The problem is that most of the soundfonts I came across have far too much character, suitable for solos but too distinctive for orchestral work. Usable brass is hard to find, particularly the all-important French horns. This is true not only of, say, oboe+flute in octaves, but also when the oboe is reinforcing a section of strings. The only exception to the rule is the oboe, which in midi scoring seems to blend more naturally when there’s a distinctive vibrato. A little vibrato can offset the fact that you aren’t working with instrument sections-essentially, you’re scoring one instrument per part-but too much stands out and usually sounds cheap. In the woodwinds, stay away from samples with overly noticeable vibrato.
You will also want a choice between “solo” instrument samples and samples that fit well into an orchestral fabric. Depending on the overall orchestration, you may find that that trumpet that sounded dreadful with one combination of instruments works perfectly with another. It’s a good idea to have several soundfonts available for each instrument. A flute that’s acceptable above C5 but sounds oddly metallic between C4 and C5 is no good, whereas one that sounds realistic up to C6 but then gets shrill may, in fact, be usable, since the flute is naturally a little shrill up there. No soundfont is perfect, top to bottom, so what you’re looking for is as close to a “typical” sound in the low, medium, and high registers as possible. LinuxSampler has a handy virtual keyboard that makes trying out individual soundfonts easy. For anyone interested in midi orchestration, I suggest downloading as many soundfonts as you can find for any particular instrument, then auditioning them, just as you’d do with real players. Part of that is personal preference, but generally, quality soundfonts that work well as part of an orchestra are hard to find. The problem is that where quantity reigns, quality does not. gig, all three of which can be loaded into LinuxSampler.
MUSESCORE LEGATO FREE
There’s no dearth of free soundfonts out there, most in. Using LinuxSampler, I could load any soundfont I wanted and have it correspond to the appropriate Musescore staff. Since Musescore is JACK smart, I wondered if connecting Musescore’s midi output to a sampler would solve my problem. Or the oboe would be great and the French horns terrible. If the strings were good, the oboe would be awful.
MUSESCORE LEGATO FULL
I wanted to go bigger, trying my hand at a full orchestra, but was finding some limitations in Musescore’s reliance on GM soundbanks. Starting off small, just songs scored for a solo instrument with piano accompaniment, I progressed to adding strings, and finally worked up to a small orchestra. The more I worked with it, the more I became intrigued with the idea of using it for prototyping audio versions of my work. I started using Musescore simply to engrave pencilled manuscripts that were in danger of fading. My commentary is based on the setup described.
If you’re a Musescore user, and interested in this article, have a look at the LinuxSampler tutorial located here. I’ve already written a tutorial at Musescore on extending Musescore (v1.3) with LinuxSampler, but I’d like to share my thoughts on the more musical side of things, specifically achieving a satisfactory Musescore-generated performance of music written for full orchestra. For the past few months, I’ve been exploring Musescore as an all-in-one solution to composing, orchestrating, and engraving original compositions.
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