location instruments.xml
Like a good little user I searched first before I posted, and I found many posts about instruments.xml living in the Templates directory. I don't see it there, in fact I issued a full disk find command and I found it in
/Applications/MuseScore 2.app/Contents/Resources/instruments/instruments.xml
/Applications/MuseScore 3.app/Contents/Resources/instruments/instruments.xml
I use Mac and so do a lot of users...
My Templates folder was empty. So my question is this:
If I copy the instruments.xml from the Applications location into Templates and then edit it, will my edited one be used or do I have to do something or configure something to make it find it. The next question is well I am editing instruments and I want to both use the Brazilian names for some existing instruments so I guess that would be translations and also add some instruments that you don't have, I don't think you have berimbau. So I would just copy the XML block for some other percussion instrument, and edit its attributes accordingly? Finally, if I actually PLAY the score, how can I add actual samples of the different instruments so it will sound vaguely correct.
My percussion score at the moment is kinda crude, it just has hits in various lines that are mislabeled because I chose from the available options, and I have to remember this one is really left timbal and this one is right and so on. The different stroke type note heads are all wrong.
Thanks!
Comments
I'm surprised that anybody has said instruments.xml lived in the Templates directory. Anyway, you found the right place.
You'll probably want to leave the original file alone, and make a copy to edit. It can be anywhere; whether in the Templates directory or somewhere else, you need to put the path into Preferences > Score.
I would suggest first editing a default percussion staff within MuseScore; right-click the staff, choose Edit Drumset, and you can map which of the available sounds go with which positions on the staff and with which noteheads. Once you have it how you want, you can save the drumset definition (as a DRM file) and open it with TextEdit/Xcode/whatever you're using for your XML editing. The way the drumset definition is stored in a DRM file is pretty close to the way it would be in instruments.xml.
As to adding new sounds, you would need to edit the default SoundFont as well as instruments.xml—see http://musescore.org/en/node/36171 for the basic information.
If you are just concerned about changing names of staves and the appearance of the notes, indeed, just use the Edit Drumsert facility as well as Staff Properties - no need to mess with instruments.xml unless you are really making more fundamental changes. I believe you can also save any such customzied score to your Templates folder to use as a basis for future scores. But if you do wish to add new instruments more globally, you can add a second file, leaving the original alone - that's probably easier / better.
BTW, chances are any posts you found about the location of instruments.xml were referring to older versions of MuseScore.