Col Legno Articulation
I'm am writing a piece where a portion of measures within the string section will be playing Col Legno. I have two questions: 1) How do I mark that articulation in Musescore other than simply typing it in as text? And 2) Once the articulation is noted in the score, will the strings in the onboard VSTi's actually play the sound as marked? Thank you in advance for your help.
Ari
Comments
1) The way to indicate it is to type the text.
2) Unless you have a sound font that includes Col Legno it will not play back properly. If you do have a sound font with Col Legno, you can use the tremolo channel for Col Legno. Change the sound from tremolo to Col Legno in the mixer, then chose tremolo as the sound in the Staff Text Properties. This works if you don't use tremolo indicated using Staff Text Properties - which is not necessary since you can use articulations. There are sound fonts that include Col Legno.
Unless you have a special symbol in mind, text (staff text specifcally) is how you enter that or any other text-based marking.
MuseScore's synthesizer is based on the General MIDI standard, and col legno is not part of that, so the default soundfont won't do anything in particular. If you can find a non-GM soundfont elsewhere on the net that has col legno sounds, you are welcome to add this to MsueScore as described in the Handbook under "Soundfonts" and use that sound where desired.
In reply to Unless you have a special… by Marc Sabatella
Thank you, Marc, and thank you mike320... I shall persevere! And, yes Marc, Col Legno is usually marked as a text. I will be looking into the soundfonts as you suggested. Thanks for the guidance. I appreciate it. 😊
Ari