Finished redoing my jazz compositions (50+ of them!) in MuseScore

• Nov 13, 2011 - 23:30

For anyone interested, I've just finished creating MuseScore versions of 50+ of my jazz compositions. It's something I've been working on in the background for the last few months ever since 1.1 came out, but I decided to really accelerate the process the couple of weeks. I've been uploading them to musescore.com as I go, so here is a link to the full set:

http://musescore.com/marcsabatella/sets/leadsheets

I also wrote up a blog article on the experience.

I thought these might prove useful as models for people wondering how to do various things in MuseScore. If it's something that you'd want to do in a lead sheet, chances are, it came up for me at some point. Really, most of what is there is covered in the tutorials I had put together when 1.1 was released, but sometimes it helps to see more examples of what can be done. If you want to know how something was done that isn't covered in the tutorials and that you can't figure out from examining the file in MuseScore, just ask (maybe start a new thread in the Support forum).

Here's a sample page:

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Comments

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

I've been a fan of yours for years, since your great jazz textbook hit the Internet. Once again you are adding value to the community. Here are some screencaps of a project I've been working on: transcribing a 90 minute rock opera from the CD and turning it into working parts. Without the lead sheet plugin it would have been impossible.

http://a2.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-prn1/557005_418652124817223_2…

http://sphotos.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-prn1/548803_416604495021986_2647936…

I had to overuse the chord text boxes for all the little instructions under the staff. Would like the ability to drop a text box wherever I please.. but anyway.. thanks Musescore and Marc!

In reply to by bpatterson

Thanks for the kind words! Looks like a cool project on the rock opera.

Not sure what you are asking regarding text boxes - is there some reason you can't use Staff Text for that? I have the Jazz Lead Sheet template set up so that ordinary Staff Text ( (Ctrl-T) goes below the staff and System Text (Shift-Ctrl-T) goes above. The new Jazz Combo template I provided for 1.2 uses this same convention, but be aware that the real difference between Staff and System text is that the latter will appear on all parts where the former appears just on the staff it is attached to.

In reply to by bpatterson

Great! You might want to check out my tutorials on lead sheets, then, as most likely there is other stuff covered that might not know about: http://musescore.org/en/node/11723 and http://musescore.org/en/node/11726

I notice also you are using "m" for minor and "dim" for diminshed. The default template doesn't recognize these abbreviations (it uses "mi" and "o" ) and as a result, chords using those abbreviations will look strange ("b" not turned into the flat sign, etc) and they won't transpose correctly or export to MusicXML. See http://musescore.org/en/handbook/chord-name for more on the various options available. If you wish to continue using those particular abbreviations, you could try switch to the stdchords.xml style in style / edit general style / chordnames, and then force MuseScore to reparse the chords by double click then and hitting space (you could double click the first then just hold space while it cycles through all the chords). The flat sign used in this chord style will be the "generic" flat sign used, though, not the MuseJazz version. I don't think there is a direct way to get the abbreviations you are using while getting the full use of the MuseJazz font. But you could edit the chordname style file to get that if you really need it.

Hi Marc,

I've been using Finale for a while, and I'm not sure if I could do all the complex things with MuseScore, but for many people they don't need them.

Your songs I listened to are really nice though, and for beginners I just might point them to your galleries because it's great how they play right away!

The Finale player has similar ability, it even transposes and prints, I think, but well, if what you're using is really free, wow!

Thanks a lot, and thanks to the MuseScore people too. Oh! You can check out my scores: http://teovincent4.com

Teo

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