change instruments in mixer

• Jun 20, 2020 - 02:50

sorry to bother everyone again.my question is how do i change the instrument in the mixer.

in the score I have two staves, top for mezzo and bottom for violin. Now for some reason in the boxes at the bottom of the task section where an instrument name appears they both say violin. i would like to change the sound on the playback for the mezz staff (now both play pizzicato).
i searched in the Handbook and its says you can change instruments in the mixer but i could not find where it says how to do that.
i understand that changing the editable name box at the very top would have no effect on this.
thanks again. Philip


Comments

You can change the sound you want to hear to any other soundfont MIDI patch changing the third box (from the top) into the Mixer channel you are using.

Example: Into the Channel 2, the third box says: "Violin". You can change it to... Whatever, let's say "Trumpet". You will hear a trumpet instead a violin, BUT... The score will still show the original instrument name (violin).

The boxes at the bottom say what you've entered into that name field. As established in your previous topic, you kept trying to type into that field whilst having advised against it.

Whatever you type into the name field will be what is shown as the name of the track in the bottom of the mixer. It will not influence sound in any way at all.

In reply to by jeetee

thank you. everything you say is correct but for some reason, probably because i did something inadvertently before when changing the violin playback sound to pizzicato, both tracks at the bottom now say violin, and the mezzo playback is pizzicato also. i want to change the mezzo playback sound to Voice Ahs, i can't figure out how to change the first track to be mezzo (as i think it was originally, as in your first image). Is this clear?

i would appreciate it if you could tell me then how to change the first track back to mezzo. i understand that just typing mezzo in the name box above will not do it. thanks again, Philip

In reply to by Philip Ellis Foster

Excuse me, because I forgot to say something important...
Out of the MuseScore Mixer, in the score itself, there is a very great MuseScore capability: You can right-click on each track score name and you will get a menu, where you have the option: "Score/Part Properties ".
When you click on that option, you will see the attached image.
As you can see in that image, there is a part where you can change the score/part instrument in a more "global" way.
This change is "on-top" the Mixer changes.
If you change to "Violin" here, then, in the Mixer, you will see, automatically, the word "Violin" into the Mixer track box and into the Mixer track bottom label.
Don't be afraid!!! You can revert any change without to ruin your work.
Try on!!!

In reply to by jeetee

i re-read the last post above, by jeetee, and i went to the mixer and in the name box where there was the word violin i replaced it with the word mezzo but the name in the box at the bottom of track 1 did not change and still says violin.

i went back and looked again and first both were name and track box were blank and the mezzo appeared in both. i think the problem was that before either it didn't work or it just didn't happen quickly enough so i thought it was not working.

anyhow if typing mezzo in the name box changes the name in the track box as now it did, i don't understand what was meant before by saying typing the name in the name box wold not change the playback sound unless you meant that i also have to change the sound iin the sound drop down box which of course would be necessary because otherwise i would just be changing the instrument and not its playback sound.

i changed the sound to Voice ahs and closed the mixer and now aall is well, mezzo in voice ahs and violin in pizz. thanks to all for your help. philip

In reply to by Philip Ellis Foster

Glad that you worked out your end result.

>> i don't understand what was meant before by saying typing the name in the name box wold not change the playback sound unless you meant that i also have to change the sound iin the sound drop down box which of course would be necessary because otherwise i would just be changing the instrument and not its playback sound.

Typing in the name box only changes the name that appears on the bottom of the track. It does not change the playback sound. It also does NOT change the instrument definition in any way.
What I meant is exactly what I've written, nothing more nothing less.

Changing the instrument itself (the definition of it) is never done in the mixer, the mixer is about playback only.

In reply to by jeetee

many thanks again for your assistance. i could not get this done without it!

understand. there is often a problem of communicating just by email or messages like this. For example, by change the instrument, since i was speaking about using the mixer to change the playback sound, i meant change the instrument for which the playback sound would change, not change the instrument in the piece.

or changing the name in the box now i see also changes the name in the soundtrack, and nothing does change until you additionally change the sound and then close the mixer, but i obviously you have to change the sound if you want the sound changed, and then of course close the mixer to effectuate it. before as mentioned when i typed in the new name nothing seemed to happen but that was because i expected it to change instantly and it took a few seconds.

Thanks very much again.

In reply to by jeetee

where do you put the cursor to click the track? i tried by putting the cursor on the word violin iat the bottom when both tracks said violin and nothing happened.

on the other hand when i typed mezzo into the name box at the top, after some seconds the name on track one changed from violin to mezzo and then changed the sound from pizz to voice ahs and it worked just fine.

In reply to by Philip Ellis Foster

No, it's the other way around. Changes you make on the top only affect the track that is selected on the bottom. So first you select which track you want by clicking it on the bottom, then you make changes on the top. So if you neglected to select anything on the bottom, the first track was probably already selected by default, so changes you made on the top affected that track. And that's probably exactly how you created the problem originally - you intended to make changes to the second track but you didn't click it first,t and that's why the changes you made affected the first track and that's why your voice track got the pizzicato string sound.

I've got the same problem as you but in Musescore 4. I want to change the playback 'choral voices' sound for a Grand Piano, which was easy in version 3 - started typing it in the appropriate box and a big list came up - but now I can't find how to do it. If I click in the box it comes up with 2 choices - MS Basic and Soundfonts - neither of which I can change. The Mixer doesn't appear to have half as much useful stuff on as before. Is there a way to expand it or is it just not there?

In reply to by AngeV

You cannot current change to a different sound within the soundfont, but you can change to the Muse Sounds piano, or install a separate soundfont or VST for piano specifically. Or you can change the instrument to piano, using the Instruments panel. A future update will likely return the ability to select sounds within a soundfont, but for now, these other methods are all available.

From your description it sounds like you might have neglected to install Muse Sounds yet, so be sure to go back and do so (using Muse Hub) if you want to take full advantage of MuseScore 4!

In reply to by AngeV

Can you explain what else you are having trouble with? As explained, there are multiple ways to get piano sounds for your choral scores. A few other features have changed locations, but pretty much everything you could do before, you can still do, there just might be different buttons to press. Usually, fewer buttons, as the design is intended to be simpler to use as well. So it could be we can help you with any other issues too. But there are a small handful of things that are temporarily not possible, and maybe you are referring to one of these? Understanding what in particular you are missing is important to know in prioritizing how to add features.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

Thank you for your reply. I haven't been using Musescore 4 for very long yet, but below are a few 'irritations', that I've encountered....

I mainly use Musescore for transcribing music for a choir, usually scores with SATB. Many of the choir don't read music, so I export the files as audio .mp3s. They get freaked out by hearing voices singing the parts so I have been changing them to Grand piano. I guess it's because at rehearsals, we notebash using a piano so that's what they're used to. So the fact that I can't change the sound in 4 as I could in 3, is a big factor for me. So now that facility is taken away, I may just as well use Musescore 3, where I can change the sound easily for whatever I want. For me - and the choir- the quality of the piano sound isn't hugely important, the audio files are literally used for note bashing. So however wonderful the new sound files are, that doesn't help me, although I'm sure it does for others, like proper composers!

I worked round this by choosing Piano for scoring and having 5 pianos ie 4 voices plus the piano accompaniment, but that gave me a piano stave for every voice and I couldn't see how to get rid of the staves I didn't want, as I was scoring it as an open score. This was annoying when I was trying to copy from the previous Choral score with SATB as I had to do each voice to piano part separately because there were too many staves. I tried to find out how to get rid of them but I could only see how to hide them, not actually delete the unwanted staves.

I understand that Save icons are a thing of the past, but I don't see why this should be, as I found it very useful. With no Save icon, I need to do two actions (Ctrl+S or File>Save) when one is much quicker. If the icon is a bit old fashioned, as it's a floppy disc, change the icon by all means, but why does it have to be got rid of, when it's an action that I do so frequently, and for which, an icon is sooo useful? So, again, Musescore 3 works better for me in that respect.

After reading the conversations on the forum about the Sounds, I thought I'd try redownloading Musescore 4, which I did. When I went to find my scores, they had been deleted! So hours of tricky work had disappeared, so I wasn't very happy. As luck would have it, I'd previously tried to use the scores from Musescore 4 in Musescore 3, unsuccessfully of course, so had copied these files from 4 to 3, so luckily for me I had backups! Phew!
If I'm scoring a closed score, having tried various ways, I find the best way is to use 4 voices, so that I can filter out the voices, using the Selection filter, that I don't want when I export them, however Musescore 4 only has 2 voice icons and the + sign next to it doesn't have an option for adding a Voice. Under Tools>Voices, it has Exchange voices options but how do you get voices 3/4 so that I can exchange them? I went to Settings but Voices 3 and 4 have shut eyes and won't add them.

If I want to open another score, M3 allows me to open it in the same screen whereas M4 opens a whole new Musescore, which I find cumbersome and confusing.

These are differences I've noticed so far but I'm sure there will be others, although I'm more likely to start new scores in Musescore 3, at least for now, as I can transfer them to Musescore 4, but can't do vice versa and go from 4 to 3, so may not ever discover other (what I consider!) time wasting factors!

Thanks for your time.

In reply to by AngeV

Thanks for your comments! But I think yoh might be misunderstanding a few things.

First, you can absolutely set your choral staves to playback using a piano sound - simply select it from the Muse Sounds section the mixer.

Second, you only need voices 3 & 4 if yin have more than two voices in a single staff - very uncommon in choral music. Normally you just use two staves per staff, and those should be 1 & 2.

Third, you can certainly add the voice 3 & 4 buttons to you toolbar if you need them - just click the closed eyes to open them , now they are on the toolbar.

Finally, it is true that MuseScore no longer forces you to use the same sounds for all scores as it older versions did, and this means opening scores in separate windows. That is not unlike how other programs work, and you can use the standard techniques your OS provides like Alt+Tab to switch between the open windows

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

Thanks Marc, I'm sure you're right about me misunderstanding things. So I'll use Musescore 3 for now, while I need to get things done but I promise I will 'play' with version 4 when I've done, and hopefully, never look back! Mind you I would still like that Save one click option.......!

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