Practice Mode on Laptop

• Dec 23, 2019 - 14:59

I read "MuseScore introduces mobile practice mode" (musescore.com/groups/musescore-updates-and-statuses/discuss/5037636), which states:
"Every day hundreds of thousands of people use MuseScore services for practicing music, learning scores or preparing for performances. [...] We’ve been recently putting a lot of effort into improving the product for performers, not only on the website but in the mobile app.

I searched the handbook and the community forums for "practice mode", "read along mode", and "play-along", but I can't find anything about how to enter practice mode on the desktop/laptop app. Does it exist? If not now, when?

I keep trying to excite my son about how he can learn thru Musescore, and it always ends in frustration because every time we open a new score we need to change the display in a dozen ways, etc.

I know there are many different screen sizes and ratios, but it would be great if scores automatically opened in a way that's perfect for play-along.
* Full-screen
* Read-only
* detects orientation (I put my laptop on its side on my piano - same orientation as printed sheet music, portrait not landscape. For guitar, landscape mode is better, because it's hard to get a laptop on its side.)

Possibly relevant:
- my laptop flexes 180° so I can put it on my piano. My son's does not.
- my laptop has a touchscreen. My son's does not.

Thanks

Comments

• Dec 23, 2019 - 15:13

Practice mode is a feature of the closed source commercial mobile player apps only.
No such specific feature has been included into the open and free desktop notation software. Depending on your needs you can use the loop playback feature together with continuous or single page view and the play panel to control how the score is viewed and how fast it is played back.

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• Dec 24, 2019 - 20:05

Is MuseScore from the "Windows Store" the same as the desktop software? I installed both. They install in different locations, and have different symbols (desktop is a blue circle with MU, windows store version is a blue square with MU).
My laptop is a touchscreen and has "tablet mode".
Everything appears the same no matter which version I open.
Other option: try an emulator to open Android apps on Windows 10. www.digitaltrends.com/computing/how-to-run-android-apps-in-windows/

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• Jul 13, 2020 - 11:57

If indeed “Every day hundreds of thousands of people use MuseScore services for practicing music”, then many must be using a laptop or a desktop. It's strange that there is no plugin for that, as we have plugins for all kinds of special needs. Or does anyone know of one?

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• Aug 13, 2020 - 11:25

I found the same problem moving from mobile to laptop. You can do the following:

Switch from Page View to Continuous View
Open the Timeline Panel
Select the bars you want to loop
Hit play

Open the play panel to adjust tempo/metronome e.t.c

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• Aug 13, 2020 - 12:33

shewison's solution alas is only a solution to a small part of the problem, and one i was already using. The problem is:
"every time we open a new score we need to change the display in a dozen ways" - including changes not mentioned by shewison.

I know there are many different screen sizes and ratios, but it would be great if scores automatically opened in practice mode / a way that's perfect for play-along.
* Full-screen
* Read-only
* detects orientation

As Sebaudia wrote: "If indeed “Every day hundreds of thousands of people use MuseScore services for practicing music”, then many must be using a laptop or a desktop. It's strange that there is no plugin for that."

Marc Sabatella wrote: "The desktop software is optimized for creating music, the mobile apps for "consuming" it."

Tablet screens are smaller than laptops. For that reason I bought a laptop that also has tablet mode, and i've installed both the desktop and tablet versions of musescore, but neither is optimized for "consuming" the music.

For instruments which play only one note at a time, then tablet screens might be big enough (perhaps not for faster music), or beginner piano might work on a tablet, but if you're playing intermediate or advanced piano, or if you're leading a band, tablet screens are too small.

Besides, many people can't afford both a laptop and a tablet so they choose one. For many, the choice is a laptop. That applies both to purchases as well as to traveling around town or long distances.

I keep trying to excite my son about how he can learn thru Musescore, and it always ends in frustration because every time we open a new score we need to change the display in a dozen ways, etc.

Why not let the user decide whether files open in editing mode or practice mode?

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• Aug 13, 2020 - 15:19

"Why not let the user decide whether files open in editing mode or practice mode?" - that's a valid question. But in order to begin to consider this, we'd need a better understanding of what you think "practice mode" should look like, how many of those features are already present versus would need to be developed from scratch, etc.

So far the main concrete thing I am seeing here is the desire to force scores to open in Continuous view rather than whatever view they were actually saved in. Since continuous view already exists as a feature, that much would be easy enough to make happen. But we don't actually have a read-only mode, so that would need to be created. I would find that useful as well but I wouldn't want it tied to continuous view, my use case would be totally different (for example, to use handouts I have created in classroom demonstrations). But once that feature existed, a "practice mode" that forced both of those options on starts to make sense.

The state of the timeline can already be remembered if your workspace is set up to remember GUI components, BTW.

So the question is, what else, specifically, would people like to see?

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• Aug 13, 2020 - 18:10

Some thoughts occur to me:

What the OP wants is already doable in the mobile app. The problem being the size of the tablet. As well as being limited to the website music.

I'm not sure the desktop software needs a play-along mode.

And then there is the play-along mode, itself. How important is it to play along with sound coming from the device? It might be helpful sometimes, and other times, a hindrance. If sound is less important than there are other things that can be done. You can save anything you can open in Musescore as a PDF. Open that PDF in Acrobat on your laptop. You can view it full page in any orientation you want. You can get a $25 foot switch that acts like a mouse that you use to turn pages. These are available in usb or bluetooth. This works on an android tablet, also.

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• Aug 13, 2020 - 18:55

But then you have to have a working printer with cartridges that actually have ink in them. Then you have to find the cable that connects it to your computer because for some reason your bandwidth is almost non existent because everything is hooked up so you can work from home. And wouldn't you know it, you ran out of paper yesterday, and just now found out when you got all the other stuff squared away and then hit "print".

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• Aug 13, 2020 - 20:07

Audio playback helps when sight-reading music that we don't already know well.
I mean this in 3 cases:
1. Pre-listening to music before playing
2. Playing back the other instruments in a multi-instrument piece while you play.
3. Playing back your instrument while you play/sing.
The 3rd case may not be very useful for piano or other fixed-pitch instruments, but for singing or violin I imagine it would give immediate pitch feedback - in addition to volume feedback.

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