MuseScore 4

• Dec 17, 2022 - 10:35

The new instruments sound great, but there is issues which plenty of other threads talk about.

The new instrument system seems to be very CPU unfriendly, I don't have a high end laptop, but I just got it at the beginning of September, and the playback more or less needs an extra measure to buffer the sounds, a built in buffer might be good, also when playing large orchestras stutter occurs, which in a way defeats the purpose of making a big orchestra out of vst instruments.

Also having to rely on special texts to change sounds in MS4 is terrible, in MS3, I use a custom instrument file, and most of the "improvements" I've made include simply duplicating an instrument but with multiple identical sounds (Flute 1, 2 having two flute sounds) allowing me to compose two flutes on one staff while still having two flute sounds with different pan positions, Or having Violins 1, 2 on two staffs while they share 1 instrument name, but again each staff has its own set of sounds with different pan positions, which would work especially well with the new MS4 instruments, if you could have multiple sounds on a single instrument.

Default settings are strange, typically I view the pallets and properties simultaneously, but they start on the same side of the screen, also having to add in the tremolo and arpeggio pallets manually seems very strange considering how common these symbols are, guitar tab seems unchanged, though having the lines broken instead of continuous has always seemed like a strange default, They've been continuous in most official tab books at least since the '80s.

The number pad section on my keyboard can no longer function to select note values, only the numbers at the top of the keyboard.

Opening up scores made in MS3 is not great, it looks fine and if it was just to export a PDF with the new horizontal spacing and other visual improvements it's mostly good, but some things don't translate, and editing the score causes parts to go silent.

I am looking forward to see how MS4 develops, but for the time being MS3 still appears to be the king of engravement software.

Attachment	Size
instruments-jason-pilla.xml	520.25 KB

Comments

msfp

• Dec 19, 2022 - 21:38

Thank you @jason_pilla, that is a simple but clever trick to mimic 1,2

            <Instrument id="flutes">
                  <longName>Flutes 1, 2</longName>
                  <shortName>Fls. 1, 2</shortName>
                  <description>Standard Concert Flute</description>
                  <trackName>Two Flutes</trackName>
                  <musicXMLid>wind.flutes.flute</musicXMLid>
                  <clef>G</clef>
                  <barlineSpan>1</barlineSpan>
                  <aPitchRange>60-93</aPitchRange>
                  <pPitchRange>59-98</pPitchRange>
                  <Channel name="1">
                        <program value="73"/> <!--Flute-->
                  </Channel>
                  <Channel name="2">
                        <program value="73"/> <!--Flute-->
                  </Channel>
                  <Articulation>
                        <velocity>100</velocity>
                        <gateTime>95</gateTime>
                  </Articulation>
                  <genre>common</genre>
                  <genre>jazz</genre>
                  <genre>orchestra</genre>
                  <genre>popular</genre>
                  <genre>concertband</genre>
                  <genre>marching</genre>
            </Instrument>