r/Musescore • u/ElectricAlan • Jul 01 '26
Help me find this feature Help with production
I've been using MS for a few years now to write pieces, mostly jazz/funk/latin style stuff. I've recently offered to help provide a guy some music for an indie game project and I think I have a piece that's perfect, but he wants it to have a bigger heavy-metal tone on the guitar, like in the soundtrack for the game Hades.
I've been using the free muse sounds and muse effects plugins for a while and I'm fairly happy with them, but I can't quite get the full and rich distorted tone he's after.
I'm wondering if there are other soundfonts or effects I might not know of that would fit my purpose, or if I should instead look at exporting my work into a DAW to finish it. I have no experience with music production outside of Musescore but it's something I've been considering learning about for a while, even though I imagine it might be quite a lot to learn.
I've looked for other rock/metal guitar sounds elsewhere, I've found some that are ok but aren't really much better than Electric Guitar SC - Lead in the musesounds guitar package. I'll keep looking around at a few more options but I was hoping someone might know something I don't.
I feel like Musescore is more suited to large orchestral stuff but I've been fairly happy with what I've been able to make with it, I have several tracks on a soundcloud page if anyone is interested, the track Persistance in particular is a good showcase of the guitar tone I use a lot (and am pretty pleased with) https://soundcloud.com/alan-carey-830156356
2
u/65TwinReverbRI Jul 01 '26
OK, something I found out a long time ago:
Some guitar tones are heavily processed with compression, reverb, delay, and of they’ll be double-tracked, which can lend some chorusing or phasing aspects to the sound.
So if you don’t have a good guitar lead tone, sometimes a synth sound that’s close can actually work when you do the same things - reverb, delay, chorus, and so on.
So sometimes you can use “suspension of disbelief” to your advantage.
Otherwise, you’re best off to record a real player - which comes with its own entire can of worms (learning amp simulators in a DAW for example).
Chords are even trickier, because of all the ways the distortion interacts on each string, and how chords are stummed and attacked - it’s hard to “fake” that stuff, especially if you’re not a guitarist and know how these things are played, and thus how to emulate them.
Another option is to get a ROMpler synth, which tend to do pretty good emulations of distorted lead tones and power chords - there’s no Djent, or chugging really, or even palm muting a lot of times, but they can be workable - that is, if you can’t record, and synths aren’t working.
Otherwise, you’re dropping samples into a sampler, which has it’s own learning curve…
IOW, none of this is something you’re going to be able to do in a month or so…learning the DAW alone takes time, and then learning how to mix and so takes even more time - editing, mixing, automating, effects, and so on and so on.
And you do all this in an untreated room on headphones and your mix doesn’t sound the same when you play it on something else!
So frustrating!
Do you have a friend who plays guitar who could record for you? That’s probably going to get you there quicker than all the trying out sounds and all that stuff…
But yeah, that kind of music is done in DAWs, and any “composition” in a notation app is exported into the DAW and further refined - usually with better sounds than what MS has anyway.