Voice selection
On the Mixer Panel it is possible to select from a great number of instruments. While this is nice, the list is very long and unstructured, unlike Stave Properties which has the instruments classified. Could the Mixer reflect this structure or better still, alow me to create my own menu of Favourites?
I do think Musescore is a great product but it can be hard to find your way around all the features.
Kevin
Comments
The mixer just shows what the soundfont has to offer
And because it's specified by the soundfont, there really isn't a way we can add our own structure to it. BTW, the default soundfont is sorted according to the General MIDI standard. I guess we could try to detect if a soundfont is GM-compatible and at least show something structured to take that into consideration. Note, though, that you can type the first letters of the name of the sound you want.
In reply to And because it's specified… by Marc Sabatella
Thank you. I now understand that Soundfont is not an integral part of Musesore but a 3rd party product. It is useful to know how to select sounds by initial letters. I still wonder how the Instruments accessible through Stave Properties manage to be structured.
In reply to Thank you. I now understand… by Kevin FA
The instruments in Staff Properties and the Instruments dialog are defined in a special MuseScore file called instruments.xml. There is an option of using a different file in the preferences. The each have a default sound (listed as a sound number) from GM compatible sound fonts assigned to them. Sounds in a GM compatible sound font are listed from sound number 0 to 127. Technically the default sound fonts are not 3rd party. They are created and maintained by MuseScore contributors but MuseScore is compatible with a large number of sound fonts available through 3rd parties.
For information, here is a page that lists all of the GM sounds: https://www.midi.org/specifications-old/item/gm-level-1-sound-set
In reply to Thank you. I now understand… by Kevin FA
"Instruments" are an abstraction created by MuseScore, and as mentioned, the structure of that list - including division into categories like brass and woodwind, as well as genres such as orchestral and marching - is defined in the instruments.xml file as mentioned above. We do have complete control over that file and are often making improvements to the organization of it.
What you see in the Mixer are not "instruments" in this sense, but sounds, and those are indeed defined by the soundfont you happen to have loaded. We include a soundfont to use by default, and that soundfont adheres to the General MIDI standard for how soundfonts should be organized.
Under normal circumstances when writing music, you would not be messing with selecting sounds in the Mixer nearly as often as you would be selecting instruments from the instrument list (whether accessed via Staff Properties, the Create New Score wizard, or Edit / Instruments). Depending on what you are trying to do, in fact, you might not ever need use the Mixer.