MuseScore 4 is OUT NOW!

• Dec 14, 2022 - 00:17

UPDATE - March 13, 2023: MuseScore 4.0.2 has now been released.

This patch release release fixes loads of issues, and also includes some important usability improvements as well as a ton of engraving enhancements.

All the details about this version can be found here on Github.


UPDATE - January 13, 2023: MuseScore 4.0.1 has now been released (see changelog).


This announcement is available in other languages. See links to translated versions below.


Hey everyone,

Today, we are delighted to announce the release of MuseScore 4 along with our new orchestral playback library Muse Sounds!.


To install:

  1. Visit https://musescore.org/en/download
  2. Click the main Download button for your operating system
  3. This will download the Muse Hub installer, which allows you to install MuseScore 4 and Muse Sounds

Linux users need to click the "Download AppImage" button to install MuseScore, and also the text link "Muse Hub (for Muse Sounds)" directly below in order to get Muse Sounds.


For those wanting to download a Windows or Mac version of MS4 without the Muse Hub, please use the appropriate text links at https://musescore.org/en/download.


Watch our release video

YouTube video: Announcing MuseScore 4 - a gigantic overhaul!

What's new in MuseScore 4?

  • Our new orchestral plugin, Muse Sounds
  • Saving to cloud on MuseScore.com is now working
  • An improved system for publishing to MuseScore.com
  • A simple toggle for switching between playback profiles (MS Basic and MuseSounds)

An entirely new interface
- 400 new icons
- customisable colours
- A new Home tab which includes recent scores, plugins and video tutorials
- A new, friendlier onboarding process


An engraving overhaul
- New system for horizontal spacing
- New system for slurs and ties
- New system for beaming and cross-staff beaming
- New, heavily revised version of Leland and Leland text
- System objects can appear on more than one system (although this is currently only available on certain templates)
- Hundreds of other smaller fixes and optimisations for lyrics, articulation placement, tremolo marks and general positioning
- For a more comprehensive explanation of the engraving changes in MS4, please see this document. https://musescore.org/en/node/330793


Multiple workflow improvements
- The Properties panel (formerly the inspector) is now much more responsive, easier to understand and filled with lots of useful options
- The capabilities of the note input bar have been expanded and the toolbar itself is now much easier to customise
- Customisable 'Tempo Lines', (accel, rit, etc.) that work with playback
- Scrollbars on the score
- Parts are easier to discover, edit and alter (using the new 'Instruments' panel)
- The experience of setting up a new score has been simplified to be more welcoming to new users
- Improved instrument definitions
- A new tuplets toggle
- New articulation buttons
- A new toggle for cross staff beaming


A new mixer

laptop_desktop_2x.png


VST instruments and effects support
- Please note that we will be building additional tools, like automation and MIDI mapping in later releases, once MS4 is out


Accessibility improvements
- A new keyboard navigation system that follows best practices to allow users to quickly move around the interface
- Improved screen reader support (in particular, we really need people to test and provide feedback on this)
- An editable high contrast mode


Incompatible features we will re-introduce in later releases

  • There are other features that have not played nicely with our new systems at all, and which will need to be replaced in later releases, namely: the plugin creator (which we want to rewrite completely as a priority), the score comparison tool and the 'Documents side-by-side' feature.

Read this announcement in other languages

These translations have kindly been provided by members of our community:

Or you can use Google Translate to view it in other languages.


Comments

It's been a few months since Muse Sounds was officially released and I was wondering if there is still work being done on it? For example, is there a plan to implement fixed velocity/manual velocity adjustments to Muse Sounds? Because right now, articulations and dynamics are incredibly inconsistent. This is most noticeable when writing/transcribing chamber music (e.g. imbalanced sounds and clumsy articulations) .

In reply to by Atimony12

"This is most noticeable when writing/transcribing chamber music (e.g. imbalanced sounds and clumsy articulations) "

Absolutely. Yes all of the above - also silent highest range notes. It sounds fantastic until suddenly it doesn't. I know it is on the to do list, so first every week and now once a month I hopefully download a daily beta, but it has remained the same since the early 4.0 release.

Best regards. Will the audio effects in the mixer of the Linux version be useful in the future? Support for vst and lv2? Will this vitally important part only serve on windows and mac? Thank you for your answers.

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In reply to by discarlosrobl1

VST for Linux is listed on GitHub as being a priority for 4.1, and "contributions from the community are very welcome". The effects on Windows and macOS are already based on VST, so presumably that would come for free. But also a new aux send system and native reverb is being worked on, and what's there so far is already working on Linux. LV2 is also listed as being on the roadmap for 4.1. I guess it will come down to how much the community steps in to actually implement this...

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

I can understand the need for community support for LV2, as it isn't a cross platform function of the software. But I think it's unfortunate that the implementation of a foundational cross platform function for VST is essentially being put on the shoulders of the community. Shouldn't the core development team prioritize VST on Linux themselves? As has been conveyed before, it appears that Linux is second class with the team appearing to suggest that the Linux community (many of whom are users and not developers) are on the hook for basic functionality of an incomplete software.

I'm just not comfortable with the implication that the Linux distribution doesn't fully work and it's the community's fault.

In reply to by cfirwin3

I can't speak for anyone on the core team or speak to the question of what policy might be going forward. But I've been part of the MuseScore development community for over ten years now, and I have to say, I'm kind of perplexed by the attitude that the development of MuseScore has ever been anything but the responsibility of the entire community. I mean, sure, there has always been a core team developing important functionality, and we're eternally grateful for them, but huge chunks of the code have pretty much always come from the community. The core team does what they can, everyone else pitches in to tackle what they can - this is how it's been since the very first release.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

I suppose the question is, what puts VST for Linux outside of "important functionality" while VST in Mac/Win is apparently critical? The only differentiating element is Linux itself. As I said in the previous post, I can completely understand why LV2 is pitched to the community. I don't think that it's fair to paint my comments as an 'attitude' that is somehow out of touch with the history of development. The effects rack is a placeholder in Linux with no concrete promise for implementation. Doesn't that bother you? It's a completely fair criticism, and it is independently shared by users.

In reply to by cfirwin3

Again, I can't answer in any official capacity - only as a community developer who has been involved with the project since the first release and has been in the computer industry for close to half a century at this point.

My answer is, same as how any other such decisions are made and always have been made in MuseScore or anywhere else - a pretty straightforward matter of cost/benefit. Features used by 95% of users have always gotten more attention than features used by only 5%. That doesn't mean lesser-used features aren't important at all, but sometimes when decisions need to be made because it turns out supporting the feature turns out to be more unexpectedly difficult (as was the case for VST on Linux), that's a deciding factor in how the features are prioritized.

Decisions like this are not about singling out Linux specifically; they are about trying to quantify the number of users who might rely on a particular feature. The number of Linux users is much less than Windows, but not negligible either, so it's not like support for Linux in general would ever just be dropped. On the other hand, the percentage of users who rely on VST is also not huge on any OS, and is very likely smaller for Linux than for Windows, simply because VST support on Linux is much less than on Windows across the board (most major vendors don't provide Linux versions of their VST libraries). So you end up with a smaller percentage of a smaller percentage of users, and a higher-than-expected development effort needed to support it.

Again, it's not about singling out Linux - other features that were temporarily sidetracked affect Windows users disproportionately, others disproportionately affect Mac users. But the majority of things that were temporarily de-prioritized affect all OS's equally . Again, it's not about singling out an OS, it's just a simple matter of cost/benefit, same as virtually every similar decision made throughout the history of MsueSocre, or indeed about virtually any software, or pretty much any product period.

I'd like to address the issue of the playback - long notes, that are connected with a tie (I hope I use the correct term. it's the one connecting two notes of the same hight together to make them longer) are played twice for some reason. It should enlong the note, but it just plays the two notes as if they weren't connected. This problem is new to MS4. Am I doing something wrong or is it a known issue?

In reply to by Kurpaph

Be sure you are adding a tie, not a slur - they look similar and have adjacent buttons on the toolbar, but very different meanings. Shortctus are T for tie, S for slur. If you continue to have trouble, please ask for help on the Support forum and attach your score there so we can check it out.

Bonjour,
Musescore 4 a été mis-à-jour il y déjà plus de 5 mois et il a apporté des améliorations indéniables par rapport à musescore 3. Pourtant, je ne l'utilise pas car il est touujours impossible de lire les partitions sur iPad (pas de problème sur PC et Win 10) .
Pour être plus précis lors de mon dernier essai (hier) , j'ai pu lire une partition dans "Mes partitions" sur l'iPad mais dès que j'ai demandé de l'enregistrer dans le "Songbook", la page est devenue blanche non seulement dans le "Songbook" mais aussi dans "Mes Enregistrements" même après l'avoir effacé du "Songbook".
NB: Dans "Mes enregistrements" la page est blanche mais le fichier reste enregistré et es infos restent accessibles.

Travaillez-vous sur ce bug? Merci.

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Worst software release ever. Full of bugs and bloat. Freezes for 5 seconds on save. Ctrl+I no longer italicizes text. Various shortcuts have changed for no reason (such as "+" for adding a tie). Last night I even managed to get a corrupted measure error when saving. This release is NOT fit for production, please revert back to MuseScore 3.6.0 as MS4 scores are incompatible.

In reply to by g-liu

You can still change shortcuts like I have. Nonetheless, I still use MS 3.6 as my main for piano...I'm used to it and it has a functioning keyboard and pedaling. I'll use MuseScore 4 more when they improve the piano experience. Also I like the interface of 3.6 more, where all the options are visible - in MS 4 many options are hidden behind other buttons and things to click, which makes it even harder to find what you're looking for compared to just scrolling down a list of options.

Also if you made a score in MS 4 and want to move it to MS 3.6 just export it as a music XML file and import it into MS 3.6

In reply to by g-liu

Sorry to hear you are having problems! But, it seems there might be some confusion.

It’s perfectly normal that saving takes a few seconds. If you have a score where you believe something is going wrong, please start a new thread and attach it along with steps to reproduce the problem.

Only small handful of shortcuts changed, but - not without reason! In the of tie, it was to make room for accidental shortcuts, which never existed before. You are certainly welcome to customize them if you find that to be problematic for whatever reason.

Corruptions happen in all release of MuseScore, but prior to MU4, you wouldn’t find out until the next time you open the score, by which time it’s normally too late to remember what triggered it. Now it’s much better, catching the corruption immediately and this giving you the opportunity to fix it.

F**K MUSESCORE 4
it crashes constantly, doenst let me restore my progress, and every update it crashes more and more often and cant do the basic stuff its supposed to. stick with 3 at least it works

Edit: i apologize for my language as this is a free platform and volunteers are running it. im extremely grateful that this software exists even though i get very frustrated with it. Ive just been frustrated with numerous crashes every time i try to make a chart for a song. It seems each time i try to make a chart i find a new glitch and i get hopeful after an update that it will just work but i cant reliably do anything with musescore 4. Im tapping out! lol musescore 3 was fine for me, at least it worked and playback didn't freeze after every 20 mins :/

In reply to by nliebert49

Sounds like you’re having some sort of iss,e but without more information we cannot help. Please start a new thread in the Support forum and describe the problem in more detail (separate threads for separate problem), and then we’re happy to help. If you have a score and specific steps that produces a crash, that’s a bug for sure, so once you let us know how to reproduce it and we can confirm the crash, then we can show you how to report the bug so it is fixed for the next update (as crashes virtually always are).

As for restoring progress, of course you should be saving often, but even if you forget, there is an autosave facility that guarantees you won’t lose more than the last three minutes of work. If you’re having trouble using that, again, please start a new thread and describe the issue in more detail, and we’re happy to help.

But when asking for help, please be respectful of the volunteers offering their services for free and use polite language.

In reply to by nliebert49

I also request you use respectful tone. In my 71 years on this planet not once has a problem been solved faster or more competently through anger. Also you are getting this product for free.

As for myself I'm running the software on Ubuntu Linux and have had zero crashes in this or the last two V 4 updates so I also suspect you have a system/OS issue and only by providing details about your system is there any hope of solving your problem. Typically there are more issues with drivers and MIDI software/hardware on Windows and the user has to install and maintain these things and work with compatibility issues. On Ubuntu the OS comes complete with all the software needed to run MuseScore out of the box.

I hope the next rollout will be tested more thoroughly before it's released. Typically, programmers have little or no control over that part of a project (but they should). It's up to the team leaders to make sure a product is ready to put out for mass consumption. But I cringe whenever I see a user comment that is rude, disrespectful, and unreasonable.

In reply to by artoffugue333

There are things programmers have no control over which are the user's responsibility, OS, Drivers, Malware, Antivirus and mult AV conflicts, Prerequisites, system performance and compatibility, All products of this type are more difficult to support on Windows where MS has locked down much of entertainment and productivity to their own software. As I mentioned above, Ubuntu comes out of the box with all the required support for this product which requires far less skill for the user. When the dev asked questions to begin the trouble shooting process, no response. If the product was so bugged it was unusable that would be an argument, but in my case I use it 4-10 hours a day with no crashes. User skill is yet another issue. None of these things can be prevented if the programmer held onto it and tested it for many years.

You might have noticed there is a beta forum where people can get an advanced pre-release to test and respond. This is very typical in the open source/free software industry. Do I need to repeat "free"? Which is not an excuse but an insight into the unrewarded time and generosity of the developers with minimal risk to the community.

In every product there are edge cases which cannot be predicted.

If the developer ignored complaints that would be one thing but the response here was immediate.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

Marc, you are right. I'm sorry about not posting more on github. I've posted a few on there and am routinely checking on their status... when I get the chance. I try not to submit a GH request unless I'm fairly sure it's not a repeat. That takes time because there are so many requests and comments due to technical issues in v4.

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