Steel drums are too loud!

• Aug 19, 2015 - 18:23

Hey everyone, I need help.
I'm creating an arrangement for steel band, and I'm having trouble hearing everything when I play the audio. See, the bass and cello pans are doing one thing, while all the hanging (soprano, alto, tenor, and guitar) drums are doing another. The volume of the bass and cello is fine, but when the hanging drums come in, they are way too loud and drown out all the other instruments. I've tried changing the dynamic for the notes individually using the Dynamics Palette, but the volume of the notes is not changing. This is really hindering my progress, and if someone could help me, that'd be swell!


Comments

In reply to by wittledrummergirl

Yes. Sometimes there are slight differences in how things look, but mostly the changes are for the better anyhow. Some manual adjustments may need to be tweaked. But mostly, it's just way more feature-filled, with tons of bugs fixed as well, and manages to be easier to use in the process, at least once you get used to the things that have changed!

But your current version will remain intact (for Windows & Mac anyhow, could be different on Linux depending on the specific distribution) so you can always open existing scores there.

Hello! It helps if you can post the score you are having problems with. Adding dynamic markings *shoudl* affect the volume, but maybe you just adding a quiet enough marking to make a different.

Anyhow, that's only the right answer if you think it will also be needed when human musicians play this - if steel pans really are a lot louder than the other instruments so that they would need to be told to play quieter.

I suspect in many real life situations the other instruments would be amplified to make that unnecessary, just as, for example, guitars are normally amplified when playing in a band with drum set. You can simulate this in MuseScore by going to View / Mixer and setting the relative volume of each instrument.

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