Working with MuseScore remotely
I run MuseScore on a laptop in my home office using a large monitor and a good MIDI keyboard. I’m using Windows 11 and everything works very well. But there are time I’d like to work remotely. If I undock my laptop my screen really doesn’t have enough pixels to work with MS. (My fault for getting the small one.)
I looked into getting a Windows tablet but the cost seemed quite high. But I have an iPad with a high resolution screen and found that by using Microsoft (the other MS) Remote Desktop, I could run MS on my laptop see an entire page of one of my scores on my iPad and interact with it reasonably well. (I’m using a third part “pencil” for this.)
It’s not as smooth as it is with my laptop, MIDI keyboard and monitor, but it does allow me to try new ideas away from my office (often this means when I’m having my morning coffee in bad).
And both MS 3 and MS 4 work equally well. I’d be happy share details with anyone who’s interested.
Comments
About your laptop not having enough pixels. I run MuseScore on a 10 inch screen without issue.
In reply to About your laptop not having… by bobjp
With an aspect ration of 16:9 and Windows 11 eating a strip along the bottom, the effective height is 6.25 inches. The default display settings include a scaling factor which increases the text size to be more readable, but that enlarges the control area at the top to almost 2 inches.
I can fiddle with that but it still leaves a rather small area for the score itself. I can display 2 pages side by side, but see only the top 2/3 of them. If I put it in tablet mode and change the orientation to portrait, it's better, but quite narrow. And, of course, I can't use the laptop's keyboard.
The iPad's 4:3 aspect ratio, and its higher resolution, is a better fit, even though its diagonal size is about 2/3 that of the laptop's.
In reply to With an aspect ration of 16… by stephencbryant
Just trying to figure out what happens on your laptop. This is how I learn things. The default resolution setting on my Surface Go 10 inch screen is much higher than my old 17 inch Toshiba laptop. On either system, I have to set the size of the music page to only be able to see the top 2/3 of a page. Depends on how many staves there are. There are text size issues on the Surface. It's closer to 4:3. I know I said I run it without issue. I mean I can still use it. It's not the same between my two systems because of aspect ratio.
In reply to Just trying to figure out… by bobjp
That's very interesting. I had been looking at a Surface Go 2 and wondered if its resolution would be sufficient. Being able to see only part of the page doesn't sound ideal, but if you switch to vertical scroll mode (they probably call it something else), perhaps that's enough for "off road" work. By the way, I've compared MuseScore 3 to MuseScore 4 and there are, no surprise, pros and cons - but no big differences.
My iPad Pro is aging. I wonder if Best Buy would allow me to install MuseScore on a Surface before I buy :)
In reply to That's very interesting. I… by stephencbryant
Max ( and recommended) resolution on my Surface is 1800x1200. You probably would need to mess with dpi. If I had it to do over, I would get one with a bigger screen.
Still not understanding why your laptop doesn't work for you.
In reply to Max ( and recommended)… by bobjp
It's because one dimension of the screen is quite small relative to the other. It's an odd thing: it looks perfectly fine as a laptop with a keyboard, but I can flip the keyboard around and use it as a tablet. In portrait mode it looks rather strange - tall and skinny.
With the two dimensions so different, in landscape mode, a lot of the control bar is just unused space, while in portrait mode, the same is true of the palette bar.
I'm trying an HP tablet that runs Windows. It's small (11" diagonal) but MuseScore fits it better. In portrait mode I can easily see a whole page. The control bar is a bit cramped, but very usable. In landscape mode, I can The nice thing is that it is something I can put on my piano work right there (it's better for making adjustments than large scale editing).
Good to know, thanks for sharing
Nice! I did something similar while teaching using a third party access app called Splashtop during the very early days of MuseScore. I've also done this using Chrome Remote Desktop. In my case, I then also connected my iPad to a projection display system so my theory class could follow along, which added yet another wrinkle. As you say, it's not necessarily as smooth as running "live", but it's pretty amazing it works at all.