Re: Setting the midiInstrument to "woodblock" ruins the woodblock sound?

On Fri, Jun 12, 2026 at 1:11 PM Kevin Cole <[email protected]> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> Thinking I was doing the "right thing" I added `\set
> Staff.midiInstrument = "woodblock"`
> to a "metronome" snippet. I was puzzled when wbh and wbl sounded
> identical. Lo
> and behold, when I removed it, the two sounded quite different.
>
> This seems very counterintuitive and confusing to me. Why would telling it
> the
> instrument o use break it?
>

Allow me a little constructive criticism: The MWE that everyone quotes
stands for Minimum Working Example, but your example is not working.  Many
people will simply not answer your question without a working example, but
to be instructive, I made some changes so that the example "works."
"Works" in quotes because my example doesn't have the behavior you
mentioned.  This is why an MWE is so important.

\version "2.26.0"

metronomeI = {
  \set Staff.midiInstrument = "woodblock"
  \drummode {
    wbh4 wbl4 wbl4 wbl4
  }
}

\score {
  \new DrumStaff \metronomeI
  \midi {}
  \layout {}
}

--
Knute Snortum