Need Help setting up Midi USB Keyboard for Input

• Dec 7, 2017 - 16:51

I installed Musescore 2.02 ( and also tried 2.1) onto Linux/Ubuntu 16.04 . I cant seem to be able to get my USB MIDI Keyboard (M-Audio Keystation 49e) to be used for note entry into Musescore.
I suspect the problem is that for some reason my install has no menu bar across the top, where I can select preferences. Without the menu bar, there seems to be no way to adjust preferences, such as MIDI input method ( i.e. ALSA, etc.)
All of the Youtube, etc resources show a menu bar where this can be configured.
Where'd the menu bar go? Is this a Linux specific issues? I cant figure this one out?

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• Dec 7, 2017 - 20:10

I can right click and see all the toolbars that are available. They are all enabled. But still no menu bar across the very top of the application (i.e. File Edit View etc...). I wonder if this is Linux specific. But your post helped, the link you provided had another link on how to launch musescore from command line in Linux.

https://musescore.org/en/handbook/command-line-options

It appears you can pass a command line option that specifies the MIDI input protocol ( i.e. ALSA, JACK, etc)
I'll try that tonight...

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• Dec 8, 2017 - 17:17

WOO HOOO!!!, finally got my Midi keybord working with musescore on a Linux OS (Ubuntu 16.04 LTS)
No need to run the JACK interface. I launch Musescore from command line with this option:

mscore -I -a alsa

The -I is optional, but it shows the midi codes received on the console.
The -a alsa is the default ( I think) midi driver in Linux, so no need to run Jack.
Hope this helps someone else....

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• Aug 13, 2021 - 10:37

Just to update this for Ubuntu 20.04 and Musescore 3:

The snap version of Musescore (in the "Ubuntu software" store/catalogue) doesn't seem to work with a MIDI keyboard, no matter which of the hacks on this page I tried.

Instead, use the stable version (currently 3.2.3+dfsg1-4build1 Revision d2d863f) from the Debian repository by typing, at a Terminal prompt:

sudo apt install musescore3

If the package is not present on your Ubuntu install, it will flag up with an error message and tell you how to get it - but on my v20.04 distro it was already there.

You can then run Musescore 3 as per horvath62's command above, except that the -l argument is not supported (it told me when I typed it in!). So:

mscore3 -a alsa

And then it works like a charm :-)

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• Aug 13, 2021 - 20:29

Not that I know of, but I haven't tried the AppImage from the Musescore website. I see now that Musescore say "recommended" for that.

I was just passing on my own experience - which was that initially I found Musescore in the "Ubuntu software" app on Ubuntu 20.04 and installed it, but couldn't get Musescore to talk to my MIDI keyboard for note input.

horvath62's suggestion in this thread to use "mscore" (and "mscore3") at the command line produced an error message; I guess because the Ubuntu software release is packaged using snap, so the option to add command line arguments -l -a alsa etc. wasn't there.

Maybe typing

snap/bin/musescore3 -l -a alsa might have worked. I didn't try it.

However installing from the Debian repository seemed an easy workaround, and it got me on the road again with note input.

I should add, I'm not a Linux guru - only migrated across from Windows earlier this year, and still feeling my way :-)

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• Aug 13, 2021 - 23:13

The AppImage is the only version we build and test and support ourselves. Other versions are built by third parties and may or may not work well, plus they are often out of date (in this case, over two years out of date). Unless you are a guru and have a special reason to need to use an unsupported older version, definitely best to use the AppImage.

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