Question regarding Musescore
1. Is there a recommended soundfont to use with Musescore?
2. Is there an established date for the next prerelease of Musescore? I am currently using prerelease 1667.
3. Due to the percussion bugs, I have been unable to use the new percussion features, but is there a sustained cymbal roll on musescore?
4. What application is commonly used to open compressed Musescore files? (mscz)
Thank you for your help
Comments
1. No but you can found several free GM sounfonts in the soundfont chapter of the handbook.
2. I'm compiling the prereleases for windows every 20 commits or so, if I don't encounter fatal issues. There is no date for prereleases or releases.
4. Musescore ;) If you want to see the row content, it's a zip file. So you can open it with 7zip for example.
I'll try to give some answers. I'm sure someone will correct if I'm wrong.
1) There are a number of free soundfonts that are available. Some of these are listed in the soundfont section of the handbook. Which one you use depends on how large of a soundfont your system can reliably run, and your personal preference for the results produced.
2) The prerelease will be made available as soon as one is made. There is no particular deadline for this.
3) I don't know. I haven't played with the percussion much.
4) I'm not sure I understand what you're asking with this one. Other than MuseScore? If you want to use the file in another application, you're probably better off saving it as a .mid, or if you want to retain the notation, as a .xml, or .mxl (compressed).
Hope that was at least some help.
My own experience is with the Fluid SF, listed in the handbook. if you use cello or bassoon, know that these are bad instruments on this soundfont, the bassoon sounds out of tune and apparantly uses store-bought reeds, and the cello is inaudible on rapid notes because it takes too long to build up its tone. The piano, however is nice, just turn the chorus all the way down on the mixer, unless of course you're playing honky-tonk music.
3. A cymbal roll can be notated using trill or tremolo but it does not affect playback. I don't know if MIDI even supports cymbal rolls.