How should I write a SATB piece in Musescore with respect to its voice soundfont?

Question

I'm currently writing a vocal piece for a high school SATB chorus in Musescore. Throughout the composition process, I've been using the Musescore playback, **which presents all voice syllables in a Choir Ooh soundfont.** This is my first time writing a(n) SATB peice. ----------How am I supposed to know whether the layers of lyrics will make sense with the harmony? Or how the piece is influenced by the gender of voices? Are those even pertinent questions? What am I *missing* in terms of composition by referring the soundfont?----------Is it recommended that I regularly ask the choir to learn and recite their current parts to test playback? If so, how regularly?

Answer 1

The soundfont will give you a rough idea of how the music will sound sung by an actual chorus, but, as you note, among many other differences, the lyrics are missing. Balances between parts will be off. There will be none of the subtle variations in tone color with register that an actual chorus can produce.

The only solution to this is to listen to a lot of choral music, so that you can fill in *in your head* what it will actually sound like. If you can do this live, that's great; if not, recordings can still be helpful. If you can follow along with scores, so much the better. If you can get your chorus to sing partial drafts of your piece, that could be very helpful; how often would depend mostly on what else the chorus was doing and how indulgent the director is toward your project.