Regarding Guiro and Agogo

• Dec 21, 2024 - 20:23

Not sure where exactly to put this, but I'm trying to help people out, so I'll put it here (first time posting, please be gentle).

I've been using MuseScore for years (since Fall 2021, I believe), and like others before me, I've been trying to figure out two issues over the past few weeks: 1) "Why is there no guiro scrape in the guiro drumset?" and 2) "Why is the agogo not in the instruments list when it should be?" (see Guiro for an example of 1) and agogo bells for an example of 2)). I was having this issues because I was trying to copy/translate/etc. a visualizer on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iISXD4iiPD4) into the attached sheet music (it's a thing I do because I like video game music, doing something like this is good for my mental health, and also why not; note, the score is not finished) Eventually, I looked through the instruments.xml file (see second node for why), and what I found was that it indeed had sounds for "Long Guiro", "High Agogo", and "Low Agogo" (search with "agog" for the latter -- "agogo" won't bring results because of the accent marker on the final "o") -- and "Long Guiro" specifically was the sound for a scrape, and it was used for things like the ratchet. So why wasn't it available for the guiro? Well, as it turns out, the "Long Guiro" wasn't coded into the guiro drumset section:

<Instrument id="guiro">
                  <family>unpitched-wooden-percussion</family>
                  <trackName>Güiro</trackName>
                  <longName>Güiro</longName>
                  <shortName>Gro.</shortName>
                  <description>Güiro.</description>
                  <musicXMLid>wood.guiro</musicXMLid>
                  <clef>PERC</clef>
                  <stafftype staffTypePreset="perc1Line">percussion</stafftype>
                  <barlineSpan>1</barlineSpan>
                  <drumset>1</drumset>
                  <singleNoteDynamics>0</singleNoteDynamics>
                  <Drum pitch="73"> <!--Short Guiro-->
                        <head>normal</head>
                        <line>0</line>
                        <voice>0</voice>
                        <name>Short Güiro</name>
                        <stem>1</stem>
                        <shortcut>A</shortcut>
                  </Drum>
                  <Channel>
                        <!--MIDI: Bank 128, Prog 0; MS General: Standard-->
                        <controller ctrl="0" value="1"/> <!--Bank MSB-->
                        <program value="0"/> <!--Standard Kit-->
                  </Channel>
                  <genre>jazz</genre>
                  <genre>world</genre>
                  <genre>classroom</genre>
            </Instrument>

I thought this was weird -- if the "Long Guiro" sound was there, why wasn't it put into the instrument? So at first, I tried editing the instruments file myself; I was rightfully stopped by the admin permission check (foiled again). But yesterday, I had a different thought: What if instead, I try to edit it into the drumset in MuseScore? This was something I think I tried some other time with the agogo -- to see if I could just take a score and put the whichever necessary agogo sound into the set -- but to no avail. That is, until yesterday, when I learned that in order to edit the drumset, you need to find the appropriate MIDI number for the sound you want (sometimes, reading the handbook is all the difference). So I had a thought: What if I hunt down the MIDI number for "Long Guiro", then edit the guiro's drumset to use it, with anything else necessary (shortcut, staff line, etc.)? So I readded the guiro to the score (it was on timeout before that), opened the drumset, found MIDI #74 for "Long Guiro", did some more adjustments, saved the settings, clicked on the new drumset item, and it worked! I could finally use the full (enough) capacity of the guiro without some weird workaround!

And that gave me another idea. Another user in the forum about the agogo (agogo bells) noticed that the agogo's sounds were mapped as substitutes for other instruments such as metal castanets -- and the castanets specifically were mapped to the "High Agogo" sound:

<Instrument id="metal-castanets">
                  <family>unpitched-metal-percussion</family>
                  <trackName>Metal Castanets</trackName>
                  <longName>Metal Castanets</longName>
                  <shortName>Met. Cst.</shortName>
                  <description>Metal castanets.</description>
                  <clef>PERC</clef>
                  <stafftype staffTypePreset="perc1Line">percussion</stafftype>
                  <barlineSpan>1</barlineSpan>
                  <drumset>1</drumset>
                  <singleNoteDynamics>0</singleNoteDynamics>
                  <Drum pitch="67"> <!--High Agogô-->
                        <head>normal</head>
                        <line>0</line>
                        <voice>0</voice>
                        <name>Metal Castanets</name>
                        <stem>1</stem>
                        <shortcut>A</shortcut>
                  </Drum>
                  <Channel>
                        <!--MIDI: Bank 128, Prog 0; MS General: Standard-->
                        <controller ctrl="0" value="1"/> <!--Bank MSB-->
                        <program value="0"/> <!--Standard Kit-->
                  </Channel>
                  <genre>orchestra</genre>
                  <genre>world</genre>
            </Instrument>

With this tidbit in mind, I decided to add metal castanets to the score, change the name to "Agogo" and the abbreviation to "Ago.", then edit the drumset to include MIDI #68 for "Low Agogo". I made the necessary changes, and sure enough, I had an agogo -- again, without some weird workaround. I even saved the new agogo and the guiro drumsets just so I would have them on hand.

I was certainly happy to make these discoveries, to the point where I would share it even though I don't do much online interaction; but at the same time, I do still wonder why the guiro doesn't have the "Long Guiro" sound by default, or why the agogo isn't in the instruments list even though its sounds are used in the file. For the MuseScore coders reading this, I would ask that you consider changing that -- it doesn't have to be high priority (I can kinda feel that 4.5 is around the corner somehow), but it would be nice to not have to do what I did just to have a guiro scrape and an agogo. For everyone else scoring guiro and agogo, I hope this helps!

(Instruments xml attached in case proof is needed.)

Attachment Size
(Pikmin) Main Theme or Title Theme.mscz 57.38 KB
instruments.xml 687.37 KB

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