I have a document with 8 staves and I'm trying to change the instrument on just 4 bars of one of them. I tried highlighting the bars but Instrument Patch was then greyed out. Also is there a way for just these bars to sound much quieter when played?
You can Insert Instrument Patch anywhere that you want to change instruments on that MIDI channel. You have to insert a second Instrument Patch later on to restore the prior instrument sound.
Insert, Dynamics is generally the way to instruct the player to be louder or softer.
Thank you, but how do I apply Insert Dynamics to just 4 bars as it is greyed out when I select them.
Any item, including instrument changes and dynamics, is inserted into the staff. You should not select things on the staff prior to inserting new items.
The idea of the question sounds like this:
Change the dynamics, and please put them back to whatever it was before. A sort of push/pop idea. That would be ideal: a 'save state' and 'restore state' option.
To restore to the original dynamics, you have to realise what the dynamics were. Moreover, if the dynamics change at some point (before), the 'changing back' has to be changed, too.
For now, push/pop sounds like wish(list)ful thinking.
I think you have it. Analogous with selecting a word or phrase in a wordprocessor and making it italic or bold.
I think that what is being said is that you can right click on anywhere you want on a particular staff, select staff properties and in the dialog box which comes up, select the instrument you want . In the same way, put your cursor at any point, then press D on the keyboard and it will give you the opportunity to change the loudness of the notes.
Where you want to go back to the original settings, do the same at that later point in the staff.
Tony