some things we want back in MS 4

• Dec 15, 2022 - 21:26

I am really hyped about MS 4 and all in all I see it vastly improving our lives (at least for me that uses it in a daily basis). All that considered, I miss some features from MS 3 that I hope will be included in later releases and fixes.

  1. Being able to adjust the width of palletes, properties and generally all panels.

  2. All the placement of panels and dimensions should be saved in the Workplace you've introduced in MS 4

  3. Being able to drag elements from the score into our custom palletes.

  4. Being able to "Set" any parameter we want to the style properties. In MS 3 there was a capital S next to settings such as line thickness in inspector. Line thickness hasn't this option in MS 4.

  5. Being able to change a text properties. e.g. write a custom text that can enable the pizz. midi channel in violins. I know you've made custom texts that do that for many instruments (guitar, strings) but I personally want the freedom to do it myself and not copy paste from palletes.

  6. Being able to adjust the "stacking order" of elements in the score. I mean I get it that it is not used by most people, so you might want to consider having a more advanced view mode for things like this because they are key to professional and detailed engraving.

  7. Not seeing the background of the elements when dragged and dropped in the score from palletes (purely aesthetical)

  8. Having a dark theme with black elements and white background in the palletes (not inverted) as an option.

Now some bugs that I observed and ought to be fixed in the future.

  1. I customised my palletes and now I opened the app again proportions & scaling in the palletes are all over the place.

  2. if you put many volta lines that do not make sense logically, musescore is confused and doesn't even play the measure that is selected.

To clarify myself, I do not consider MS 4 worse than 3. It is difficult to describe how big of an overhaul MS 4 really is and the impact it has in its users and to have that for free is a divine blessing and only possible thanks to the wonderful team developing and supporting it.
From this point onward I see no reason for musescore not being the first choice for a music engraving software. On a final thought I want to add that since more and more composers (myself included), and many that self-publish work with musescore, I think that the next big improvement and the only thing that musescore is lacking a lot in is anything that has to do with contemporary notation (pictorial scores, custom curves, lines, arrow lines that are customisable, cluster notation, and many more that are achieved only with "tricks").
Keep up the amazing work musescore team & musescore community.


Comments

(3) Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+Drag still seems to work for me to add customized score elements to a palette

(4) Set as Style is in the "three dots" button for the setting (if available)

(5) You could try using the predefined palette text, then double click it into edit mode and change it to whatever you want?

(6) Properties > Appearance > Arrange functions should have you covered there. It doesn't show the numeric underlying value, but does allow sending things to front/back

About bug 2: feel free to share the score, but MuseScore is quite smart in interpreting volta's. More likely the result of them doesn't as much "confuse" MuseScore as it rather tells players (including humans) to always skip the measure you chose to try to start playback from. Because you explicitly (via the volta's) ask for that measure to not be played, MuseScore dutifully doesn't do that.

1 & 2 very much agree. It's a little thing, but literally the first thing I tried to do when I opened MuseScore 4 was resize the width of the palettes and couldn't and it makes the whole screen feel wrong when you're used to it being a certain way. Also my workflow involves using a keyboard shortcut to show/hide the properties (inspector), and now it shows up on the left side even when you dock it on the right. It should stay where you last left it.

But also I totally agree that a lot is improved and I'm very excited about 4!

Two things which, I assume unintentionally, have disappeared from MS3 in MS4 which I find is a disastrous loss for me:

  • Reminder dynamics, such as (f), should leave the dynamic as it is, not lower it, as for some mysterious reason it now does in MS4.

  • Flute trills with the Musescore Sounds should playback as clear trills, as they did in MS3, not just as I slight stutter, as they do now in MS4.

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