning more.

Thankyou.
www.lucatoldo.de

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• Jul 23, 2022 - 16:27

Dear Jojo,
i checked my scores and i was not using music xml exported from MuseScore but instead from Sibelius.
Sibelius / MusicXML 3.0.
The score was not owned by myself and therefore I cannot post it here. However the relevant part is here:

   <score-instrument id="P2-I1">
    <instrument-name>Flute (2)</instrument-name>
    <instrument-sound>wind.flutes.flute</instrument-sound>
    <solo />
    <virtual-instrument>
     <virtual-library>General MIDI</virtual-library>
     <virtual-name>Flute</virtual-name>
    </virtual-instrument>
   </score-instrument>

I tried several music writing softwares, including dorico, Sibelius , and many others, and for my needs I find MuseScuse the best choice (irrespective from the fact that it is provided at no license cost). I conduct small wind orchestra (http://www.blaeserwerkstatt-bergstrasse.de/) ) with about 13 different instruments and MuseScore is really a good tool.

The only thing I regret, is that in order to use it I have to take always with me my MacBook, since there are no apps for the iPad.

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• Aug 1, 2022 - 06:59

As far as I remember, exporting instrument-sound was never implemented. MuseScore uses MIDI program numbers internally, when I looked into this the MusicXML sound names were not available in MuseScore's data.

As of today, MuseScore's instrument template does contain the sound ID, thus implementing this could be possible.

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• Aug 1, 2022 - 09:17

Thankyou for following up.
I am a software developer and am able to compile the MuseScore code on my Mac. Am willing to contribute a patch. Ci noticed that musicxmlid is in the instrument template but could not figure out how the MusicXML export relates to that. If you could give me some advice I would be happy to do this small feature .

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