Creating a Musescore Pipe Band Extension
To;dr: how do I package and upload an extension so others can use musescore for pipe band files I've made?
I've nearly finished creating a set of files that will make musescore much more useful for people who write music for pipe bands.
Pipe bands have 4 main instruments, bagpipes, snare drums, tenor drums, and bass drums.
Drummers use the berger uniline staff, with left and right hands indicated by note placement below and above the line, respectively. I have solved this with a custom instrument and soundfont for each instrument.
Pipe Band Tenor drummers use either a bass clef staff with individual parts colour coded by pitch or a uniline staff. I modified the color notes plugin to used the colours I prefer. Visual flourishes by tenor drummers are shown using staff text currently and some day I might try to make a comprehensive custom pallet of flourish symbols (not yet though).
I improved playback for tenor and bass drums (I used tympani and concert bass prior to creating a instruments and soundfont from sampled drums).
Bagpipe notation in musescore had no issues, but playback of appogiaturas didn't match the specific way that bagpipers use ornamentation, so I made a plugin to correct the playback sound.
Finally, snare rolls were not playing back the way I liked, so I've approximated the correct tap and closed roll buzz sound using some modified MDL samples, and I'll add custom samples to my soundfont eventually.
I need to finish updating my templates and examples, and then I would like to figure out how to create an extension, ideally modeled after the MDL one, that can be installed the same way to save people the annoyance of having to read through my readme and drag my files to several different places on their computer.
Thanks in advance!
Comments
The process isn't documented, but see https://github.com/musescore/mdl to learn how MDL does it. I was able, with some effort, to adapt the scripts there to work for me in creating an extension a year or so ago, but I've forgotten the details and would have to relearn how if I ever wanted to update it,
In reply to The process isn't documented… by Marc Sabatella
Thanks for the link. I will document as I go so that I can hopefully put together a process for others to follow.
In reply to The process isn't documented… by Marc Sabatella
Follow-up on this thread, here is what appear to be the steps for making an extension, although I still have to figure out how to make it "installable" (and do steps 6 and onward, project for this weekend).
It's possible that I am off base with a number of these steps but I'll come back to update as I go.
In reply to Follow-up on this thread,… by Kate.Dudek
Follow-up again, I've uploaded my extension files to github here: https://github.com/Meerkatenator/mpb
The thing I am uncertain about is how to make the extension "installable" through Help > Musescore resources - does it need to be approved and officially added to the musescore installation? How do I start that process?
In reply to Follow-up again, I've… by Kate.Dudek
I think you are right that you'd need to have it approved officially somehow, There is no process for this as far as I know because it's never come up :-). I'd start by checking out the Development info in the Contribute menu above, much of which isn't particularly relevant, but signing the CLA probably is, and joining the chat on Telegram definitely so.
In reply to I think you are right that… by Marc Sabatella
I will do those 2 things - thanks for pointing me in the right direction, I feeling like I'm wandering around lost sometimes!
In reply to I will do those 2 things -… by Kate.Dudek
Kate,
Did you have any more luck getting this up and running? I'd like to the same for my pipeband. I'm new to Musescore, but willing to learn to get this to work "right".