MuseScore Studio is dedicated to supporting Finale users
MuseScore Studio: A New Alternative to Finale
Historically, MuseScore Studio was developed as an alternative to Finale, designed to be simpler and easier to pick up for first time users. We were always aware that by doing this, the experience of MuseScore Studio would be quite different from Finale but believed this approach was appropriate, given that composers typically prefer to stick with the tools they are most familiar with. We did not expect or try to lure Finale users to MuseScore Studio. However, with MakeMusic announcing that they will no longer support existing users of Finale - a significant problem given the rapid rate of change in operating systems - we recognise the need to put concerted effort into making the transition from Finale to MuseScore Studio much smoother.
Supporting Finale's Features & Workflows
We have begun drafting plans to support common workflows found in Finale, particularly note entry and shortcuts. Our ultimate goal is that when a Finale user opens MuseScore Studio, they can select a 'Finale' profile, which adjusts some of the core mechanics so that the experience feels familiar. Another key addition we plan to make is an analogue for the Speedy Entry tool and additional support for Garritan. With this in mind, we'll be talking to Finale users, putting out surveys and polls and taking note of conversations and requests that take place on our forum.
Importing Finale Files to MuseScore Studio via MusicXML
Over the last few years, Muse has heavily invested in MusicXML import capabilities for both Sibelius and Finale files. This effort partly addresses an internal challenge, as hundreds of thousands of scores in our catalog were in an incompatible format. While we acknowledge that MusicXML does not always yield perfect results, we are confident that MuseScore Studio is the application most likely to retain the details of your original .mus file as accurately as possible.
Furthermore, we've been developing 'smart' conversion systems in MuseScore that identify problems in imported MusicXML scores and apply fixes. We intend to continue investing in this area and will soon publish step-by-step guides on how to achieve the best results. Since MuseScore Studio is free, give it a try and find out for yourself!
Ongoing Professional Support and Dedication to Quality
It's true that in its early years, MuseScore was rough around the edges and often lacked features found in apps like Sibelius and Finale. However, for the past five years, our professional team of designers, developers, and engravers has been rapidly enhancing every aspect of MuseScore Studio, with the goal of making it the best notation app in the world.
In particular, we've worked diligently to dispel the myth that "Free = Bad Quality." We're confident that our progress over the last two years demonstrates a level of commitment and advancement unmatched by any other product. If you haven't yet, check out our YouTube channel to see how quickly and ambitiously we've been evolving.
Naturally, there are still areas where MuseScore Studio is in need of improvement and the transformation is still not yet complete. However, if you take a look at MuseScore 3.5 (released four years ago) and compare it to 4.4 (released this week), our trajectory will be immediately apparent.
Why Is MuseScore Free? How Is Development Supported?
To get a sense of the seriousness of our team, it's important to note that our parent company, Muse, is the largest sheet music publisher in the world, having acquired Hal Leonard at the beginning of 2024. We generate revenue from the sale of sheet music through platforms like Sheet Music Direct and MuseScore.com. To ensure the continued success of these sites, we need a top-notch notation tool that ensures our sheet music is of the highest quality. Our goal is to develop a single, unified format for sheet music, which allows us to finally overcome decades of compatibility and support issues. By having our own notation tool, we no longer need to depend on other services and can reach a level of quality and consistency unmatched by any other company. Therefore, MuseScore Studio is not only used by millions of community members worldwide but also serves as a critical tool for Hal Leonard publishers and other Muse products too. No other company in the digital notation space has as much vested interest in improving and maintaining a notation application as we do. MuseScore Studio is at the heart of our company. Moreover, we are also supported by 100's of community volunteers who continuously add refinements and fixes with every release and we have already announced our intention to support a new plugin format to expand the possibilities for what community members can build.
Apart from that, MuseScore Studio is published under an open-source license (GPL3), which ensures that the code will always be available for others to use and modify for their own purposes. Muse is committed to the spirit of open-source development, as evidenced not only by our support of MuseScore Studio but also of Audacity. Additionally, our mission to grow the largest ecosystem of musicians in the world is why making MuseScore Studio free is so crucial - it allows us to reach as many composers as possible. The other advantage of GPL3 is that MuseScore can never be shut down because our code is available to the public.
MuseScore as Part of a Comprehensive Ecosystem for Musicians and Composers
MuseScore Studio is not an isolated application. It is part of a growing ecosystem of valuable services. For example, this year, we've started investing in new educational tools like MuseClass, which aims to enhance the experience of teachers and students. We offer services like Arrange Me, used by thousands of composers to sell their work on sites within our ecosystem. Then there's MuseScore.com, which provides free cloud storage for your scores and serves as a portfolio to showcase your work publicly. We're also in the process of reimagining Audacity to better cater to musicians' needs, ensuring future compatibility with MuseScore Studio.
Our Engraving Quality Is Already Superior to Finale, and We're Not Done Yet!
Another myth we've encountered is that MuseScore's layout and engraving quality is subpar compared to Sibelius and Finale. The opposite is true. While Finale and Sibelius have essentially halted engraving improvements over the last decade, we've been putting more effort into this area than anything else. Automatic placement is a particular area of focus for us. When you place something on a score, it should find the most elegant initial placement, avoiding all types of collisions. Also note that MuseScore studio already supports multiple Finale notation fonts.
Although there is still work to do—specifically a major refactoring of our notation model to support tuplets crossing barlines, shared staves, and various other modern requirements—we are actively working on these improvements right now.
Here is an example of what MuseScore Studio can already easily do. Please also bear in mind that this score required very few manual adjustments.
We have the best playback in the world
Another of our superpowers is our playback engine and world-beating sample libraries. These include numerous free libraries to cover the entire orchestra, as well as Guitars and percussion. In addition, there are also competitively priced libraries from other top publishers, including Spitfire, Berlin and Cinesamples. Unlike VST libraries which require enormous amounts of setup, Muse Sounds libraries work out of the box and are incredibly simple to modify. You can also expect the ability to apply automation to Muse Sounds within the next 2 or 3 releases.
For marching band and other marching percussion composers, we've just launched Muse Drumline as well as a version of Virtual Drumline, which also makes use of our Muse Sounds technology. Check out our latest release video (link at the top of the page), which demonstrates how powerful these new tools really are.
How to get MuseScore Studio
To try out MuseScore Studio now, head over to the Download page to see the available options.
- Windows & macOS
- The main download option gives you the Muse Hub utility, which you can use to install MuseScore Studio and Muse Sounds, including Muse Drumline.
- There's also the option to download MuseScore Studio without Muse Hub if you prefer, but you'll need Muse Hub if you want to use Muse Sounds.
- Linux
- The main download option will just give you MuseScore Studio. You’ll also need to download and install Muse Sounds Manager if you want to use Muse Sounds.
- The main download option will just give you MuseScore Studio. You’ll also need to download and install Muse Sounds Manager if you want to use Muse Sounds.
Comments
I find it very strange that some MuseScore users have refused to move on past 3.6.2, and continue to use that as the standard by which they compare MuseScore against the others.
I've been hearing about the "Big four" including MuseScore since the release of 4.0.0, and every update since has been another big step forward (apart from a bit of a hiccup with 4.2.0 that was promptly fixed in 4.2.1). The latest update made a huge improvement in how voices are treated, which is the only thing standing between MuseScore Studio and Dorico's condensing features. It's only a matter of time now.
In reply to I find it very strange that… by jscaranomusic
The users that don't move on either relied on or were more comfortable with features that were axed in the refactor... which largely don't have much to do with engraving. Musescore is 90 - 120% caught up with sibelius and where finale was depending on how you look at it so if you're sticking with with 3.6.2, it's not for engraving. Likely something to do with a specific workflow (need for a specific plugin to easily make a certain type of music, or use a process), or a playback related feature one preferred. (Like control over midi, syncing with JACK, certain other controls etc.) I've been using both for those reasons.
Once Musescore gains a functional Piano Roll and full midi control, it most certainly will be able to match or outdo Dorico as well. Further Down the road, I wouldn't be surprised if the palettes could simulate a customizable version of the Dorico modes or something.
Either way, musescore is undeniably a leader in the engraving world. With immeasurable value since it's free and open source.
In reply to I find it very strange that… by jscaranomusic
I still actively used 3.6.2 as my computer was too old to properly handle version 4 (although it got better over the subsequent releases). Now I've updated my main system, however, so the likelihood of using version 3 is rapidly getting slimmer.
In reply to I find it very strange that… by jscaranomusic
Strange though you may find it, MS4 does not support the workflow and options that some scorers depend on. Hopefully by MS5 this situation will be rectified in full and these MS3.6.2/3.7.0 users will feel able to make the transition.
In reply to Strange though you may find… by yonah_ag
Most of those issues were fixed by 4.2.0, but I see a lot of people still just writing off version 4 as a whole, and even saying they haven't bothered to look at any of the updates since 4.0.0 even though the issues they complain about no longer exist.
And it's still not a fair comparison, to look at what 3.6.2 can do, and say that MuseScore is miles behind Dorico when that just isn't the case any more.
My comment was a reply to a comment that has since been deleted, which specifically mentioned people making that comparison, instead of comparing the newest version of both.
In reply to Most of those issues were… by jscaranomusic
I didn't read that anyone said musescore is miles behind Dorico (although outside of these forums that may be a prevalent misconception). I use both Ms Evolution and 4, because for me Ms4 is mainly only good for engraving, and sometimes I use musesounds to make stems for productions... Usually without engraving properly. Musescore evolution gives me the ability to make Piano Roll Changes that can copy and paste among other tools related to midi that allow me to easily export to a DAW later. And if I ever decide I want to improve the scores, I can easily do by opening the scores in Ms4.
Dorico is not really good for a full fledged production but it does have quite a few tools so that you can do all of your writing in Dorico, and easily export midi and/or stems to a DAW later for mixing/mastering.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iabeug7Ti28
You'd be looking at editing that MIDI in the DAW with MS4, and if you changed any part of the score, importing/editing again would be quite the pain.
It's not miles behind, but this kind of development is a crucial one when you're looking at playback (beyond engraving) and is either in its infancy or not in conception at all with Musescore's current development. But looking at how musescore is developing, their main priority is to make their program's engraving experience the best out of the box (I assume to meet the demands of publishing) and make enough improvements to have great playback out of the box for majority of users purposes. To that end they developed musesounds and it looks like in this update, have set it up to work with libraries they like for a small fee outside of the free ones which already create a nice performance (although tedious to control). It's great out of the box, but full productions often utilize way more than what is granted out of the box. [Which kills Sibelius]
But precise control over these things isn't needed for publishing and take a lot of care to develop anyways so in that sense, it will be a long while before we see anything like that implemented. Especially since there are other pressing matters that still take priority. Once this phase is complete, we may eventually see the demise of Dorico.
In reply to I didn't read that anyone… by speedmeteor101
Regarding the piano roll, we had intended on including it but were unable to migrate the existing version for a variety of reasons. At the moment, our plan is to refactor the underlying notation engine so that durations are completely separated from the concept of measures. In this way, a piano roll will be far more flexible and usable. If you move an arbitrary duration anywhere in the piano roll, the associated notation will be able to update accordingly.
I do understand your frustrations though. The piano roll is on our hitlist and now that we've addressed Drumline, dynamics for separate voices, etc. the list of remaining 'core' pieces of work is greatly narrowing.
I'd also just like to make the point that a lot of the reason we are implementing features in the order we have is so that the resulting application won't become laden with tech debt, eventually grinding development to a near halt, and ending up with the same situation as V3, where medium sized changes took enormous amounts of time to build.
In reply to Regarding the piano roll, we… by Tantacrul
I mainly use the piano roll to edit performance values (for rubato and the like) rather than to edit the notation so that would not quite pertain to me... but I'm sure many new users looking for a piano roll would look for that ability and I do see that most things in MS4 are fully featured and polished in implementation. So creating or leaving a half-baked or incomplete feature in MS does kind of go against you design philosophy.
Furthermore, I understand and respect the development process and do appreciate the response. It's a large undertaking and has to be handled with care (and will inevitably take a longer time due to these) so I can't blame you all for making the decisions you made. I know the 'technical debt' would just make things 10x harder to modify in the subsequent updates so I'll continue to use both MS 3.7 evolution and 4.x in the meantime for different needs. I will say that this more than outdoes sibelius and finale out of the box which will be good for most users who don't fiddle much with midi and new users looking for a great product/sound.
I honestly probably a bit salty because I wished for most of the MS4 implementations to be implemented without musesounds because of that... musesounds is beautiful and great out of the box, don't get me wrong... but for some [minority of us] users ends up being more of a handicap because we do our production elsewhere but rely on other features for export.
I would be great if a lot of these engravement and ease of access improvements could be backported to musescore 3 somehow (I love being able to show/hide instruments/parts, the intelligent behavior of the palettes and the many other upgrades to the engraving process like the 4.4 hairpin placement etc) and could work with the MS3 fluidsynth based sound engine. Although I'm sure they are too many worlds apart and don't understand the first thing about musescore's codebase.
Either way, I'll be waiting to see what you do with MS5. The engraving improvements are incredible and I can't deny that musesounds does sound nice even if I do not use it as intended. Kudos and thanks for your work. 🙏
In reply to Regarding the piano roll, we… by Tantacrul
@Tantacrul wrote
Regarding the piano roll … at the moment, our plan is to refactor the underlying notation engine so [the] piano roll will be far more flexible and usable … [and] if you move an arbitrary duration anywhere in the piano roll, the associated notation will be able to update accordingly.
“Far more flexible” sounds great, but:
You said “the associated notation will be able to update ” when the user changes a duration in the Piano Roll Editor.
That raises a very important question:
Is it intended that MS4’s new Piano Roll Editor will also allow 3.6 / 3.7’s PRE behavior when altering a "play duration" bar—aka 3.x’s LEN property? Meaning that editing a play duration bar will NOT neccessarily update the notational representation in the score—i.e. no change in the face value of the associated note?
In other words, we can still have independence between play durations and face value durations? And possibly that this behavior might be the PRE's default in MS4/5, since traditionally it was in 3.x?
To me "far more flexible" means the addition of the new feature you described while preserving the old behavior that's so important to many of us. Perhaps that's what you meant?
An audible use case:
Due to MuseScore 3's independence of play durations and face value durations I can create highly legible scores—without pointlessly over-ladening them with notation durations, and yet the score also produces Let Ring play durations that pertain precisely to the string tuning data and tablature string assignments.
Here's an example of a Courante by Robert de Visee.
In reply to Regarding the piano roll, we… by Tantacrul
IMHO: In MuseScore, piano roll is not important as a tool for entering notes but as a tool for tweaking the played durations and velocities of individual notes and humanize playback even further by drawing in tempo changes and MIDI controller changes to create a nuanced performance. If we will not have these in piano roll then I think we do not need such a piano roll at all.
Thus, "If you move an arbitrary duration anywhere in the piano roll, the associated notation will be able to update accordingly" looks to me as a wrong priority because it enables using of piano roll as a tool for entering notes instead as a tool for tweaking the performance.
In reply to IMHO: In MuseScore piano… by hstanekovic
It’s not the ‘wrong’ priority. You’re too focused on your own use case. The general rule is ‘it should work and not be half baked’ which is why we couldn’t integrate the previous piano roll.
With that in mind, when supporting a piano roll, it shouldn’t utterly break the moment you want to move a duration. That would serve the overwhelming majority of users.
In short, we’d rather delay features rather than half-build them. That’s how you compete in the majors.
In reply to It’s not the ‘wrong’… by Tantacrul
Being someone who understands both sides, for a feature marketed as a piano roll, in general, that is a feature that can be announced on a release video, it is indeed too specific a use-case. You'd be correct that in 3.7 and below, trying to enter notes with a Piano Roll is perhaps more tedious than using notation...
So the other side would be that the average user of musescore's Piano roll from 3.7 and below understands as a tool to edit velocity, length, and position of existing notes without editing notation, which works for two reasons:
1. Many users who record midi would do so live in a DAW with access to many VSTi settings, easy tweaking to midi values and performance for optimal sound, and simply export that into musescore without need for a piano roll; so users who were already in musescore messing with a PR were typically already more comfortable with notation than a piano roll. [I'd suspect that this is why Piano Roll conversations are held up until automation and the sound engine refactor is complete. So that everything can be done inside of musescore]
All in all since MS4 is in the middle of a sound system refactor, it doesn't really make sense to develop a new system that will be trashed a half year to a year after it's released, assuming it'd take half a year to develop and add an extra 2 weeks to a month to each update to maintain. Probably not competing in the majors wasting time in the long run. I know investments and partnerships are the real deal hahaha.
But still playing devil's advocate, it's not necessarily that hstanekovic is too focused on his own usecase, but that he is a longtime user of musescore [that used it]. I think that this understanding of the Piano Roll's function was natural for longtime users of musescore [that actually made use of the Piano Roll. Important Edit since some longitme users never quite got it]. In order to satisfy this use, it'd need to be called a 'note offset editor' or something like that so that it's not announcing itself as a half-baked piano roll, but a more convenient tool to provide users performance/midi control separate from notation/text. There's probably way too much going on to invest any time into something like that, but if I may, the dismissal of it as what feels like a myopic characterization of personal usecase should also be looked at in the context of the software's history. It is indeed not really a Piano Roll, but the purpose it did successfully serve would be the independence from notation that users actually use(d) it for. [Edit: So it could be seen as the 'wrong priority' for older users who have that understanding for how to use it, although it'd definitely need a new name hahaha. It's the user way of saying, "why make it so big of a task for yourselves, just give us back our notation/playback independence please! grumble, grumble" lol. Unfortunately it's likely not that simple. ]
In reply to Being someone who… by speedmeteor101
speedmeteor101 thank you for understanding and clarifications. Yes, I'm an old user of MuseScore and I would love to see tools for fine tuning the performance i.e. making the performance independent of the score. It's not about how tools will be called i.e. piano roll or automation or something different.
The score is only an approximation of what capable performers play, composers know this and they seldom try to annotate all the small details. So tools like drawing velocities, tempos, controllers values, instrument techniques and changing exact time of note start and length is what I (and many others) would love to see . However, entering notes in piano roll, instead in score, looks to me like a toy option but that's just me. Other users can and probably will find good reasons to use this.
In reply to Regarding the piano roll, we… by Tantacrul
"I'd also just like to make the point that a lot of the reason we are implementing features in the order we have is so that the resulting application won't become laden with tech debt, eventually grinding development to a near halt, and ending up with the same situation as V3, where medium sized changes took enormous amounts of time to build."
This is definitively a very good reason. Glad to read that.
Now, my reason to stay in 3.6 is the lack of basic play panel features, with "count-in" as number 1.
Is this also something on the "to do" list, but not done yet to avoid creating technical debt?
It is surely a bit naïve, but I can't see how keeping the V3 "count-in" feature would have created technical debt.
In reply to "I'd also just like to make… by frfancha
Yeah, ‘count-in’ needs to go in ASAP. Agreed.
In reply to Yeah, ‘count-in’ needs to go… by Tantacrul
Good to hear!!
Speaking of count-in ...
Not that this is the pinnacle of UI design, but it is a springboard of ideas for a revised and expanded Play Panel with count-in options. It's a Practice Panel that would appeal to music educators, students of all levels, and to dedicated and developed musicians who want to practice along with scores.
I can foresee that this type of market focus would dramatically expand MuseScore's popularity and usage because there are more students, practicing musicians and music teachers than world-class professional scorists.
In reply to Most of those issues were… by jscaranomusic
@jscaranomusic:
For me the basic plugin API and lack of PRE renders MS4 a complete non-starter. The TAB Ring plugin is vital for my scores and MS4 cannot run it. I am keeping a close watch on MS4 updates and I look forward to the day when I migrate as the UI is improved but for now I'm using MS3.7.0, a.k.a. MS3 Evolution. I only use TAB and this doesn't seem to have improved over MS3, for example the lack of a bold tab font is still the case.
beautiful, thank you so much. you are changing lives
Great read. Thanks for making composing -- and being able to hear what you've composed! -- more accessible to beginners like me, MuseScore team. Wishing you every good fortune as Finale users look for a new home.
That's really great... but we Linux users need MuseScore to be a little more dedicated to supporting Linux users first. The main program still lacks mix, effects and virtual instrument capabilities on Linux that are touted as features of the supposed cross-platform program. Now the Muse Sound Manager has fallen way behind the Muse Hub with respect to what should be freely available updates to Muse Sound libraries. All of this plus the loss of long-standing robust sync features that are now sitting idle in pull requests, waiting indefinitely for review and incorporation to the master trunk.
Don't get me wrong, contemporary M4 features are extremely powerful and represent giant leaps forward.
Linux users are clearly (in spite of what some easily frazzled support staff will say) second class users. In spite of the relatively low user share on the whole... it really should not be this way. Linux users are not merely amateur/hobbyist composers. Many of us are serious, and we deserve serious features when they are made available to Mac/Win. We also deserve to have quick review and integration of community development, even if it is for Linux only features.
Otherwise, great blog post and call out to Finale users! I haven't used Finale since I switched to MuseScore at the very beginning in the late 2000s. I (and many others) have been loyal. Court me and my Linux associates... please.
Plugins are now not working properly, it showed no name for some plugins
Excellent programme. Many thanks :-)
In reply to Excellent programme. Many… by solomons8
I agree. Many thanks :-)
This is some good news for us long time Finale users. I have been trying out Dorico and MuseScore to see which one can even do what I need it to. I took me a day and half to fix the score that I imported via MXL of my latest solo flute piece that I wrote in Finale. But I did get it to match. Still trying to figure how to make Dorico do cut aways or make invisible measures.
It would be great if it had a Finale input mode for those of us that have using that for 30+ years. But here are a few other things I miss from Finale.
Is the ability to make your own smartshapes and expressions. So much better then having to use graphics and place them. Once they are created then is easy to place all over the score quickly and save them as libraries to be used again. This would be really helpful as since you don't seem to have as complete set of articulations and expressions as Finale does.
I really liked staff styles and to be able to make custom styles for your project to be used on measure here and there. Again saved me ton of time. You can do cut aways already which is good, better then Dorico it seems, but this gave me the flexibility to do more then just cutaways and do it quickly once defined.
Import audio track, my current orchestra piece had a "tape" component and I can only write it with the audio file playing back in time with the music. Now maybe this does exist and I just haven't found it.
Be nice if one of these notation programs made native box notation tools. I had a good system worked out for Finale but it wasn't really native and by the looks of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58wO88jwdfk
it seem pretty wonky for MuseScore and Dorico. Again if Item one on this list happens it makes Box notation hacks easier, but Native would be a dream come true.
I don't know if MakeMusic would give up the info but the ability to just import a finale file instead of having to dump it down to mxl first would be nice, specially if there was data loss as with MXL.
In reply to This is some good news for… by tfbsaxman
No. 5 sounds like it would be a huge benefit to migrating users. Maybe MakeMusic would be open to sharing details under the circumstances.