musescore / musescore/MuseScore

Instrument request: electric baritone guitar

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#20,364 2 comments 0 reactions 1 assignee View on GitHub

@shoogle is already working on this.

Since Dec 8, 2023.

feature request instruments
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Description

Your idea

MuseScore currently supports a "baritone guitar" which has a classical guitar sound, but the electric baritone guitar seems more common. I'm not sure why the "baritone guitar" takes a classical guitar sound, but if it's intended, perhaps it should be renamed to "classical baritone guitar", and we should add a separate "electric baritone guitar" instrument with the same sound as the electric guitar.

Notation- and tuning-wise, I think we can copy the current "baritone guitar", except that the fret number should be 24 like the "electric guitar", and adjusting the range accordingly.

Problem to be solved

Since it's a fairly common instrument, it ought to be included.

Prior art

No response

Additional context

For reference: Wikipedia article on the baritone guitar

The baritone guitar is a guitar with a longer scale length, typically a larger body, and heavier internal bracing.

That indicates the baritone guitar is a distinct instrument from the standard guitar, not just a standard guitar in a lower tuning, even tho a standard guitar can be tuned to baritone.

While no standard tuning has been established for baritone guitars, popular tunings for the instrument are: a perfect fourth lower than a standard guitar (B1–E2–A2–D3–F♯3–B3), a perfect fifth lower (A1–D2–G2–C3–E3–A3), or a major third lower (C2–F2–B♭2–E♭3–G3–C4).

I think we can treat the B tuning as standard baritone tuning. I've seen it in the guitar tuning presets added in 4.2 beta, which is nice. I've also seen "tune down 2 step[s]" (C tuning), but "baritone A" sounds like a reasonable addition to the tuning presets.

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