Play, Mute, or Solo Staff

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Play, Mute, or Solo Staff

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There are a variety of occasions where you might want to listen to only certain staves of a song while other staves are muted (silenced). For example, if a song has a melody staff played by some instrument, but you want to sing the melody by yourself, then you can mute the melody staff. Or, you might want to study the composition and arrangement of a song and focus on how a particular instrument part is written by "soloing" that instrument part, thus muting all of the other staves. If you have a MIDI keyboard, you can temporarily mute a staff and perform the part yourself; Musician will assign the instrument sound of the staff to the notes you play.

Musician enables you to play any combination of staves while muting other staves. You can even do this while the song is playing back. If the staff controls are visible, you can tell that a staff is muted if the top-left button is not pressed down and has a dull light instead of the normal bright green light:

    StaffControlPlayActive  staff playback is active

    StaffControlPlayInactive  staff is muted

Note that you can also mute staves using the Staff Setup command in the Staff menu.

If you save the song as a MIDI file, then any muted staff will be restored as an audible staff in the MIDI file; the staff will not be deleted.

prcarrow To toggle the mute status of a staff:

B8141If the staff controls are not already visible, choose the Show Staff Controls option in the View menu. Note that the Show Staff Controls option is not available in Page View.

    In the group of four staff controls, toggle the play/mute button between StaffControlPlayInactive and StaffControlPlayActive.

-- OR --

B8141If the staff controls are not visible, and you do not wish to display them, then while holding down the 'T' key, click anywhere in a staff. Musician will display a pop-up menu offering choices for Select Staff, Mute Staff, Solo Staff, and Instrument Sound. In the pop-up menu, choose the Mute Staff command.

Another option allows you to mute all staves except one (or a few) staff(s) that you wish to temporarily "solo". The play/mute status of the other staves are only temporarily changed. Once you remove the solo status of all staves, any staff that was previously playing will continue to play, and any staff that was previously muted will continue to be silent.

prcarrow To temporarily solo one staff so that no other staves are heard:

B8141Toggle the solo button from the up position StaffControlSoloInactive (in which two musicians are shown) to the down position: StaffControlSoloActive (in which a solo musician is shown).

-- OR --

B8141While holding down the 'S' key, click anywhere in a staff belonging to that staff. Musician will offer a pop-up menu. Choose the Solo Staff command.

prcarrow To temporarily solo multiple staves so that only they are heard:

1.Click the solo StaffControlSoloActive button for one staff.
2.While holding down the SHIFT key, click the solo StaffControlSoloActive button for additional staves.

prcarrow To temporarily solo all of the staves in the current part, while muting all accompaniment staves not included in the part:

B8141While holding down the SHIFT key, click the solo StaffControlSoloActive button for one staff.

-- OR --

B8141Type "qsolo" for Quick Solo.

prcarrow To remove a staff from the list of solo staves:

B8141While holding down the CTRL key, toggle the solo button from the down position StaffControlSoloActive to the up position StaffControlSoloInactive.

prcarrow To resume playback of all staves, and turn off the solo of any staves:

B8141While holding down the SHIFT key, click the play/mute StaffControlPlayInactive button for any staff. It does not matter whether that particular staff has been previously muted.

Yet another option lets you temporarily mute a staff and assign the sound of that staff to any notes you play at your music keyboard. This option is useful when you want to play one of the instrument parts of a song instead of having Musician play it. Musician will still play the other parts as accompaniment.

prcarrow To temporarily mute a staff and assign its instrument sound to notes that you play on your music keyboard:

B8141Double-click the solo StaffControlSoloInactive button for the staff.

-- OR --

While holding down the "R" key (for "record", although you will not actually be recording), click anywhere in the staff of the staff.

Musician indicates that this staff has been muted by changing the staff play button to the up position: StaffControlPlayInactive

At the same time, Musician indicates that this staff has been selected to provide the instrument sound for your music keyboard by changing the solo button from green to red:

    StaffControlSoloPlayAlong

In addition, Musician indicates that this staff has been so selected by drawing a red arrow right before the beginning of the first staff shown in the window for this staff:

    PracticeRedArrow

prcarrow To return the staff to normal playback:

B8141Just click the staff's solo button again.

If the part you want to play has two staves, such as a piano or keyboard part, then you will find the following procedure useful.

prcarrow To temporarily mute more than one staff and assign the instrument sound of one of the staves to notes that you play on your music keyboard:

1.Double-click the solo StaffControlSoloInactive button for the staff whose instrument sound you want to assign to your music keyboard.

-- OR --

While holding down the "R" key (for "record", although you will not actually be recording), click anywhere in the staff for that staff.

2.For the other staff(s) that you want to play instead of Musician, toggle the playback button to the up position: StaffControlPlayInactive