Using One Soundfont for Each Staff

• Mar 31, 2018 - 20:49

How can import a soundfont, choose the specific voice, and then correspond a certain instrument staff to that voice so that writing notes and playback both use the soundfont voice?

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• Mar 31, 2018 - 21:01

I'm guessing by voice you mean alto, tenor and so forth rather than voices 1 through 4 you can use to notate on each staff.

I'll start with voices 1-4. You can't.

For different instruments (MuseScore considers Alto, Tenor... instruments, even though they are sung). Add as many sound fonts as you like to the synthesizer (accessible from the view menu only). Look at the sound font description to determine which sounds are defined. Open the mixer. The default sound for an instrument will be in the first sound font. If you type the first letter repeatedly (but not too fast) of the sound you want and you will sooner or later get the same sound again, that is from the second sound font listed. Type the letter again and you will get the sound from the next sound font listed in the synthesizer and so forth.

One note about sound fonts. When you open the first score, either the default sound font or the sound font(s) you have saved to the score will open. You can open another score, but if you do not have the sound fonts you want loaded already, you will need to either add the sound fonts or load them from score using the button in the synthesizer. This may make it impossible to have a few scores open at the same time and them sound right if you vary your sound fonts from one score to another.

Read https://musescore.org/en/handbook/synthesizer for more info.

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• Mar 31, 2018 - 23:26

Thank you for the kind words. To do what you want is not intuitive in MuseScore, so it took more explanation and more than a link to the handbook as is often the case. There are many people in this forum willing to help so you can enjoy MuseScore. BTW, all but 2 or 3 of the people are users like you and me. The MuseScore community is a great place.

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• Apr 1, 2018 - 01:23

A small amendment: you can split voices 1–4 into different mixer panels by using individual MIDI channels for them, and then you can assign different sounds to them.

The “how” is currently a bit tricky, we’re working on improving things for one of the next releases. For now, you seem to be content with mike’s answer; otherwise just shout into my direction (also just a contributing user ☺).

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• Apr 26, 2019 - 00:35

Hey mike230,

I'm having a similar issue with trying to make two different instruments use a different sound font. I'm trying to follow your advice, but I don't know what you mean by typing "the first letter repeatedly". What first letter are you talking about?

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• Apr 26, 2019 - 00:55

If you want to find the a Clarinet sound, you can press the C to move through all of the sounds that start with a C like the celesta, cello, Contrabass and so forth. You will eventually get to the Clarinet. You could actually quickly type CL, then pause momentarily and move to each instrument that starts with CL. I can't think of anything but the Clarinet that starts with Cl, so this is the best method to find clarinet sounds.

This method still works in version 3, but if you have a mouse with a wheel, it's often easier now to use the mouse wheel to scroll through the sounds you have loaded. What I do now is click the sound, press Home so I know I'm looking at the first listed sound font, then scroll down to the sound in the sound font I want. You can tell by the occasional (1) in the second sound font (2) in the third sound font and so on when you have changed sound fonts being looked at.

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