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MuseScore 4.1 is now available
- robin_reala 3y agoMuseScore is one of those rare open source projects where it’s obvious that a serious amount of thought has been put into the user experience. I only dabble in engraving, but every time I’ve tried to do something more complex the UI has been ready and waiting to help me accomplish it.
- wizofaus 3y agoArguably WYSIWYG engraving software only exists to provide a workable user experience (vs editing lilypond or god forbid musicxml notation in a text editor). Having worked a fair bit on it and as a regular user of it I'm only too aware of areas still in desperate need of a better UI/UX though. Still hope to go back to contributing more regularly at some point, though I didn't especially enjoy having to regularly deal with the foibles of a large complex C++ code base and digging into the internals of Qt to figure out weird UI bugs.
- jchw 3y agoOut of curiosity, what ever happened to all of the drama with MuseScore, locking downloads behind a subscription, the Audacity acquisition + telemetry debacle? It looks like Tenacity still exists in some form, though it does not appear like there is a ton of significant activity on it in the last month or so. Have things cooled down now?
- Reubend 3y agoWhile I don't know about the OSS community's stance, I can say that most casual users have embraced the new version of MuseScore. They added a lot of important features with the latest version, and I think most people don't really care about the telemetry.
- Tantacrul 3y agoThere is no telemetry in MuseScore 4
- thih9 3y agoNote, this would not be the first open source music app to lock downloads behind paywall, e.g. Ardour is known for it: https://community.ardour.org/download https://community.ardour.org/download
- FireInsight 3y agoDidn't even know that, always installed Ardour through repos, so got the full version as an unofficial build.
- em3rgent0rdr 3y agothe parent user thih9 is incorrect. See Paul Davis's and my comment.
- thih9 3y agoI have checked and I think my comment is correct. E.g. to me this is a paywall: https://community.ardour.org/download?architecture=x86_64&type=compiled&platform=mac&paymentSelection=options https://community.ardour.org/download?architecture=x86_64&ty...
- jchw 3y agoI believe it was the sheet music that was paywalled, not the software. That was a bit concerning since as far as I know a large portion of it was UGC and some of it even public domain, so it was weird to ask for a subscription payment for it. At this point though, it does look like they have made some amends, though I'm not sure if everyone's satisfied. Doesn't seem to matter too much in the grand scheme of things, overall, though it was an unfortunate situation to watch unfold even as an outsider.
- tgv 3y agoWhat amends? They still want me to pay for downloading a plain Bach score.
- Tantacrul 3y ago
- skybrian 3y agoI think some of this might be avoidable by downloading Musescore separately from the larger package they've promoting now and not using some features? That's what I do, anyhow.
- aiddun 3y agoI use https://flat.io/community/popular/weekly https://flat.io/community/popular/weekly for sheet music sharing now - no paywall and all browser-based.
- noahGorski 3y agoStill using MuseScore 3. Even without the new sounds packs enabled, the latency typing notes on a (computer) keyboard is still too high. I would rather be stuck with the old version then deal with the unsettling 100-200ms lag for every input. It's quite an unfortunate trend that so many modern applications are neglecting basic UI responsiveness.
- nh2 3y agoIs it known why this is / is there an upstream issue for it?
- TheRealPomax 3y agoYeah, and the PR for it is called Musescore 4.1
- TheRealPomax 3y ago(looks like at least one HN voter doesn't know a PR is a code update, not public relations...)
- chabad360 3y agoIt seems that one of the listed improvements is major performance gains.
- coldtea 3y agoFor the playback engine, which is another domain. That said, I never noticed any input lag in the first place. Though I use an M1, not sure what the parent uses...
- babalulu 3y agoI've been heavily using MuseScore 4 lately and haven't noticed that type of latency on the Linux AppImage. My only gripe with 4 is the inability to open multiple scores in tabs. It opens them in separate windows instead. It makes closing scores in that situation difficult. If you have two open windows and quit one of them, both quit. If you instead just close one of the scores the window remains open with nothing in it. It seems to be a can't/won't fix problem as it has to do with their new soundpack system. It's probably the number one gripe users have with 4.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- deepspace 3y agoMusescore the software is pretty good. Musescore the company is a disaster. They took my money for a Pro subscription, without delivering the actual benefits. Their support organization is, as far as I can tell, nonexistent. After six months of trying, I have yet to find a way to get them to respond to my request for support.
- TheRealPomax 3y agoSounds like it's time to call them out (politely) on twitter with a tentacrul at-mentioned. That at least seems to get their attention. Unless you already did that in a non-polite fashion and got muted, of course.
- l__l 3y agoIf anyone is yet to see it, Tantacrul (on youtube) is now deeply involved with MuseScore (UX lead or similar?); he put out an awesome vid on the design of MS4 at the beginning of the year: https://youtu.be/Qct6LKbneKQ https://youtu.be/Qct6LKbneKQ His video on how Sibelius' UX is a pile of shit remains one of my favourite vids on yt: https://youtu.be/dKx1wnXClcI https://youtu.be/dKx1wnXClcI
- crote 3y agoTantacrul is the former Product Owner - recently promoted to Vice President of Product at Muse Group.
- Galacta7 3y agoI was just thinking of Tantacrul and his amazing videos. I can't wait to see his update on Musescore 4.1.
- panzi 3y agoWeirdly I checked his channel yesterday (for the first time since many months) if there happens to be a new video! Didn't know that there will be a new Musescore release.
- bijection 3y agoFor the intrepid, especially those annoyed with the purported input-sluggishness of musescore et al, an interesting text-based alternative is LilyPond https://lilypond.org/ https://lilypond.org/ My dad wrote an opera using LilyPond in vim, though I believe these days he's actually doing more with supercollider, which skips sheetmusic and goes right to sounds: https://supercollider.github.io/ https://supercollider.github.io/
- gexaha 3y agowow! who's your dad?
- sambapa 3y agoI wanna meet that dad!
- tunesmith 3y agoI love lilypond as a programmer because I can use git. I have a private git repo that has lead sheets for all my favorite jazz standards (with my own reharms), notation at various levels for my originals, arrangements of songs for my a cappella friends, and a cue for a full film score project I did. The output quality is amazing, but the best part is I don't have to worry about forward/backward compatibility. None of my old Sibelius scores are openable anymore without spending hundreds on an upgrade, but all my lilypond scores will always be available to me.
- sudobash1 3y agoI use it for the same reason, but also it is worlds ahead of Musescore if you want to put together a songbook (particularly if you also have tex experience). The best advice Musescore has for making a songbook with many scores is to use a PDF editor on the output. Also as a programmer, Lilypond is programmable, and nearly infinitely customizable (similar to tex). I love that I can write some style information in a "header" and include it in every score. In my current project I am writing a lot of SATB choral songs in book format. But I also want to do a melody only edition. Just tweaking a header file, I can hide all the other voices, no problem. (I also use Musescore, which I prefer for composition or simple projects. But when I want to output a large finished product, I always go back to Lilypond.)
- footlose_3815 3y agoTheir SEO ruined Google searches for music. These non-functional demo pages polluting searches for sheet music.
- koromak 3y agoSo Google working as intended
- TheRealPomax 3y agoThe only party to blame for SEO is Google. Everyone else is just playing catchup to however they decided to rank pages this week. There are other search engines, of course. And no, don't stop using Google, but also start using the alternatives. Just using one search engine is doing yourself a disservice.
- em3rgent0rdr 3y agoActually I'm glad when Google points me to scores that can be edited in a free-and-open-source software.
- tgv 3y agoHow is it free? When I try to download one of those scores, it tells me I have to subscribe. And "try for free". Why? What is that? They don't mention a price, but it strongly suggests I have to pay sooner or later. That's not free. Plus, they have a ton of non-PD scores for which they don't pay licenses. They just grab the money.
- footlose_3815 3y agoIt's paywalled.
- askvictor 3y agojust add `-musescore` to your query?
- Waterluvian 3y agoI found the app to be incredibly well-featured but ridiculously unintuitive. Nothing worked the way I wanted to and I spent half my time fighting it when trying to insert notes and such. I have no background in authoring sheet music so my sense is that this is just me and my whole mental model is probably wrong. Did anyone else experience this? Or did anyone else find it to be the opposite: super intuitive and smooth?
- TheRealPomax 3y agoI hear if you create a 40 minute youtube video on how bad the UI is, with a bit of humour mixed in, but mostly valid criticism, they hire you as a product manager.
- bjustin 3y agoI've used it to make proper sheet music out of tabs people post on Ultimate Guitar. It was a slog to get started, but I suspect that is because of the wide range of symbols etc I needed to use. Once I had a sense for how to find things — after transcribing about a page of music — it was smooth sailing. I'd never written sheet music before using MuseScore 4.
- em3rgent0rdr 3y agoThere is plenty of good easy to read documentation: https://musescore.org/en/handbook/4 https://musescore.org/en/handbook/4 Pro tip: With your left hand centered on asdf, you can easily access the most important stuff (note pitches abcdefg and note durations 123456).
- coldtea 3y ago>I have no background in authoring sheet music so my sense is that this is just me and my whole mental model is probably wrong. Probably, if you mean 4+ which is significantly intuitive with certain big changes. 3 and earlier was a lot more unituitive. Note that all the industry-standard alternatives (except the relative newcomer Dorico) are much much less intuitive, and not because of the domain complexity of sheet music, but because of bad UI.
- dottjt 3y agoHopefully it fixes the MIDI input lag. Still using version 3 as a result.
- _nivlac_ 3y agoAs a fairly casual user, I absolutely love Musescore. Still takes a bit of getting used to entering notes if I haven't used it for a while, but I am amazed that there is a free app for sheet music notation, where I would normally be locked into a paid option. The choice to upload to the cloud and play in browser is awesome for sharing. Can't wait to see more updates :)
- sbjs 3y agoI remember having my kids install MuseScore and it was an invaluable app for getting your feet wet with music making.
- sowbug 3y agoA home page with an autoplay video. You'd think a music company would know better.
- lucas_membrane 3y agoThe number of different things that different people want to do for different audiences with music that goes through a computer somewhere along the way is so great that we must admire the people who have put MuseScore together for producing any progress at all on a path that might be hoped to deliver all things for all people eventually, and all who have tried it, as I, ought to thank them for sharing it. If you find it useful, use it. If you find it somewhat useful, use it somewhat, as I do. If you find it almost useful, adapt if you can, but be patient if you decide to wait for, or persuade, the developers to deliver what will work for you. The problem space addressed is so huge, so many different kinds of sounds, scales, instruments, notations, markups, styles, media and formats, performance spaces, input devices and playback systems, personal preferences, human factors, human languages, ...
- t0bia_s 3y agoMusescore has most frequent, I'd say spammy and aggressive, email announcements I ever got. For unsubscribe I had to make exception in NextDNS for their tracker in unsubscribe site.