Today as part of my IDS project, I upgraded my pieces using a feature of MuseScore called Soundfonts.

On its own, a score is just notation. It serves to tell those who play music what notes to play at what time and with what articulation; the composer doesn’t really need to go into much detail on what the music will actually sound like.

However, I (obviously) don’t have a full band to play all of my arrangements. In place of this, I use MuseScore’s playback feature to get a feel for how good my piece is and what I should improve, and to later present my pieces. However, the sounds MuseScore uses don’t always fulfill my vision of what it would actually sound like, and are often just stock MIDI instruments.

Fortunately, there’s a solution to this: soundfonts. Soundfonts are special files that can be installed on your computer and added to MuseScore through the Synthesizer window. Once added, these files change the sounds of certain instrument options, which you can select for your pieces in the Mixer window.

I experimented with many different soundfonts, but decided to use the Touhou soundfont for 2 of my pieces. Touhou adds higher-quality, realistic replacements for MuseScore’s weak MIDI guitars, which was very useful for both one of my draft pieces, a pop punk ballad, and my main piece, the metalcore song Machine Hell.

(This post is part of a series of entries into my Learning Journey for my IDS project in Music Composition.)

Print Friendly