Instruments not catered for currently in Musescore
There are currently a number of instruments not available in Musescore. They are: -
1) Lupophone - the Baritone member of the Oboe family - becoming more common, very dark and thick sound - lowest not F2
2) Violino Piccolo - used by both Bach and Fuchs, used widely in the Baroque period, but making a modern comeback. Two variant tunings were common, tuned from B flat below Middle C in fifths, or from Middle C in firths. With four strings. Identical in shape and construction to a violin, but smaller, and with a sweeter sound - especially in the higher registers.
3) Other sizes of Guitar (Classical) - The Contrabass, the Requinto/Alto, and the Treble/Soprano. These are identical to Guitar in every way exept size and pitch, and obviously will sound different at their respective pitches than a standard Guitar (Prime) would. The Contrabass is one Octave lower than the Prime, the Requinto/Alto is one Ffth higher, and the Treble/Soprano is one full Octave Higher.
I hope therefore that these omissions can be corrected soon in Musescore, as I would love to write for these instruments. I notice you have much rarer and much more obscure instruments than these. so why not these instruments?
Thanks.
Comments
The rarer instruments have been entered due to requests from users like you. One problem with most of these is that there is no sufficient non copyright sound samples that allow a sound font to be made for the instruments, so a similar sounding instrument is assigned for playback. For example an erhu has the violin sound for playback.
Having said all of that, you can create instruments yourself by selecting a similar sounding instrument and changing the definition of it. In the case of the Violino Piccolo you would select the standard violin and change the available range, the instrument name, long part name and short part name. You can save it to a template or edit the instruments.xml file to be able to access it in the future.
There is virtually no instrument that sounds identical to a human on playback from a score created by a computer. The best any computer can do is give you an idea of what it would sound like.
In reply to The rarer instruments have by mike320
Thanks very much. Could you tell me after I had changed the instrument, how to save the instrument to a template so that in future it comes up in the list? Thanks. And will you take any of my suggestions and include them in the future if you can find a good sound sample? Thanks very much any way.
In reply to Thanks very much. Could you by mark.composer
I'm not a code contributor, so I won't be the one adding any instruments to the code.
One warning about the template option: A template starts a new score with exactly the instruments in the score that is saved as a template, so you cannot load multiple templates to make a single score. You would need add all the instruments you might want to use in a singe template, then delete the unwanted instruments and add other instruments not included. I you will only use one of the instruments at a time, you can create multiple templates with each instrument.
Creating a template is simple. Save the score to the user template folder. When you use the template, any notes or frames you have added will be ignored. Here are directions for the user template folder since it varies between Operating Systems.
https://musescore.org/en/handbook/create-new-score#User-template-folder
In reply to The rarer instruments have by mike320
Well, the problem is not just lack of samples with a suitable copyright, but more that these ain't GM compatible.
And to add any additional instrument we need to know the long and short name, the amateur and professional range, transpositioning, clef and closest GM sound.
In reply to Well, the problem is not just by Jojo-Schmitz
Thanks for all your replies. But if there are any code contributors on this forum who can see this post - then I would be willing to supply all the necessary information that you mentioned above to them - ranges, clef sound etc, so if you wish let them know and I will supply the info. Thanks again to all of you for your replies.
In reply to Thanks for all your replies. by mark.composer
Use the Issue tracker to the right of the posts and put in a feature request with the info Jojo said is needed.
In reply to Use the Issue tracker to the by mike320
See #233451: Instruments not catered for currently in Musescore