Multiple instruments, one part
In musescore 2.0, will there be ways to switch the instrument mid song? For example a xylophone part that plays bells halfway through or a trumpet part with a flugelhorn solo.
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That is the plan - I'm not sure it's working properly yet, but I know Marc Sabatella has recently done some work on ironing out the bugs in it.
Yes, there will be two separate mechanisms for this. The first is already present in 1.3, and that allows switching between different variations of the same instrument - trumpet open versus muted, etc. MuseScore knows about certain of these variations, but you can always add more by editing the instruments.xml file on your system, looking at the entry for the Trumpet instrument to see how it's done. So you can already do this, with a little a bit of work. All you then need to do is add Staff Text to your score at the appropriate place, right click it, choose Staff Text Properties, and select the alternate sound. This facility works already in 1.3, as I said, but it's actually broken in the development builds. I did fix this the other day, but it hasn't made its way into the builds yet.
The new-for-2.0 facility will allow you to change instruments even to something that instruments.xml did not anticipate - flute to trumpet, for instance. This facility actually *does* work when used as intended - add the Instrument Change text, then right click it and Change Instrument to select the new instrument. After completing that process, you can also open the mixer to further change the sound (eg, to a different variation of the selected instrument). This works well already in the 2.0 builds assuming you do things in that order.
But 2.0 is *not* ready for "real" use. Especially for something like a marching band arrangement. The parts & transposition mechanisms in particular are pretty hosed right now.