The musical terminology tempo means the speed or pace of a composition. Musicians use tempo markings/marks to indicate tempo. Supported tempo markings include:
Musescore's synthesizer paces based on two settings:
Musicians use tempo markings to indicate the value of one beat, but Musescore does not use the beat information inside tempo markings. Beat information is obtained from Time signatures only.
Tempo markings are Musescore Text, except tempo change lines are Musescore Line that contains Text, see Text and Other lines chapter.
The Properties palette and Playback panel use a special unit "BPM". "BPM" is the amount of quarter notes would have been within one minute in decimal number. It is not related to the musical beat. It is not the whole number used in metronome marks conventionally, or on the score.
Playback follows written content by default. Editing the number changes playback too. This behavior is changable, see "Changing playback of tempo markings" section. If the note and augmentation dot is accidentally removed or another note value is required, professional glyphs must be used, see "Changing appearance" section.
The tempo changes along the object's anchored range, see Other lines chapter.
Musescore does not understand the written content. These items have pre-defined tempo setting. In Musescore 4.2 beta's Tempo palette, by default:
The setting is changable, see "Changing playback" section.
Musescore does not understand the written content. In Musescore 4.2 beta's Tempo palette, by default:
All of these settings are changable, see "Changing playback" section.
All markings are found in the Tempo palette, see Using the palettes chapter.
New tempo markings (except Tempo change line) are positioned at the top of system (a layout term, see Page layout concepts chapter), this behavior is similar to "System Text" or "System Text Line", see Staff Text, System Text and Expression Text chapter. Tempo change line is special, it still affects all instrument's playback like "System Text" does, but it is positioned on top of the staff (not system) by default, and only appears in "FullScore" and "Part" the feature the staff that line is attached to, like "Staff Text" does.
To add a Metronome mark, Verbal tempo indication, or Metric modulation onto the score, use one of the following methods:
To add a Metronome mark that use a suitable note value by using the beat information from the time signature:
To add a Tempo change line, use the methods explained in the Other lines: apply line chapter. One common method is to add it to a selected range:
Playback can be configure to follow written content of Metronome mark and Metric modulation. Musescore only understand note and augmentation dot professional glyphs. The augmentation dot is not a "Full stop / period" on the computer keyboard. Do not copy from other programs or the internet, as they are not exactly raw unicode characters.
Other characters and numbers are plain characters, entered using (typing on) a computer keyboard. They have different formatting behaviors, for example changing the Properties panel:Font does not affect glyphs, see musescore 3 handbook Fonts chapter. See also Entering and editing text chapter.
Tempo change lines are Musescore Line. To change appearence of the dashed line, see Other lines: line properties and Adjusting elements directly: Changing the range of a line chapters.
To change the predefined tempo setting:
To assign a manual / overriding tempo setting:
To change the manual tempo setting:
Tempo change lines are Musescore Line. The tempo changes along the object's anchored range. To change the range, see Other lines: line properties and Adjusting elements directly: Changing the range of a line chapters.
A tempo marking's layout and default positioning depends on how it is added, see "Adding tempo marks to your score" section.
For tempo markings that behave like "System Text" or "System Text Line", there is a special method to mirror the object, see Staff Text, System Text and Expression Text: Repeating System Text on other staves chapter.
Selected tempo markings(s) on a score can be edited with Properties panel, settings are already covered in other sections of this chapter. The Properties panel: Font property affects plain characters, but not the professional glyphs. Professional glyphs use "Musical symbols font", see "Tempo style" section. Text related settings are covered in Formatting text chapter. Line related settings are covered in Other lines chapter.
To edit the score-wide settings, see "Tempo style" section.
See main chapter Templates and styles
Values of the "Style for text Metronome" can be edited in Format→Style→Text styles→Metronome. No object uses this profile by default, its purpose is for styling Tempo markings which have both a verbal indication part and a metronome mark part. Often the metronome mark part is non-bold and a little smaller. Source: https://github.com/musescore/MuseScore/issues/13377#issuecomment-147399…