Change the used instrument
I was composing a few pages of a piece for a friend, but then realized I was using the wrong instrument. Is there anyway to switch the music I have to a new instrument without deleting it and starting over? I wouldn't have to change any of the notes, as I was supposed to be writing music for the flute, but wrote music for piano instead.
Comments
To Change Instrument:
1. Right click on an empty part of the staff (or right click on the instrument name you wish to change).
2. Then, in Staff properties select 'Change Instrument' in the Part Properties area.
Regards.
Is there any way to make bulk changes to set all clefs to a particular sound font instrument?
If not, is there any chance that this could be a future enhancement?
In reply to Is there any way to make bulk by Jim Berry
Can you be more specific about what it is you want to do?
In reply to Can you be more specific by Marc Sabatella
I have a score with 6 parts, each one with a separate clef.
e.g. 2 violins, 2 violas, 2 cellos.
With the mixer, I can change the playback instruments individually, but I would like to be able to make a bulk change to play back all parts with one instrument type (e.g. guitar).
If this not possible with the current UI, is there an API that can be used to write a tool to do the job?
In reply to I have a score with 6 parts, by Jim Berry
For each staff (instrument) that you want to change: right-click on the staff, then select Staff Properties and use the "Change Instrument" function in the dialogue which will appear.
In reply to For each staff (instrument) by Recorder485
Yes, I know that is possible, as I have previously indicated, and is indeed the answer already given to the OP.
But what I am suggesting is that there could be a shortcut to do the same thing for six staves at once.
And that could also include selecting the playback instrument from the sound font, not just the long and short instrument names on the score.
In reply to Yes, I know that is possible, by Jim Berry
Assuming your original score has no time-signature changes in it, you can do it this way:
1. Create a new score of the same length as your original. Set the key and time signature.
2. In the Choose Instruments dialogue, choose the one instrument you want, and click ADD six times, then OK. The program will create six blank staves for that instrument.
3. Go to the original score; type CTL+A to select all the music. Type CTL+C to copy everything to the clipboard.
4. Go back to the new blank score, and paste in the music.
In reply to Assuming your original score by Recorder485
Thanks, that will work for a simpler exercise, but since this piece has several time changes, I would have to add in the different time signatures and associated barlines which don't get copied.
This turns out to be just as time consuming.
I still think a "bulk changes" tool would be a welcome additional feature for Musescore.
In reply to Assuming your original score by Recorder485
To accommodate situations where there are time-signature changes in the score, I have modified Recoder485's recipe as follows -
1. Save the original with a new name. The key and time signatures will obviously remain the same.
2. Type CTL+A to select all the music.
3. Type CTL+C to copy everything to the clipboard.
3. In the Choose Instruments dialogue, choose the one instrument you want, and click ADD six times, then OK. The program will create six blank staves for that instrument.
4. Click on the first measure of the first new instrument.
5. Type CTL + V to paste in the music from the clipboard.
6. In the Choose Instruments dialogue, select each of the original instruments (no longer required) and click "REMOVE".
In reply to To accommodate situations by Jim Berry
Glad it worked out for you. :)
In reply to Yes, I know that is possible, by Jim Berry
Changing instrument *does* change the sound. And doing ifor six staves takes only seconds. It generally isn't common to have scores for lots of the same instrument, and then change them all to lots of a *different* instrument, so I doubt many people would find a single command to change all instruments to be useful very often (for most people, this would probably *never* come up). What is the real world situation where this ever happens? But FWIW, a future release may include next/previous buttons in the Staff Properties dialog to make it easier to change properties for multiple staves.
If it's just about playback - which actually is not that uncommon (wanting to hear a vocal score played back with various different instruments) the Mixer is the easiest way to do this.
In reply to Changing instrument *does* by Marc Sabatella
"Changing instrument *does* change the sound."
But only to the default sound for that instrument :-(
Is there a way to change the default sound?
E.g. for Acoustic guitar the default sound is "Steel String Guitar", but there are several other possibilities. Is it possible to change the default once only so that for all subsequent ADDs the selected sound is "Dons Nylon Guitar" or "Nylon Guitar 2"?
In reply to "Changing instrument *does* by Jim Berry
You could change the default sound by setting up and using a customized instruments.xml
In reply to "Changing instrument *does* by Jim Berry
Note that the latter is not part of the General MIDI standard, so presumably you are using some sort of custom soundfont that includes those sounds (Timbres of Heaven is my guess). Meaning if you make that change, your score possibly won't work on anyone else's system, which may or may not be something you care about.
Generally, if you want a nylon sound, the way to get it is to choose "Classical Guitar" as your instrument rather than "Acoustic Guitar", and then it will choose the GM-compatible nylon sound. If you have Timbres of Heaven installed as your default soundfont, it should use whichever sound is the default nylon sound in that soundfont - I believe that's "Don's". So no custom XML file should be required - just choose Classical Guitar and all is well. Only if you want a non-standard sound like the secondary nylon sound to be chosen by default would you need a custom XML file, and the price, again, would be it wouldn't work (meaning, perhaps, no sound at all, or maybe a piano sound) on systems that don't have that soundfont installed as the default.