MuseScore 3.3 Release

• Oct 31, 2019 - 11:53

Today we are pleased to announce a significant update, MuseScore 3.3. In addition to dozens of bug fixes and new features, it introduces substantial usability improvements for palettes, note input workflow and accessibility.

Download MuseScore 3.3 Release

Windows 64-bit Windows 32-bit macOS 10.10 or higher Linux AppImage
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MuseScore 3.3 announcement

Palettes redesign

Palettes panel is one of the most commonly used UI elements in the editor. By the way, there are many reports from users who don't understand how to customize palette cells, how to add custom elements and rearrange existing palettes.

In collaboration with @Tantacrul, we focused on simplifying the interaction with the palette elements and ease of customization. We made the interactions more intuitive and integrated the semantic of Master Palette to the palette panel.

Check out the video describing all the palette improvements!

Note Input Workflow

We have already implemented essential improvements related to the appearance, usability, and customization possibilities of the palettes. We are focusing on new users to let them understand MuseScore's facilities faster and easier, yet keep the workflow for experienced users the same or significantly simplify it.

One more thing we wanted to see in the MuseScore 3.3 release is the Tantacrul's Note Input workflow redesign implementation. Mattmcclinch generously helped the project and implemented the most significant part of the usability improvements. The changes were not massive, but significantly improve the UX of the Note Input workflow. It allows entering notes right after clicking proper duration without extra clicking "N".

Accessibility

MuseScore has long made accessibility for blind and visually impaired users a priority, and previous releases of MuseScore have provided some degree of keyboard and screen reader support to allow blind users to navigate and read scores. But many operations - especially operations relating to creating or editing scores - continued to rely on the mouse or fail to provide appropriate screen reader feedback. Blind users were thus limited in what they could do.

For MuseScore 3.3, we have removed most of the remaining accessibility barriers. Navigation commands now give keyboard access to almost all score elements, and the screen reader feedback (using NVDA on Windows) has been enhanced and optimized to be as complete as possible and also reduce redundancy. The navigation commands also continue to work and to pick up where you left off even when the selection is cleared.

We also improved the tab ordering of various windows and made other improvements to keyboard access of controls within MuseScore. Perhaps most significantly, the palette redesign discussed above includes keyboard navigation support, allowing blind users full access to all the symbols provided by MuseScore. With MuseScore 3.3, blind users are able to read, edit, and create scores, with access to almost all program features.

MuseScore is one of the very few score writers able to make that claim, and this will open up the world of music notation for many blind musicians.

Special thanks to Marc Sabatella for implementing most of the accessibility improvements.

Chord symbol improvements

Chord Symbol Formatting

Past releases of MuseScore have supported super scripting within chord symbols, but only when using the Jazz style and the corresponding MuseJazz font, and only the fixed amount built into the font. With MuseScore 3.3, you can now set super scripting options within Format / Style / Chord Symbols, whether using the Jazz style or not. There are separate controls for the size and position of extensions and modifiers (the "7" and "b9" respectively in "C7b9").

Roman Numeral Analysis

MuseScore 3.3 adds native support for Roman numeral analysis (RNA) through a new command, font, and style settings. To add RNA to your score, select a note or rest and use Add / Text / Roman Numeral Analysis (or define a shortcut for this command). You can then type your analysis using ordinary characters, like "IV64", and it will be rendered with appropriate formatting using the new Campania font and the Roman Numeral Analysis style settings. You can then use Space or any of the other shortcuts used when entering chord symbols to enter additional analysis on other notes.

Nashville Number System

MuseScore 3.3 adds native support for Nashville notation through a new command and style settings. To add Nashville notation to your score, select a note or rest and use Add / Text / Nashville Number (or define a shortcut for this command). You can then type your notation using ordinary characters, like "4m7/6", and it will be rendered using formatting similar to that used for chord symbols and the Nashville Number text style settings. You can then use Space or any of the other shortcuts used when entering chord symbols to enter an additional notation on other notes.

MuseScore 3.3 RNA

Special thanks to Marc Sabatella for implementing all of the chord symbol improvements.

Plugin API

MuseScore 3.3 adds a lot of new possibilities to the plugins API.

  • Plugins have now a direct (read-only) access to the list of selected elements which greatly simplifies writing plugins to automate certain user actions on selected elements.
  • Plugins have also gained a possibility to alter the playback of notes by altering parameters of their play events, which are later used to generate the actual MIDI events for playback. This ability can be used to implement custom ornamentation playback or improve phrasing capabilities in playback. A great example of plugin making use of these capabilities is Articulation and Ornamentation Control plugin written by BSG which is aimed exactly towards improving phrasing in playback.

MuseScore 3.3 also features an experimental change that allows plugins to get notified of potential changes in score state. In particular, this allows tracking selection changes or certain score edits, which is especially useful for writing interactive dock plugins. Here are examples of plugins making use of this feature:

A full list of changes is available here.

We want to thank DLLarson who has implemented most of the mentioned changes and BSG who has inspired many of these changes and much helped in testing them during their development.


Comments

In reply to by Sambaji

Is the suspended cymbal out? If not, in which update will it have appeared? I'm on an outdated version of it (3.0.2) so yeah (I downloaded it on software center, I would appreciate an update for it). But I have other computers (I carry this one all the time).

Here's a video I made walking through the accessibility features:

https://youtu.be/Ocl9gBxmeKg

Aside from the palette navigation, the feature I demonstrate aren't brand new so much as they are much more complete and refined. That is, shortcuts like Alt+Right/Left to navigate element-by-element have been around since 3.0, but they skipped a number of elements, screenreader feedback was spottier, etc.

I love this software, but this latest update is highly unstable on my computer. I can't open musescore without it crashing in this version. I've reverted back to 3.2.3, but I would like to be able to use 3.3.

In reply to by Jojo-Schmitz

I have a thread on the bugs and support forum entitled Musescore 3.3 crashing. I really don't have much other information about the crashing, though. It just opens the blue startup window and repetitively tells me the previous session crashed and no matter if I try to restore it or not, the prompt window crashes and reverts to the blue startup window

In reply to by Jojo-Schmitz

Still crashes even after uninstalling musecore and reinstalling it! I have also tried using the repair option but it still crashes after lunching it. Its been like that ever since I tried installing the musecore 3.3. Beta & RC versions respectively. Now the latest version still crashes too. Its really frustrating and I need help, please?

Impressive! MuseScore's really improved since the time I've used it (during 2.2 days)! I'll be keeping an eye on its development. I'm really looking forward to how this grows as a software.

Ok for palette.
For note input however, I've looked the video and what is new is quite unclear for me.
I'm especially confused by this sentence in the post: "It allows entering notes right after clicking proper duration without extra clicking "N""
That was already the case in MuseScore 2 for me (I'm a keyboard user) ??

In reply to by cadiz1

Why a new thread? My question (I never press N so I don't understand what's new in not pressing N) is exactly on the original post of this thread.

In reply to by frfancha

I guess "clicking N" here means exactly clicking the corresponding toolbar button with a mouse, not pressing "N" key on a keyboard. This was indeed a required step for mouse users (which most of beginner users are) in any of the previous versions of MuseScore.

In reply to by frfancha

To be clear: it's not the "6" that enters note input mode in older versions, it's the "C". That hasn't changed - typing a letter continues to enter note input mode. What has changed is that the "6" now does it all by itself - you get a note input cursor immediately now in 3.3 (assuming nothing is selected). Furthermore, while technically typing "6 C" did enter a note in older versions, it didn't enter a half note - it entered a quarter. Now it enters a half.

In any event, the reason for the change has nothing to do with experts who know to select a measure first and are using keyboard shortcuts. As far as I understand, it's about discoverability for the new user. The new user doesn't know to select a measure first, they don't have any idea that note input mode is even a thing,, they don't know about 6 or C. They see a toolbar with notes on it, and that's the first thing they click, then wonder why nothing happens. They may try to drag the icon to the score, but again, nothing happens. With this change, you get a cursor, the note input lights up, so you get some feedback as to what is happening. You still need to figure some things out, but you're on the right path.

So again, that aspect of the change is about discoverability and surprise for new users, not possibly saving one keystroke for power users in some cases.

There are other changes too. Used to be with nothing selected, or something unexpected selected like a hairpin, entering note input mode either guesses threw you back to the beginning of the score. Now we do a better job of finding a good place to start. But the most significant change for existing users has to do with the accidental buttons on the toolbar. which now work to affect the next note entered rather than the last.
This is consistent with how the other toolbar buttons work - duration, rest, voices. In other words, you press the accidental button then enter the note. In addition to being more consistent (and hence, again, more discoverable for new users), this also reduces the disruption of hearing the wrong pitch first in playback. It will be an adjustment, but it's pretty clearly the way it should have been all along. Also, when not in note input mode, the accidental buttons work as toggles like the dot button, and also updates to show you the state of the current note as you navigate.

In reply to by cadiz1

Houston, we have a problem :)
1:
Create a new score
Click on the second measure (select the measure) *1
input 6, C
and see what happens.

2:
Create a new score
Click on the last measure (select the measure) *1
input 6, C
and see what happens again.

*1 <= Don't click on the whole-measure-rest, just select the measure.

Users usually click on the measure they want to input the notes, they don't aim at a special place (like a rest), right?

In reply to by Ziya Mete Demircan

What happens here is a bit of a corner case - a combination of a naive user who doesn't know to enter note input mode with a power user who knows about shortcuts - but it's worth discussing these corner cases in a separate thread. What I can say is, what you are seeing is a result of no single note or rest ever having been selected, so the code that tries to start note input at the last selected location ahs nothing to go on. Probably pressing 6 should select the new half rest. Again, worth discussing elsewhere.

Great stuff. Looking forward to trying the Roman numeral chord symbols. And custom pallets are welcome.

Very impressive to learn about the accessibility UX for the visually impaired.

Thanks to all for your work!

where did you move the ability to make multiple parts in one staff? the 1,2,3,4 that was next to the note length bar. I use that quite often, and I didn't get any notice on where that is. help. for now i'll just copypaste from another score i guess.

Congratulations for the new Release!
Although I like the new easier Palette here's how it looks on Windows 7 Pro 32bit (also after complete deinstall/reinstall):
Palette1.PNG
Palette2.PNG

In reply to by musikai

Musecore 3.3 still crashes even after uninstalling musecore and reinstalling it! I have also tried using the repair option but it still crashes after lunching it. Its been like that ever since I tried installing the musecore 3.3. Beta & RC versions respectively. Now the latest version still crashes too. Its really frustrating and I need help, please?

In reply to by ndy

Could you please try to test the following instruction? This may help with the issues with crashes or bad palettes displaying (at least those not related to scaling).

So, basically, I suggest forcing MuseScore to use ANGLE implementation of OpenGL. For this:

1) Create a text file.
2) Put the following content to that file:

@echo off
set QT_OPENGL=angle
start "" "C:\Program Files\MuseScore 3\bin\MuseScore3.exe"

If you have installed MuseScore to a non-default location you will need to replace the C:\Program Files\MuseScore 3\ part with the actual path to your MuseScore installation.
3) Save the file.
4) Rename the file to something like musescore_opengl.bat (the important part is .bat at the end). If a dialog pops up, confirm changing the file extension.
5) Double-click that .bat file.

This should launch MuseScore which should start (hopefully) successfully now. If this doesn't work try replacing QT_OPENGL=angle with QT_OPENGL=software in that .bat file.

Please leave a comment here if these instructions work (or do not work) for you, that would help in finding the root of the issue.

In reply to by jeetee

Thank you for the link!
I installed the microsoft update and now have a D3DCompiler_47.dll in system32. But this doesn't help.
Running with
QT_OPENGL=angle
still does produce the above error message as shown in the image.
I'm just telling my experiences for you to notice.
QT_OPENGL=software seems to be the only (and fine) solution here on my PC.

In reply to by jeetee

Hello Dears,
tested new 3.3.2 Release on my Win7Pro32bit.
The Palette fonts are rendering a bit nicer but still some quirks. dragging symbols in and out gets a blackened palette window and the quick-starter window is corrupted.
Fortunately the workaround works: the .bat file with:
@echo off
set QT_OPENGL=software
start "" "E:\Programme\MuseScore 3\bin\MuseScore3.exe"
Quick-starter Window:
MS332win7pro32bit-Starter.png
Palette:

MS332win7pro32bit.gif

In reply to by dmitrio95

Seems that ANGLE is now preset. Leads to this error message (the same as starting previous builds with ANGLE):
Nightly.PNG

Starting it in software mode works
@echo off
set QT_OPENGL=software
start "" "E:\Installationsprogramme\Musescore\MuseScoreNightly\bin\nightly.exe"

In reply to by Jojo-Schmitz

Actually I wasn't able to find any information on why exactly this library is not needed, and this dialog box still suggests that it is needed. Also ANGLE seems to map OpenGL calls to Direct3D (at least this page suggests so) so the requirement for d3dcompiler libraries seems to be natural. But I may have missed something here.

In reply to by dmitrio95

We were not sure either back in the days when this got added and had to find out by experiment what is needed and what not.
But that file may not be needed because it is avaliable in another place on Windows too. Adding it doesn't harm, other than increasing the package to download

In reply to by musikai

@musikai, could you please try the following build?
32-bit version:
https://ci.appveyor.com/api/buildjobs/1oy33h4ofuan666c/artifacts/MuseSc…
64 bit-version, in case anyone is interested:
https://ci.appveyor.com/api/buildjobs/1k2hcrm5u6h1mt47/artifacts/MuseSc…

This version doesn't preset ANGLE anymore but rather forbids using native OpenGL implementation on Windows 7, so this has more chances to work for everyone affected by this issue. By the way, d3dcompiler library is still needed in that build, otherwise palettes and Start Center content are not displayed on some systems (see the attached screenshot).

Attachment Size
nod3dcompiler.png 246.06 KB

In reply to by dmitrio95

OS: Windows 10 (10.0), Arch.: x86_64,
version (64-bit): 3.3.3.8992, revision:57d770e
Notice: Win 10
Earlier posts:
https://musescore.org/en/node/295219
https://musescore.org/en/node/293956#comment-946560
There were artifacts in the palettes. Especially annoying: big black surface of the palettes when editing text, also
in 3.3.3.
The . bat with 'software' seems to repair it. Occasional glitches, not in the palettes but in the selectionfilter when open at the same time. 'Angle' works as well but then the Palettes are less clear.
Experiments with AutoHotKey seem to indicate that the openingtime of the palettes on my system has increased from about 60 ms to 110 ms compared to v 3.0. MuseScore crashes still occasionally but (for now) unpredictably.
I tried MuseScoreNightly-2019-11-28-1825-master-93393c2-x86_64 as well but this one shows the big black surface of the palettes when editing text.

In reply to by mike320

To be clear, you mean the size of the elements within the palette, as opposed to the size of the names of the palettes, or the space between them? I believe that as we discussed elsewhere, you mean the size of elements within the palette. For the record, there shouldn't have been any change in the size of the palette elements going into 3.3, and I don't recall seeing any other reports of that. Offhand I can't imagine how that could have happened, could be something about a very unique combination of screen resolution, physical monitor connection, OS version, graphics driver, etc.

But it's definitely true that 3.3.4 changes the size of the palette elements for some users, hopefully for the better. Here's the story with that: https://musescore.org/en/node/298165

I believe I recall from prior discussion you had previously scaled down your palette sizes in Palette Properties because you were among those who actually had larger-than-life palettes when MsueScore 3 first came out. I think it's those customizations that are actually resulting in your palettes being too small now. But increasing the overall scaling using the new advanced preference is undoubtedly easier than going back to reset the scaling of each and palette individually.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

I haven't had any customizations to my score since 3.3, perhaps the element size was related to my customizations being deleted when I reverted to factory settings when 3.3 came out. In any case, it is now controllable without the need to customize most elements. I do have a text palette that needed customization but that's not surprising.

In reply to by dmitrio95

I tried starting the program by double-clicking on the "nightly.exe" in the "bin" folder but the attachment below was what displayed. I also click on the nightly.bat shortcut, yet the same problem occurred. There seems to be a problem I simply can't trace or explain causing these issues. I wish there could possibly be a solution other than going back to MuseScore 3.2.3. Anyways thanks for your kind assistance, I really appreciate.

Attachment Size
nightly.JPG 28.38 KB

In reply to by ndy

By the way, set is indeed missing from the second line of this script attached by @ndy, so this may potentially be a reason why it doesn't have any effect. Still this workaround seems to have helped only in cases when MuseScore is able to start but displays palettes wrongly so it may still not help in this particular case.

In reply to by dmitrio95

I tried the .BAT file but it made no difference. I tried QT_OPENGL=angle and =software
Text is still blurred and faint in Palette. I am using Win7 64 bit
Then I checked the response to the BAT file
which was
'QT_OPENGL' is not recognized as an internal or external command,
operable program or batch file.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

I think the workaround batch file quoted in a couple of threads of this discussion was missing something
After trying it a few times I checked the wording inn the thread which I was following and it kept faiiling
But I finally discovered the problem when reading through another reply to a related issue

@echo off
QT_OPENGL=software
or
REM QT_OPENGL=angle
REM start "" "INSTALLPATH\MuseScore 3\bin\MuseScore3.exe"

should have read
SET QT_OPENGL=software (or angle)
The "Set" made all the difference (and it was definitely not in the one which I copied and pasted from the comment
When I tried it that way it worked as hoped

In reply to by dmitrio95

grazie per il suo consiglio, funziona bene.
l'unica operazione che ho fatto è cambiare il percorso di apertura programma dall'icona su Desktop e rindirizzare l'apertura da /bin/musescore.exe a musescore_opengl.bat
in questo modo con doppio click sull'icona il programma si apre in modo corretto in automatico.
grazie ancora a tutti per l'aiuto.

Can't say I'm particularly happy with this "improved" palette.
• The spacing between palettes was increased, leading to unnecessary scrolling.
• Speaking of scrolling, the scrollbar looks completely different from the scrollbars everywhere else, such as in the selection filter.
• I now have to double-click to open/close palettes, or click the small arrow. Double-clicking also makes the palette flash light blue, which is very distracting, especially with the dark theme.
• The ellipsis button is just an eyesore; right-clicking is already a thing.
• Lots of superfluous animations: opening a palette has a silly animation, and scrolling to the top or bottom of the list causes a weird jerk.
• The "More" button takes more space than the old ??? button, sometimes requiring another row.
• For some reason, every ampersand in the palette names (such as "Breaks & Spacers") was doubled.

What's worse is that it appears that it corrupted my custom workspace, so I can't load it in older versions. I managed to repair it (remove the useColorInPalettes property from the xml inside the zip), but it took a while to figure out.

In reply to by Caagr98

Best to check other threads on the subject of the palettes specifically, then start a new one if you think there is some aspect here that hasn't already been addressed. I'll just say for here that while I don't see much point to the animations, the rest seem like legitimate tradeoffs that have significant wins discussed elsewhere (eg, discoverability, accessibility, customizability, usability) that are well worth it once you leanr how to take advantage of it.

Hopefully a new update is added to the software center is added, that's where most people in my school use it.
Including me.

In the version 3.3.4 of Musescore, it crashes almost as soon as I launch the application. I have no clue why. Every single crash has been submitted.

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