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Posted: **Wed Nov 18, 2009 5:53 am**

Has anyone used this notation software?

http://www.musescore.org/

Check out the handbook.

In a lot of ways it looks to be more intuitive and user-friendly than Finale or Sibelius. It looks like it's got most of the capabilities of those other two as well; you can save/export as MIDI, PDF, XML, WAV and several other file types. The XML is huge, because that means that if it isn't as capable as Finale or Sibelius, you can do the simple entry (which by the looks of it is FAR simpler than either Fin or Sib), then export it to Finale or Sibelius for clean-up. It has MIDI playback just like the other two, though you have to direct it to a SoundFont midi driver to get the instrument voices (most sound cards come with an on-board SoundFont - just search your computer for ".sf2" and you should find it). So it looks like it'll do what 99% of us that use notation software need it to do.

The best part is: IT'S FREE

Posted: **Wed Nov 18, 2009 8:21 am**

Looks very interesting. I wish I had time to try it out, but if you do download and try I would love to hear what you think. Like most things that are successful, if this product does well I am sure it will not be free forever...

Posted: **Wed Nov 18, 2009 10:21 am**

BVD Press wrote:Like most things that are successful, if this product does well I am sure it will not be free forever...

Except it's released under the auspices of GNU and the GNU GPL which requires that all future released improved versions (and the underlying source code) be free software ("free" as in "'free speech' not 'free beer'"), however, one of the features of GPL is that, if a developer or a third party distributor decide to charge for the binaries or source code, purchasers can upload and distribute a purchased copy free of charge ("free" as in "free beer"), and there ain't a damned thing the developer/third party distributor can do to stop them, so ...

Posted: **Wed Nov 18, 2009 12:28 pm**

I have tinkered with it "some" on my Ubuntu machine. It definitely felt like the most "feature complete" open-source & cross platform music notation package available. It has some great potential. Yes, under the terms of the GNU GPL, it will remain free.

Posted: **Wed Nov 18, 2009 2:25 pm**

Steve,

Thanks for posting this. Have used music software going back to "Will Harvey's Music Construction Set" (anyone remember that???)
Any chance this will be able to open or import older Finale files?

Posted: **Wed Nov 18, 2009 2:40 pm**

MartyNeilan wrote:Steve,

Thanks for posting this. Have used music software going back to "Will Harvey's Music Construction Set" (anyone remember that???)
Any chance this will be able to open or import older Finale files?

I think it will depend on how old. If they are MusicXML, then it should open them. I'm not sure when Finale started using MusicXML.

I am in the process of installing it now, and will let you know how it works.

AFA free vs. not free...from the license agreement you have to accept:

GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE
Version 2, June 1991

Copyright (C) 1989, 1991 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA
Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies
of this license document, but changing it is not allowed.

Preamble

The licenses for most software are designed to take away your
freedom to share and change it. By contrast, the GNU General Public
License is intended to guarantee your freedom to share and change free
software--to make sure the software is free for all its users. This
General Public License applies to most of the Free Software
Foundation's software and to any other program whose authors commit to
using it. (Some other Free Software Foundation software is covered by
the GNU Library General Public License instead.) You can apply it to
your programs, too.

When we speak of free software, we are referring to freedom, not
price. Our General Public Licenses are designed to make sure that you
have the freedom to distribute copies of free software (and charge for
this service if you wish), that you receive source code or can get it
if you want it, that you can change the software or use pieces of it
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To protect your rights, we need to make restrictions that forbid
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These restrictions translate to certain responsibilities for you if you
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We protect your rights with two steps: (1) copyright the software, and
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Finally, any free program is threatened constantly by software
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The precise terms and conditions for copying, distribution and
modification follow.

Posted: **Wed Nov 18, 2009 8:58 pm**

*UPDATE*

I downloaded it and installed it, and I have to say that I'm impressed! In many ways, it is much more intuitive than Finale or Sibelius. What required several mouse clicks to accomplish in Finale takes far fewer in MuseScore. You can import the .xml files into Finale. This is very important because I don't think you can extract parts from score in MuseScore. The import function isn't perfect; you still have some clean-up to do, but it is FAR better than the SmartScan. You can't import tiff files into MuseScore, but that's not a big deal because even though Finale says you can, it's worse even than SmartScan. Now, that said, you can save the MuseScore files as midi files and import THAT into Finale and it should work OK. You might need to go through and re-set all of the dynamics, text, articulations, etc.

An added bonus is that if you have Finale's SoftSynth SoundFont you can use it as the defqault synth driver for MuseScore. What's great is that the Soft Synth actually sounds more realistic when played back through MuseScore than it does in its native Finale environment.

The interface is different in many ways from Finale and Sibelius, and that takes getting a little used to after using those two programs all this time. Habits and all. But after a few minutes, it becomes second nature and VERY easy.

Posted: **Thu Nov 19, 2009 12:18 pm**

MileMarkerZero wrote: I don't think you can extract parts from score in MuseScore

Just took the latest stable release of the OS X version (0.9.5) for a quick spin.

In the Mac OS X version, part extraction appears in the File menu just above Print. Works as expected.

MusicXML import appears to be a work in progress, though. I was able to import a few relatively simple three- and four-part chorales without difficulty, but attempting to import more ambitions works crashed MuseScore every time. Since the files imported successfully into Finale '06 and Harmony Assistant 2.1.4, I presume the problem is with MuseScore rather than the files.

Overall, it does look promising, though.

Posted: **Fri Nov 20, 2009 4:05 pm**

I love to find open source or free software that at least comes close to the paid versions they mimic. I've been using MuseScore off and on for about a year and a half now and it has come a LONG way. It is still not completely stable (notice that they haven't released version 1 yet!) so you need to be sure to save often, very often. Other than that this is a feature rich piece of software. It does not feature all of the capabilities that you'll find in Finale or Sibelius, but it does feature many of them, and the price is right!

Paul

Posted: **Tue Feb 08, 2011 12:14 am**

I did not see anything in the manual about transposing. Using MuseScore can you create a leadsheet for a song by copying it from a fakebook and then transpose it to a different key?
Can it transpose chord symbols as well?

Posted: **Tue Feb 08, 2011 12:19 am**

How about scanning capabilities?

Posted: **Tue Feb 08, 2011 7:59 am**

TubaTinker wrote:How about scanning capabilities?

No built-in scanning, but you can import files scanned and saved as MusicXML or MIDI in Audiveris or OpenOMR.

Art Hovey wrote:I did not see anything in the manual about transposing. Using MuseScore can you create a leadsheet for a song by copying it from a fakebook and then transpose it to a different key?
Can it transpose chord symbols as well?

Yes, and yes (provided you use the specified chord naming syntax.

Posted: **Tue Feb 08, 2011 8:03 am**

pgym wrote:
TubaTinker wrote:How about scanning capabilities?
No built-in scanning, but you can import files scanned and saved as MusicXML or MIDI in an OMR program (SmartScore, PhotoScore, Audiveris, url=http://sourceforge.net/projects/openomr/]OpenOMR[/url], etc.)

Art Hovey wrote:I did not see anything in the manual about transposing. Using MuseScore can you create a leadsheet for a song by copying it from a fakebook and then transpose it to a different key?
Can it transpose chord symbols as well?
Yes, and yes (provided you use the specified chord naming syntax.

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