"Change instruments" generates instruments without limit, losing mixer settings

• Dec 7, 2019 - 13:00

In MS 3.3.4, but I doubt that it's better elsewhere.

I have two parts that each switches between oboe and violin with "Change Instrument" texts (as per the manuscript). This is clearly a mistake, and I'll need more parts. Each "Change Instrument" orders a new one from the music store; can't identify or use the ones already used on that staff; as a result, instruments (and channels, and even ports) proliferate in the Mixer, and you can't tell what any of the Mantovani Orchestra of violins corresponds to, and worse yet, all of their pans are wrong (they didn't "inherit"), and, worse yet, trying to fix them seems to just mess them up worse.

I hope I can get it back to one instrument per staff by moving the oboes to new staves, but this is a poor situation. "Change Instrument settings" should list instruments previously used on that staff for you to select before offering you a new one (i.e., what it does now). There will be another report and cry for help shortly if I can't get rid of all the subinstruments by losing the "Change Instrument"s.

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• Dec 7, 2019 - 13:57

I made new oboe parts which have gotten around the problem, but the problem in the product continues unsolved. 2/3 of the violins were the pizz. etc parts, but, still, you should be able to grab your old fiddle and run with it.

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• Dec 7, 2019 - 15:26

I believe there was some discussion regarding being able to select previously used instruments rather than creating new mixer entries for each change event, but if I recall correctly, there was some technical barrier to that possibility.

The fact that adding a new violin part creates three new mixer channels (albeit nested channels), can lead to confusion when identifying the currently active instrument. There are ways to make that a little simpler, such as creating a distinct label, or changing the mixer colour for that the existing channel before creating the new instrument, but that is a little tedious when all you want to do at the moment is continue making music.

This thinking may be out of date as of MS 3.3.4, but this is my past experience with MS 3.x.

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