Additions I Want on Musescore (Two Things)
Ok, I know one of these things seems stupid and the other is honestly serious. Firstly, I think that the Otamatone sound should be added into MuseScore. Although it is a toy and many of the people who play it for YouTube don't have much experience with music, I think it would be nice to have if you needed to arrange something for the Otamatone. In all seriousness, I think that if you choose percussion (non-specific) as the instrument for a single line, you should be able to change the clef like you would be able to with any other instrument. Although it is common practice to let each separate instrument to have its own line, having percussion 1,2,3,4, and 5 is much better than having a dozen different instruments that may only have one or two measures to play if you are trying to keep a more condensed score.
Comments
I'm not familiar with the instrument, and it's not part of the General MIDI standard, so it's unlikely to have any sound defined for it in any standard soundfont. But if someone tells us the range of the instrument, the clef to use, and whether it transposes, it could certainly be added to the instrument list. Meanwhile, you can simply choose synthesizer or any other instrument and then change the staff name to say Otamatone.
As for the second request, it's not totally clear, but it sounds like you want to be able to switch between standard and percussion notation on the same staff? That's a common request and one we do hope to implement at some point. Meanwhile, the workaround is to use separate staves but use "Hide empty staves" so only the needed ones are visible at any time.
I agree; we definitely need the otamatone. Me and my friends have a fun band of otamatones and it’s a hassle to have to transcribe songs using the piano sounds.
How about an add-on capability, something like Matlab toolboxes, for new instruments, etc. without adding to the complexity of the program?
In reply to How about an add-on… by dhfx
You can already add new instruments via an alternate instruments.xml file specified in Edit / Preferences. But it will still also be up to you to find an appropriate sound for it.