Announcements

Final testing for 4.5.2

shoogle — Fri, 11 Apr 2025 14:23:26 +0000

Final testing for 4.5.2

Hi everyone,

We're almost ready to release our 4.5.2 patch for MuseScore Studio, which includes playback support for partial ties at repeats and jumps.

We'll be continuing our QA process over the next few days, during which we'd be grateful for your help with testing the following areas:

Playback of partial ties at repeats and jumps
- Also check playback of arpeggio lines and tremolos, as these may have been impacted
Docking and undocking of panels like the Percussion panel
- We want to confirm this is working for people upgrading from a pre-4.5 release
General performance and stability
- If you experience any crashes or unresponsiveness in the app, please let us know!

To help test, please download the most recent 4.5.2 nightly build for your operating system. You can run it alongside your current stable version of MuseScore Studio.

If you run into any problems, please:

Check for existing issues on GitHub.
- If you find a matching issue, upvote it 👍. Only comment if you have something meaningful to add.
For new issues, provide a short, meaningful title that describes the specific problem.
- Playback bugs: create a minimum reproducible example and upload a screen recording (with audio) to demonstrate it.
- Engraving bugs: attach a problem score and screenshots.
Keep comments and descriptions short.
- Use the <detail> tag to hide supplementary info, like build logs.

Thanks for your support!

The MuseScore Studio Team

shoogle

Comments

TheHutch

• Apr 11, 2025 - 22:03

You instruct the user to "upload a screen recording (with audio)". Would be good to suggest applications to do this. I certainly don't know what software to use to create a screen recording like this.

Something along the lines of "For Windows users, Software U and Software V are free and have been used successfully in the past. For Mac users, Software W and Software X are the same. For Linux users, Software Y and Software Z."

SteveBlower

• Apr 12, 2025 - 08:20

I use Bandicam on Windows. It is simple but does the job.

Others use OBS which is more flexible but considerably more complicated (think GIMP level of complexity).

Non-Home versions of windows have some sort of built in video capture I understand. I have a Home version so can't comment further.

Marc Sabatella

• Apr 17, 2025 - 04:10

WIndows 11 supports video via the Snipping tool - and I'm pretty sure that applies to Home editions. At least this link doesn't say otherwise.

macOS also has a built-in facility. Linux distributions vary in what they include - some probably incllude video recording software, others probably don't.

graffesmusic

• Apr 17, 2025 - 06:18

Or use VLC. (Media/Open Capture Device/Desktop)
GPL and cross platform.

TheHutch

• Apr 18, 2025 - 03:34

I didn't know that Snipping Tool can capture video :-O head asplode I'll have to explore this.

Marc Sabatella

• Apr 18, 2025 - 04:03

See for example https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/learning-center/how-to-record-s…. No audio, but that's not usually needed for bug reporting. And if you need that, there is the Game Bar, also available for Home editions. Plus a large selection third party solutions found in a web search, including browser-based ones that are cross-platform and require no installation. I often use gifcap.dev for creating GIF's - also no sound, but needed only for playback bugs.

Noah_Emmert

• Apr 12, 2025 - 18:59

alexnoclain

• Apr 17, 2025 - 07:48

Hello everyone
It would be great if this version were released as soon as possible. All kinds of crashes caused by simple actions like copying or moving elements are very frustrating when working on a large project.
The instability of this version is very high.
Thank you for your work.

cadiz1

• Apr 17, 2025 - 11:42

" All kinds of crashes caused by simple actions like copying or moving elements are very frustrating when working on a large project."
Well, which ones, crashes and simple actions? Could you be more explicit, one post per problem. As far as I can see on your message history (https://musescore.org/en/user/3642280), you haven't reported any, either on this forum or on Github. Don't wait for us to do it for you. As soon as a problem arises, report it to this section of the forum, to check whether it's already known or not, whether it's been filed on Github or not, and so on, here: https://musescore.org/en/forum/6
Unfortunately, I think it's a bit late, as 4.5.2 is about to be released. In the "Done" category, the column on the far right, there are a few reported crashes: https://github.com/orgs/musescore/projects/88
Are these the ones you encountered or not?

Jojo-Schmitz

• Apr 17, 2025 - 13:59

Also try reverting MuseScore to factory settings

MuseScore Studio 4.5.1 patch now available

shoogle — Fri, 21 Mar 2025 15:22:26 +0000

MuseScore Studio 4.5.1 patch now available

Hi everyone,

We're pleased to bring you a small update to MuseScore Studio: version 4.5.1.

This update brings stability improvements and bug fixes, as well as some minor feature improvements.

Engraving

Space between a dynamic and an expression (e.g. within "p dolce") now scales correctly with staff size
Increased distance between a partial slur and partial tie on the same note
Partial ties now extend past breath marks and notes or rests in other voices
Fixed corruption in parts when a time signature is inserted between tied notes
Making higher instruments visible in a part no longer duplicates jump markers (e.g. "to Coda", etc.)
Fixed centering of dynamics between staves when horizontal space is limited
Fixed horizontal spacing after hiding an instrument
Fixed layout of courtesy time signatures for which autoplace is disabled
Increased gap before barline for hairpins created by dragging from a dynamic
"Show text" property of glissandos is now properly preserved on saving and loading
When a large time signature is hidden, its parentheses are now also hidden (affects MuseScore.com and continuous view)
High Floor Tom and Low Floor Tom have exchanged position on the General MIDI Percussion staff

Interaction

Selection filter setting is now properly accounted for during a range selection
Entering a pitch in 'input by duration' mode now turns off 'toggle rest'
Partial ties can be copied and pasted
Creating a hairpin by dragging from a dynamic can now be undone in one step instead of two
Hairpins can now be removed via the dynamics popup by pressing the same hairpin button again
MIDI notes can be staggered when entering chords in input by duration mode
If you've opted to use the legacy percussion panel, it now appears when note input is activated
More special characters can be typed with AltGr and Ctrl+Alt on Windows

Stability

Fixed crash after note input on deleted staff
Fixed crash when Shift+clicking on a page number
Fixed crash when editing partial ties
Fixed crash after copying a tie in the score and selecting it in the parts
Fixed crash when adding a time signature to a score with voltas and system markings
Fixed crash when a lyrics hyphen is entered before a repeat barline
Fixed crash when opening the layout panel
More reliable fix for crash when pasting into a tuplet
Fixed an issue where a black screen occurs on startup on macOS

Other

Fixed playback after undoing an edit to a chord symbol
Slur and hairpin properties are properly exposed to the plugin API
File format icon images are now square (i.e. same width and height) on Linux

For more details, see our 4.5.1 project on GitHub.

What's next?

You can install this update via MuseHub today, or via MuseScore Studio's built-in update notification in a few day's time.

And if you haven't yet seen the 4.5 release video, check it out here on our YouTube channel.

shoogle

Comments

scorster

• Mar 21, 2025 - 20:08

@shoogle

When I click "Free Download" or "MuseScore Studio 4.5.1 | macOS" at the 4.5.1 link, the site downloads MuseHub.

Speaking of MuseHub, presently that branch of the organization is proving unhelpful and/or non responsive. So I'm wondering if anyone here can help.

I "own" purchased MuseSounds libraries that no longer show in the Mixer's sound menus. Until I find a solution I have MuseScore Studio scores that serve no purpose.

To learn more about this, after opening the following link, look for "The (in)stability of installed sound libraries" (Note: I've included system configuration in the link):

https://musescore.org/en/node/372335#comment-1283873

Here's a GitHub link that summarizes a situation regarding Guitars Vol 2 sound quality (system configuration included in the link):

https://github.com/orgs/musescore/discussions/25963#discussioncomment-1…

... and within the prior thread there's a post regarding purchased MuseSounds not showing in the Mixer:

https://github.com/orgs/musescore/discussions/25963#discussioncomment-1…

Could the problem be an installer issue?

Thanks for all your work and input!

scorster

• Mar 26, 2025 - 19:59

After 10 days, still no response from MuseHub, so I posted a negative review for Guitars Vol 2 ... mainly due to the lack of support.

katburn16

• Apr 4, 2025 - 10:10

Good day, try clicking on the link below. I'm attaching an image, the link you need is marked there. I also didn't immediately figure out how to download without MuseHub. I hope the information is still relevant for you.

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coderqc

• Mar 22, 2025 - 01:03

That's cool and all, but can you guys fix the playback issues with partial ties? They broke in 4.5, the update where partial ties were introduced. Partial ties were a main selling point of 4.5, so I'd hope they get fixed ASAP. Otherwise, update is great.

Marc Sabatella

• Mar 24, 2025 - 16:54

? Partial ties weren't even a thing before 4.5; how could it have broken? But it is true the new partial tie feature is for the engraving only so far; playback should be coming in a future update.

FrostbiteGeek

• Mar 26, 2025 - 08:53

Hey Marc, I've watched your videos, and seen lots of your responses on the forums, genuinely very helpful, and you seem like you value being a helpful person and having people become Musescore enthusiasts. I don't know if you see how alienating your bluntness can sometimes be, though, when your written responses can be read as disdainful. You're absolutely right that it doesn't make sense that playback has been broken, i.e. this may not be a regression, but your response can be read as if you are offended.

In this case, a user who is struggling enough to make a comment has asked for help. Your response can be read as a defensive dismissal of their struggle, because you didn't like how they implied a regression. I don't think that was your intention, but it is easy for a new commenter who may be outside their comfort zone to feel wronged by an unkind assumption about their personal character.

Here's how I would have responded:

> Since partial ties are indeed brand new to 4.5, playback for them isn't yet released, but should be coming in a future update! If playback actually gets worse when you add partial ties, please describe the issue a bit more, or post it in the forums so that a bug report can be made.

I don't mean to single you out here, the limitations of text communication have been a constant struggle on Stack Overflow for years, and they have some great discussions on how to respond kindly to misguided or incomplete questions.

Marc Sabatella

• Mar 26, 2025 - 16:17

Sorry if it came off as defensive. That was not my intent - it was to express confusion, hence the leading "?". But if that somehow came off as being defensive, I certainly apologize for the unintended misread. The point was, the person I was responding to stated that something had broken, but we don't yet have enough information to understand what they mean. Hence my request for clarification.

Sovannara

• Mar 22, 2025 - 12:29

Percussion workspace/panel in 4.5.0 is so big and it appears to gain too much on score workspace. The older version 4.4.3 layout was much easier to use and easy to customize kit. Customizing the percussion in Version 4.5.0 does not work and provides no sound. For example, for a snare, if we edit a note-head with a new one that we want, it provide no sound at all.

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Proxima Centauri Protogen

• Mar 24, 2025 - 14:03

I agree with the statement.

Bresianos

• Mar 24, 2025 - 15:22

Me too, I was hoping this patch would add a way to use the old system. The new one makes it so much more complicated to add open hihats.

Lena Mini

• Mar 24, 2025 - 15:48

There is! Edit > Preferences > Percussion has the option :)

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nickpisar

• Mar 24, 2025 - 16:01

I made a bug report post about this issue a while ago. I got this response from Zac Jansheski, the QA Manual Engineer at Muse. I believe they are working on this, which you can read at the end of these email messages below. He says: "The trend I've seen is that we can make a lot of users happy if everything can at least be changed to an x. It's something I plan to look at in the next month or two after MuseScore Studio 4.5 is released."
The way I understand it, notation and engraving are closely linked in Musescore 4.0+, so it takes a lot of extra code to allow for extra other noteheads to work with playback unfortunately.

His first message:
Hi Nick!

I am writing to you about your bug report.
This issue should only happen if you are changing noteheads (the sampler is pretty strict about noteheads). It should not happen when you just change the staff line.

Out of curiosity, what noteheads specifically do you need to work? We can enable more noteheads, but it costs more lines of code.

Regarding the plug-in. We don't have any management of that plug-in so I'm afraid we are unable to assist with that.

Message: In Musescore VDL, specifically for snare drum, assigning some sounds a different default staff line in the drumset editor breaks playback. The sound that should be there is replaced with a normal hit sound. Specifically, the Rim Shot, Rim, Stick Click, and Cross Stick are the ones I've run into while writing that don't work. There might be more, but I haven't looked into every sound. I assign noteheads to different staff lines all the time in my marching percussion writing. I'm hoping this gets fixed soon! (Also, I would really love an update to the fix-to-line plugin. I tried commenting on the github repo and haven't seen a response. It's a functionality I'm sorely missing in my writing process)

To which I responded:
Ah, I see. I didn’t consider that. That’s an interesting issue, but it makes sense how closely linked the notation and sound are in 4.0+

I personally use:
- X notehead black for rim shots (not gocks or pings, just normal rim shots)
- Plus notehead black for rim
- X notehead black for stick clicks
- Triangle notehead up black for cross sticks
- Diamond half notehead for backsticks

I don’t think the issue here is limited to my use case. Marching percussion arrangers use all sorts of different noteheads for different techniques. I think the more pressing question now that I understand the scenario better is: “is there a way to change the notehead without changing the sound?”

Four workarounds I can think of:
1. Create a separate score with the default noteheads specifically for audio playback and mostly ignore audio on the main score
2. Use the “notehead type” menu in the note section of the properties panel. I’ve never gotten this to work though? (I’ve only tried percussion) It would be a really great and fast fix if it didn’t effect playback.
3. Use unused sounds/pitches in the drumset with the “correct” notehead on top of the desired pitch with the “wrong” notehead. Correct pitch would playback and be hidden visually, and correct notehead would not playback and be shown visually.
4. One I just thought of (tedious, but I think it works): replace from the symbols section of the master palette for each note.

Please let me know if you’ve got any other ideas, or if I’m using the notehead type menu incorrectly or something. Maybe it’s not meant to work with percussion? Don’t worry about adding a ton of code for my specific use case. I’d rather the app be better for more people and me find the workaround.

Thanks Zac! Appreciate your response.
Best,
Nick

And finally received:
That notehead type menu only works for tonal instruments, you are not using it wrong. Percussion in MuseScore is designed to be "locked in" to the defined drumset, which is sometimes very nice, and sometimes a bit difficult to work with.

The trend I've seen is that we can make a lot of users happy if everything can at least be changed to an x. It's something I plan to look at in the next month or two after MuseScore Studio 4.5 is released.

I often advise people to write using the defaults, make a copy, then edit the other copy for engraving purposes. Ideally you shouldn't have to do this, but it's not that unusual of a workflow for any notation program.

Marc Sabatella

• Mar 24, 2025 - 16:56

Drum kit customization works exactly the same as before . Not sure what might be going wrong in your score, but best to start a new thread in the Support forum and attach the score there and give precise steps to reproduce the problem. Then we can understand and assist better.

The easier to use part is that it's now only a single click, plus you can click directly onto the score on any line and get the correct note, plus you can define as many keybaord shortcuts as you want - it's actually a huge upgrade!

parkingb

• Mar 28, 2025 - 22:23

I agree completely. I was looking for an option to have that panel staying at the size I give it (= one row of pads visible, and the other accessible by scrolling). But apparently I'm not the only one suffering of this.

Paulo Da Silva Rosa

• Mar 22, 2025 - 13:31

Quando exporto para midi, não abedece 1ª e 2ª casa.

MichelCA

• Mar 22, 2025 - 23:18

There still are many issues:
1. When working with old musescore sounds like voice and piano, if you play the voices only, a delayed piano sound will be playing along the voices even if it's nothing written in the piano part. This can be fixed if you choose the muse sounds, but this shouldn't be the solution...

Same problem with the metronome...playing a second instrument delayed at the same time of the metronome click which is annoying. I found by choosing the metronome from musesounds this is fixed but the clicks are not very distinguishable with that metronome version. Again, you should fix this problem
At some points, if you are changing, alternating windows between musescore and other program and try midi input note, there are times where if you play, it adds many notes in the same voice in one beat, it get stuck until you hit your keyboard many times to force the program to move to next beats. This is very annoying.
Same with lyrics, if you are copying and pasting your lyrics one by one, if you do it fast, there's a point where even if you hit paste, it doesn't paste the rest of your lyrics and stop you to move forward unless you copy your text again and paste it one by one from the last part it stopped.
If you decide to disable "auto-place" for tempo marks like ritardando or a tempo, it doesn't still let you drag them whenever you want. I didn't want to show it above my vocal parts cause it was a piano part, I wanted to drag it there and it doesn't let me and ruin the layout and engraving of my score... because it seems it's automatically set as above by default when you have other instruments, that's annoying!
Last and worst: When you quit the entering notes Mode, if you are using a MIDI and you want to play before entering the notes, it plays the last instrument you selected, which is annoying. How is it possible an instrument is sounding if nothing is selected but you are just using your MIDI keyboard. This is so frustrating.

This update has been a real disappointment

Marc Sabatella

• Mar 24, 2025 - 16:58

Did you open issue about any of these before/ I can't reproduce any problems with any of what you describe, so probably best to first post to the Supoprot forum, attach your score, and give precise steps to reproduce each problem (one post per problem).

To show tempo above the piano instead of vocal, no need to resort to dragging - us the new facility in the Layout panel to add a system text object wherever you want.

domantasmilev1

• Mar 23, 2025 - 16:45

Is there a feature to add different notes on playback, when repeating?

TheHutch

• Mar 24, 2025 - 06:53

No. To get that you have to "unroll" the repeat: IOW, add measures and insert a second copy of the repeated measures in the blank measures as if there had never been a repeat sign.

jz4601989

• Mar 25, 2025 - 00:51

For me, Glissando portamento playback sometimes play earlier than intended and doesn't play at its placed spot. I found this frequent from scores from older versions. I have tried deleting the whole bar, and replacing it from scratch, but it still doesn't work.

TheHutch

• Mar 25, 2025 - 14:05

This sub-forum (Announcements) is intended to be used for the latest news from the MuseScore Team. You would probably be better off posting this elsewhere. In this case, to ask for help and report bugs, likely the Support and bug reports sub-forum (https://musescore.org/en/forum/6) would be the best choice, and would be more likely to get you a resolution soonest.

rjchalkes

• Mar 25, 2025 - 10:17

meltedgingerbread81

• Mar 26, 2025 - 00:47

Can you guys fix the mixed percussion editor so that it's grounded to the bottom like the old one rather then awkwardly blocking your screen?

Marc Sabatella

• Mar 26, 2025 - 02:24

This is already fixed. If your panel got undocked because of the specifics of how the initial 4.5 update was installed on your system, just redock it to its default position via View / Restore the default layout. Then it should stay there. Anyone who skipped 4.5 and went straight to 4.5.1 should already see it docked by default.

gj53151

• Mar 27, 2025 - 00:22

Before today's update to version 4.5.1, I was able to enlarge the header (title & p. number) by clicking on it, which highlighted it, and the properties pane would open and I could increase the font size. But after today's update, I can no longer do that -- and I couldn't find any other way to do it. Any help?

UPDATE: I found a work-around for this -- Style>Text Styles>Page Number (NOT Header [Header changes don't affect page number and title at top of each page]). It would still be handy ifI could just click on the page number/Title (Header?) and a drop-down menu (or properties menu for that item) show font size and Bold, etc., for easier changes. Just a thought.

TheHutch

• Apr 13, 2025 - 17:13

The Properties panel is how you do it and it's working perfectly for me and, presumably, most users. This report would best be posted in Support and bug fixes sub-forum to get assistance with actually resolving the problem. This Announcements sub-forum is really not the right place for it.

Marc Sabatella

• Apr 13, 2025 - 17:45

I think you are misremembering; it's never been possible to edit a header directly in the manner you describe. You may be thinking of the title frame, which indeed has always been editable in this fashion. Also, you can right-click a header to jump directly to the Style dialog, although that is for editing the content, not the formatting. Feel free to open an issue on GitHub requesting that the text style option also be added to the right-click menu.

Braxton Skar

• Mar 27, 2025 - 15:35

Hey can you fix the issue where when I click N to toggle note input, it doesn't exit note input mode? It's fairly frustrating

blapblups

• Mar 30, 2025 - 12:28

go to: preferences-Note input-enable MIDI input-deactivate "When pressing a key begin note input..."

kndolbb1

• Mar 28, 2025 - 09:37

I want to go back to before the patch, is there any way?

kndolbb1

• Mar 28, 2025 - 10:50

I found a solution.

https://github.com/musescore/MuseScore/tags

Marc Sabatella

• Mar 28, 2025 - 13:00

Can you explain why? If you’ve run into some sort of problem, i=you should report it so it can be fixed. Or it could be a simple misunderstanding we can help you with. You shouldn’t need to voluntarily re-fectr your software with the hundreds of bugs that have fixed over the past few months, or deprive yourself of all the new features, or lose the abilotioy to open scores created by others!

sammyjava

• Apr 4, 2025 - 18:54

I just want to say KUDOS on the update to the horizontal-line-between-notes functionality in 4.5! Which I have always had tied to my "L" key because in guitar notation, one uses it constantly to indicate sliding a finger up and down (part of fingering notation).

Before, I had to zoom in and edit the darned line every time to make it have gaps around the note - but you updated it so it looks beautiful "out of the box"! This actually cuts a lot of time out of my engraving!

AlexelTech

• Apr 13, 2025 - 11:17

There is a major bug introduced in the recent update for PC Windows tablet users (may be also on other OS and architectures).
It was really useful to be able to write music with tablet and stylus, but now it's impossible : when you click with the stylus pen 🖊 on any button of the upper toolbar it stays blocked, grayed out and you need to quit & restart Musescore to recover the ability to use full mouse and toolbar. Very disappointing, I don't know what broke this element (may be the new pitch by maintaining mouse function?), but it was working like a charm since the beginning (Muscescore v1!).
I'm using a big USB connected A3 Wacom tablet on Windows 11 x64, and I can make a screen capture if it can help to debug...

danieldemsky

• Apr 16, 2025 - 18:30

Is there any known issues regarding this app installed from the Microsoft Store? We install it from there and have been getting the following error since this update:

An error occurred during app install or upgrade.
Installer error code: 0.
Exception: System.Exception: Exception from HRESULT: 0x8A15004A.

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MuseScore Studio 4.5 is now available!

shoogle — Fri, 14 Mar 2025 11:03:34 +0000

MuseScore Studio 4.5 is now available!

We are delighted to announce the release of MuseScore Studio 4.5!

This version is packed with new features, including:

Speedy input of dynamics
- New popup and shortcuts make it possible to enter and swap dynamics without ever moving away from the score
New percussion input panel
- A fully accessible, modern 'drum pad' layout, with faster note input, and seamless integration with MuseSounds percussion libraries
New features for ex-Finale composers
- Workflow updates that will feel familiar to Finale users, including a new ‘input by duration’ mode, the ability to move measures between systems, and copy+paste by dragging
New engraving features
- Large time signatures, l.v. ties, text masking through barlines, and automatic placement of partial ties, courtesy clefs, key signatures, and time signatures at repeats and jumps (something no other notation app does)

The update also brings a fresh logo and branding for MuseScore Studio.

Watch the release video

How to get the update

I’m new to MuseScore Studio 4

Head over to the Download page to see the available options:

Windows & macOS
- For now, use the option to download MuseScore Studio without MuseHub.
- You'll need to download MuseHub separately if you want to use MuseSounds.
Linux
- The main download option will just give you MuseScore Studio. Ubuntu users please note that this update requires at least Ubuntu 22.04.
- You’ll also need to download and install MuseSounds Manager if you want to use MuseSounds.

You can find additional builds on our GitHub Releases page, including a portable Windows EXE.

I already have MuseScore Studio (version 4 onwards)

Users on Windows and macOS will soon receive a notification about the update within MuseScore Studio or within MuseHub.

If you don't want to wait, you can install the new version manually without MuseHub (see above).

Linux users must update manually. Ubuntu users, please note that this update requires at least Ubuntu 22.04.

New features in this release

This update introduces major workflow improvements, a brand new percussion input panel, and significant new engraving features.

Engraving

See Engraving improvements in MuseScore Studio 4.5. Highlights include:

Large time signatures
Laissez-vibrer (l.v.) ties
System locks (force measures to appear on a particular system, prevent reflow)
System markings: control which staves tempos and other markings appear on via the 'Layout' panel (formerly 'Instruments')
Automatic creation of partial ties and courtesy clefs, key, and time signatures at repeats and jumps
Options to extend slurs and lyric extension lines over repeats and jumps
Automatic masking around text and dynamics when they overlap barlines
More style options for multi-measure rests
All text items are now anchorable at any rhythmic position
Improved horizontal spacing and lyric spacing
Various fixes for local time signatures

Percussion

All-new percussion panel with 8 columns of input pads (now fully accessible; replaces the old drumset panel)
Improved percussion note input: notes are now always entered at the cursor position, and can be input at any available stave position with the mouse
Ability to customize the layout of the percussion panel
Keyboard shortcuts and MIDI pitches are displayed on the percussion pads (keyboard shortcuts can also be assigned using any key)
New Percussion and General MIDI Percussion instruments (replaces the generic Percussion instrument and the Percussion Synthesizer) with full mapping for Muse Percussion (MuseSounds)
Minor changes to various percussion instruments

Interaction

New 'input by duration' mode
General refinements to note input: improved discoverability, relocation of legacy modes, and a new option to set accidentals, augmentation dots, and articulations to apply to either the next or previous note entered
New rapid entry system for dynamic markings, including in-score popup, dedicated keyboard shortcut, type-to-enter dynamic markings, and option to draw hairpins from dynamic markings
Click and drag a range selection to move it to a different staff, measure, or beat; hold Alt/Option while dragging to copy the material
Copying and pasting multiple individual elements together is now more reliable and preserves the relative positions of the elements (and other improvements to copying and pasting)
Improved selection behaviour
Option to input MIDI as written or sounding pitch for transposing instruments
The playback speed control is now also available by clicking the tempo indicator in the playback toolbar (without needing to undock the playback toolbar)
New 'History' panel available in the 'View' menu

Playback

Improved "let ring" playback for guitar with MuseSounds
Support for l.v. ties for MS Basic, VST (limited) and MuseSounds (Muse Keys, and Muse Guitars Vols. 1 and 2, with other libraries coming soon)
Muse Percussion sounds for Mixed Percussion and General MIDI Percussion instruments
Numerous fixes for tied notes

Import/export

SVG: page size is now measured in millimetres instead of pixels
MEI: support for voice assignment of dynamics, staff line color, harp pedal diagrams & MuseScore element IDs
MusicXML: various fixes and improvements

Accessibility

Style files for various sizes of Modified Stave Notation (MSN) are included with the program (courtesy of RNIB)
Convenient shortcut to built-in styles available via Format > Load styles on Windows and macOS

General

New app icon and splash screen
Fixed various crashes and corruptions

See our GitHub Project for more details.

...and there's a new handbook!

Our new handbook on GitBook contains details of how to use the new features in MuseScore Studio 4.5.

The new handbook is currently only available in English, but we will make it available in other languages soon. Links to old handbook pages will be gradually updated to point to the new handbook.

shoogle

Comments

gondardgeorge

• Mar 14, 2025 - 20:05

Bravo !!!

partiturasfac

• Mar 14, 2025 - 23:08

Mais alguém aí não está conseguindo abrir o musescore 4.5 no Mac???

jfmusicaddict

• Mar 15, 2025 - 00:01

One way I think percussion customization could be improved is by implementing hidden drum pads for every available sound, which can be enabled to add that drum to the current kit. Customization could then be used to create additional drum pads for percussion instruments not already included in that system. This would be most practical with a drum kit utilizing full GM mapping.

This could be further improved in a future MuseScore version by allowing multiple percussion libraries in one staff, allowing this system to work with specialty instruments from other libraries.

daveburkevt

• Mar 15, 2025 - 13:09

Just fired up 4.5 for the first time and want to thank you for preserving user shortcuts, palettes and other personalized settings with each upgrade.

Love the upgrade and appreciate all of your hard work. The release videos were helpful and well done.

fyi, using appImage with Linux Mint.

fcvzdnx786

• Mar 17, 2025 - 09:24

I'm glad to see the update about muse. At present, my system version is mac os14.7.2. In the process of using it, it shows that there is a missing file to load the plug-in at the beginning, and the same is true for repeated operations. Finally, I choose not to use the tone plug-in section. And since version 4.3, it is impossible to search when using Chinese to create a new interface for the first score to select musical instruments, but English can be used normally. This situation has been feedback before, but no one has responded. I hope it can be solved one day.

iankeithsteph

• Mar 17, 2025 - 11:51

Version 4.5 on my new Chromebook plus would open and I could open existing scores but it wouldn't open a new score. It would crash every time I tried to do this. Restarted a bunch of times to no avail. I have gone back to version 4.4

Asher S.

• Mar 17, 2025 - 16:58

Doesn’t occur on Mac.

GameSwitcher

• Mar 17, 2025 - 18:13

Please for the next update fix the tremolo bar notation automatically turning on auto-place whenever the user exits the score.

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krasko78

• Mar 17, 2025 - 18:48

Sounds like this issue, right?
https://github.com/musescore/MuseScore/issues/17838

GameSwitcher

• Mar 17, 2025 - 23:00

Yes exactly! How do I apply this bug fix to my computer? All there is in the solution are the lines of code.

krasko78

• Mar 18, 2025 - 00:41

You can't yet. I checked to see if your issue had been reported in GitHub already and found it. I have submitted the fix given by the user for review but it has to be approved, tested and merged first and then you will either be able to download a nightly build to get the fix or wait for the next official release of MuseScore 4.5.1. How to get a nightly build: https://github.com/musescore/MuseScore/wiki/Downloading-and-running-tes…

Jojo-Schmitz

• Mar 18, 2025 - 06:37

The nightly builds currently are only for 4.6 though as far as I can tell, there's no 4.5.1 branch yet.

krasko78

• Mar 18, 2025 - 13:07

The names say 4.5.0: https://ftp.osuosl.org/pub/musescore-nightlies/windows/4x/nightly/?C=M;…

Jojo-Schmitz

• Mar 18, 2025 - 16:42

As I said. 4.5.1 doesn't exist yet, and the nightly builds of 4.5.0 have just forgotten to get switched off and build the same thing time and time again.

krasko78

• Mar 18, 2025 - 17:04

Ah, I see.

Seth Gibbs

• Mar 17, 2025 - 19:44

Would there be any way to switch to the old percussion input panel, or change the size of the pads on the new one? As-is, on my 1920x1080 monitor the panel makes the whole UI feel a little claustrophobic any time I have it open - I can resize it vertically, but then I need to scroll to access everything, or I could undock it and shrink it as much as I can into the corner, but it's still fairly large.

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krasko78

• Mar 17, 2025 - 21:26

Edit -> Preferences -> Percussion -> toggle "Use legacy percussion panel" on.

Christian_Lucy

• Mar 17, 2025 - 22:53

Is there a way to revert to the previous version of musescore? The drum system specifically is a buggy mess especially with rehearsal marks, they're unusuable. I regret updating.

TheHutch

• Mar 18, 2025 - 02:10

Uninstall and re-install. You may have to do some additional cleaning up after the uninstall, but try a normal uninstall from the Control Panel first.

No, you won't lose your scores. If any of them are in the default location (Edit / Preferences / Folders / Scores), you might want to move them elsewhere, at least temporarily. You definitely want to know where they are ... because the new installation of whichever earlier version you install will not.

graffesmusic

• Mar 18, 2025 - 06:49

However, if you saved your scores in 4.5, you can't open them in 4.4 anymore.
It seems that the (only?) way to open 4.5 scores in earlier 4x versions is to remove the eid tags with a text editor. (and is not lossless potentially)

Jojo-Schmitz

• Mar 18, 2025 - 06:51

Or open in my 3.7, save and then open in 4.4...
Not lossless either but less dangerous

Ugur_Milonga

• Mar 18, 2025 - 18:10

New percussion panel is something that very unuseful. It is really big torture to input notes. It covers almost half of the computer screen and screen slides to give place to this huge panel in every note input. Is it possible to use old style of percussion input without downgrading to musescore 4.4 ?

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krasko78

• Mar 18, 2025 - 19:10

Edit -> Preferences -> Percussion -> toggle "Use legacy percussion panel" on.

corndodger199

• Mar 19, 2025 - 22:20

Your a life saver.

Marc Sabatella

• Mar 24, 2025 - 16:48

Except now you won't be able to use the new features that make it so much more efficient, like the single click model, direct entry onto the staff, easy customization, etc. Better to keep the new panel but just set the option to open and close it manually.

josephestrada

• Mar 19, 2025 - 02:19

I dont know what happened, but with this new update I can no longer play a grace note on the same note with a tremolo, it just plays the tremolo and this is really frustrating as I arrange battery music and having the two play at the same time is essential for a ton of rudiments!

MichelCA

• Mar 19, 2025 - 02:47

Now you ruined the metronome... When I don't input any note the metronome works normally, but after writing the first notes and play the music along the metronome, it reproduce an off time piano sound with the metronome woodblock sound which is so bad!! I have never had this issue with any other version. Need to work with metronome for many reasons, and this delay my work too, please help me to fix this problem, it doesn't let me attach the video i recorded

Marc Sabatella

• Mar 24, 2025 - 16:49

Best to start a new thread in the Support forum to ask questions about how to use MuseScore or to report a potential bug for confirmation. Be sure to attach your score and give precise steps to reproduce the problem.

MichelCA

• Mar 24, 2025 - 21:44

I did, and didn't get any response either. Made a topic in the proper section

MichelCA

• Mar 19, 2025 - 03:09

And now I figured out another worse stuff... Once you press escape or get out of the score, let's say you want to practice or just play your midi keyboard before entering notes, you can hear the instrument being played even if you quit it. That's so annoying and something it didn't happen in Musescore 4.4... that it only play the instrument from the software when you click on it and now even if you are not selecting it, it's still sounding with latency which is just worse... pff why do you release something before doing many tests in many areas ??? so annoying. Give me a solution please, I will have to downgrade to MS 4.4 so annoying

Marc Sabatella

• Mar 24, 2025 - 16:51

Again, if you are encountering some sort of problem that neither you nor others users found or reported during the extensive beta test period, best to open a new thread on the Support forum, attach your score, and give precise steps to reproduce the problem.

flexicase1

• Mar 19, 2025 - 18:06

It has caused problems with:
1. Adding repeat bars
2. Finding the palettes
3. Finding the instrument list.
How do we revert to the previous edition?

Marc Sabatella

• Mar 24, 2025 - 16:52

Nothing changed with respect to repeats bars or palettes. If you closed the palettes, reopen them via the View menu, and there you will find the Repeats palette. The Instruments panel is now renamed to Layout because it isn't jiust about instruments anymore.

barrychab

• Mar 19, 2025 - 20:37

LOVE the new popups and shortcuts for dynamics! Was one of the few things i was missing from Dorico AND you did it even better with the hairpins!. I'm very happy with the original note entry and most everything else about Musescore. More popups would be great though!

BartoRomeo

• Mar 22, 2025 - 18:13

Okay, so now I can't input polyrythms because of the overlapping of the default voice of the note and the voice that I'm actually selecting.
Thanks Musescore.

TheHutch

• Mar 22, 2025 - 20:06

Use Alt+Up or Alt+Down to move up and down between voices.

If the note in question is a chord, it will move the selection up or down through the chord. When it reaches the top or bottom note in the chord, it will move to the next voice up or down. When it reaches the top or bottom voice in a staff, it will move up or down to the next staff.

jam01

• Apr 20, 2025 - 02:02

any way to have a future option in preferences to toggle OFF the dynamics popup? i don't want it. i don't use it. it is annoying and in the way. i know some people like it. good for them. but let us choose if we want to have it displayed or not.

Marc Sabatella

• Apr 20, 2025 - 03:06

Not sure what disadvantage there is in having it even if you don't use it, but if you can write up a good case for the option, then feel free to open a feature request issue on GitHub and explain why this would be useful.

From my perspective, what would make sense is for the popup to not appear when using the palette to enter dynamics, but to show when using the shortcut Ctrl+D or when selecting a dynamic later.

jam01

• Apr 20, 2025 - 04:10

I find that it gets in my way. When I am entering music rapidly by mouse I want to add a dynamic and so I go to the palette and select my desired dynamic or I click on an existing dynamic to modify it and kerplop I get an annoying pop-up which has nothing to do with what I want done. It's like switching on a light for a room in the house and the radio turns on also. This pop-up might be useful for some, just give the user an option to toggle it off if they don't want it. I like your idea of ctrl-d or some other shortcut for those who want the thing.

Marc Sabatella

• Apr 20, 2025 - 04:28

Ctrl+D already is the shortcut to enter dynamics. The whole point is that you don't even need the palette anymore - Ctrl+D does the job completely, by letting you type directly into the score or use the palette to select a dynamic. But for those who like to work a little slower and keep moving their mouse back and forth between the score and the palette, there is no reason to also show the popup, I would agree.

MuseScore Studio 4.5 Beta is now available

shoogle — Thu, 20 Feb 2025 14:57:30 +0000

MuseScore Studio 4.5 Beta is now available

Hi everyone,

We're pleased to announce that the Beta release for MuseScore Studio 4.5 is now available. You can download it for:

Windows (MSI installer, portable)
macOS (DMG)
Linux (64-bit Intel/AMD)

Once the beta is installed, it will show up on your machine as “MuseScore 4 Testing”. You can install it alongside your current version of MuseScore 4, but note that the two versions will share preferences and workspaces. Also, scores saved with 4.5 cannot be opened in older versions of MuseScore 4.

If you find any issues, please report them on GitHub. As always, please check first that the issue hasn’t already been raised, and ideally try to reproduce it in the latest nightly build before reporting.

What's new in this update?

See Our near-term plans for MuseScore Studio to learn what's included in the version 4.5 update. Specifically worth highlighting are:

New percussion input system
New dynamics input feature
Input by duration mode
Option+click/drag to copy/paste
Move measures up/down systems (plus ability to lock systems to prevent reflow)
Laissez-vibrer (l.v.) ties
Large time signatures
Automatic masking of text elements through barlines (specifically dynamics, expression text, lyrics)
System marking controls (See the 'Layout' panel, formerly known as 'Instruments')
Automatic creation of ties at repeats and jumps, plus options to extend slurs and lyric extension lines over repeats and jumps
Automatic creation of courtesy clefs, key, and time signatures at repeats and jumps
Generally improved selection behaviour

Also see Engraving improvements in MuseScore Studio 4.5.

New MuseSounds features

Playback support for l.v. ties requires MuseSampler v.0.100.8, plus the latest version of Muse Keys. This feature currently only works with the Grand Piano set to the 'Studio' preset (which is the default, but also accessible via a sound flag). Support for new libraries will be added in the coming weeks.

Support for the latest percussion sounds isn't quite ready yet, so look out for a Muse Percussion update in the coming days. The update adds sounds for two new combo instruments: Mixed Percussion and General MIDI Percussion; which are available via the Choose Instruments dialog in MuseScore Studio.

You can get these MuseSounds and MuseSampler updates via MuseHub on Windows and macOS, or MuseSounds Manager on Linux. To check which version of the MuseSampler you have, go to MuseScore Studio's Diagnostic menu > Muse Sampler > Check Muse Sampler.

Percussion documentation

While the handbook migration remains a work in progress, beta testers might find it helpful to refer to the documentation on the new Percussion system.

The team will be gradually updating other pages over the coming weeks and will make a separate announcement about the new handbook when it's ready.

shoogle

Comments

Jojo-Schmitz

• Feb 20, 2025 - 15:25

There is a number of known issues with the Beta that are planned to get fixed for the Release, see https://github.com/musescore/MuseScore/issues?q=is%3Aissue%20state%3Aop…

andreaparisi1997

• Mar 7, 2025 - 11:29

And why musescore 4.5 update has not been released yet at the end of february?

Jojo-Schmitz

• Mar 7, 2025 - 11:33

Because not all relevant issues habe been fixed yet

fcvzdnx786

• Mar 11, 2025 - 14:18

目前预计什么时候发布呢

Pentatonus

• Mar 11, 2025 - 21:44

准备就绪我估计这周

fcvzdnx786

• Mar 12, 2025 - 06:15

thank you

gondardgeorge

• Mar 14, 2025 - 07:18

Hello, it seems , after looking at the github page, that any bugs are now fixed :) to do : 0 fixed : 0

Joseph.Zayoun

• Mar 11, 2025 - 07:40

God bless your hard work.

I haven't downloaded the beta version, will be waiting for the release, but I have a small question. Will we be able to customize the dynamics from the properties panel in this version?

Thank you

Asher S.

• Feb 20, 2025 - 19:19

Excited for the muse percussion updates.

blapblups

• Feb 22, 2025 - 13:03

Input is always on when played by keyboard (can not turn "input" off (N)

graffesmusic

• Feb 22, 2025 - 18:29

Also, scores saved with 4.5 cannot be opened in older versions of MuseScore 4.

True, not even when disableVersionChecking=true
But MuseScore 4.4.4 crashes on this. (Linux appimage) I think that this shouldn't happen.

3.7 however can open the 4.5 files.

Question: What is the purpose of eid tags? When removing all eid's, a 4.5 file opens in 4.4.
edit: OK. found it on github.
Anyway, it seems that the (only?) way to open 4.5 scores in earlier 4x versions is to remove the eid tags.

DartMonkey

• Feb 22, 2025 - 23:11

I noticed some graphical bugs in fullscreen. Midi output doesn't work very well, some notes are not played (~25%). I'll open tickets on github if I have time. Otherwise it's a good job. I really like the added features of the Finale software.

dj frank rose

• Mar 6, 2025 - 16:15

If you're talking about full screen glitches on Windows, I've already reported them here: https://github.com/musescore/MuseScore/issues/24586#issue-2514080314. If you've discovered others, please add them in a comment.

nicolyon1005

• Feb 26, 2025 - 02:27

Loving the new drum input pad! I was wondering, however, if down the line there could be an option to have both the notation preview and pad names enabled at the same time, or a separate option that has both the pad names and their notation previews. Otherwise, looking forward to release!

beispielbeat

• Feb 28, 2025 - 09:27

I am thrilled about the percussion update in particular. Love that it's now possible to freely assign shortcuts to the instruments of a drumkit. It would be absolutely fantastic if it was possible to assign modifiers to the shortcuts e.g. closed HiHat would be 'A' and stepped HiHat could be 'Shift-A' while open HiHat could be 'Cntrl-A' that would be absolutly fantastic!

reblues

• Mar 1, 2025 - 07:42

What about extarnal SMuFL fonts? Is this function not available yet? It was announced that it would in 4.5. Could not find anything that mention it in the software. Maybe it is hidden somewhere? Or maybe I should install the SMuFL fonts globally? Currently using latest 4.5 nightly: MuseScore Studio version (64-bit): 4.5.0-250600404, revision: 92bfe3f

SteveBlower

• Mar 1, 2025 - 10:51

Smufl font support postponed until 4.6 it seems. See https://musescore.org/en/4.5-and-beyond#comment-1279491

brendan6962

• Mar 2, 2025 - 02:45

I have a suggestion, you should make it so in these mixed percussion parts, you can adjust the individual volume and reverb of each instrument, currently you can only do overall volume and reverb of the whole percussion part. Otherwise, this update is very helpful and useful.

bompstable

• Mar 4, 2025 - 11:37

When opening an existing score with an anacrusis in 4.5 beta, I've noticed that my bar numbers are incorrect - the anacrusis at the start of the score is being counted as bar 1, so all the following numbers are off. The same score is numbered correctly in 4.4.4.

Creating a new score with an anacrusis in 4.5 beta does not show this problem.

Is this a known issue?

Jojo-Schmitz

• Mar 4, 2025 - 11:39

Sample score please. I can't reproduce.

bompstable

• Mar 4, 2025 - 12:02

Apologies, on further investigation the mistake was mine!

pmarinahe

• Mar 5, 2025 - 04:28

Debería haber la opción de ocultar solo los compases que seleccionamos, porque con la opción de cortar en las propiedades del pentagrama se ocultan todos los compases que están en silencio.

qoyaslisahar

• Mar 13, 2025 - 14:50

Hello! Thank you so much for developing the program. I have a question. I read in one of the posts that in version 4.5 it will be possible to use custom SMuFL fonts. As far as I know, there is no such option in beta yet. Will this feature be added to the main 4.5 release?

Jojo-Schmitz

• Mar 13, 2025 - 15:17

No, that feature has been deferred to 4.6

andreaparisi1997

• Mar 14, 2025 - 09:18

I have another question: will you make also a library with marching band instruments ? Including Euphonium, flugehorns, ecc? And also can you improve the Glissando on the trombones ?

Our near-term plans for MuseScore Studio

bradleykunda — Mon, 23 Dec 2024 09:50:57 +0000

Our near-term plans for MuseScore Studio

Now that we're pretty deep into releases of MuseScore Studio 4 (version 4.5 is currently in development and is slated for release at the end of February 2025) we thought it was a good time to share some of our plans for the coming 1-2 years.

These are ideas that we (the internal team) plan to focus on while the community continues adding various improvements of their own. The ideas mentioned here aren't exhaustive, and we always leave room in our plans to act quickly on new opportunities when they arise, such as adding relevant features for potential new users (see "Focus on Finale users" below), or when a community developer introduces something valuable that can be readily incorporated into a forthcoming release.

For those who haven't been following the progress of MuseScore Studio, it's worth providing some context behind how we got to where we are now, before we lay out our ideas for the next couple of years.

How we work

For the last four years, our mission has been to establish MuseScore Studio as a modern, professional application. This has largely meant matching the essential features of Finale (RIP), Dorico and Sibelius. The teams working on these apps have their own development challenges, including the need for codebase improvements and feature expansions. Our particular development challenge has been the need to divide our time and resources across three distinct priorities:

1. Building new features and improvements

This is the easiest part of the job: creating new capabilities that MuseScore Studio is missing, which don't require major under the hood changes or refactoring of our codebase. At the moment, around a third our focus is on this aspect. We aim to bring it up to around 75% within the next 18 months.

2. Improving older features

When our team began working on MuseScore in 2018/2019, there were very few aspects of the app that didn't require a major rethink. Therefore, with each release, we've been gradually replacing or updating core aspects of the app's functionality.

We've been doing this work to provide a solid foundation that can be reliably built upon in the future, when we want to introduce far more ambitious, modern improvements.

To give one example: it was clear that our system for positioning and playing back dynamics and line objects (like hairpins) had to be completely replaced. So we made it possible to let these objects anchor to non-arbitrary positions on the stave. This has dramatically improved consistency when the score layout changes, ensuring hairpins no longer fly all over the place without knowing where to go! This has also greatly improved usability and playback too.

Although we are not yet done fixing up many of these older issues with MuseScore, we feel we're about 75% there.

3. Refactoring the codebase to unblock new capabilities

This is the real demon.

There remains a large area of the codebase that requires refactoring in order to enable future capabilities that are currently blocked.

When we released MuseScore 4.0, we took the opportunity to address our overall architecture, UI framework and audio engine. Since then, we've been completely reimagining our notation system itself.

The problem we knew we needed to address was MuseScore's measure-based approach, a problem those who have followed the development blogs of Sibelius or Dorico will be familiar with. Put simply, when the underlying architecture of your notation requires all notated elements to be contained within a measure, it has far-reaching implications that go beyond simple problems like, for example, tuplets not being able to cross bar lines (a problem that can be hack-fixed to a reasonably satisfactory degree anyway).

By replacing the old measure-based architecture with a more flexible system, we unlock many of the new features described below. This also allows us to create a truly fluid playback system, where durations can exist at any point in time. It will open the doors to a properly capable piano roll. In addition, it will also allow people to make major alterations to time signatures without the score saying "no" because it causes durations to go beyond the boundaries of a measure.

Our next big update: 4.5

Some of you will have already started using the master/nightly builds, in which case you may have noticed a number of exciting new features we're bringing to this release.

With version 4.5, our main areas of focus are:

Upgrading MuseScore's percussion notation capabilities
Making UX improvements that greatly enhance copy & paste behaviour and working with dynamics.
Expanding the engraving module's capacity to meet professional publishing standards
Introducing workflows that are essential for Finale users, which we also think will benefit all users of the app.

New percussion system

As promised, we'll be delivering a new percussion system in version 4.5.

This is the second update in a multi-stage plan for percussion, which is so ambitious in its scope that we are forced to realise our vision for an industry-leading percussion system in incremental stages.

The first stages took place earlier this year, when in MuseScore 4.3 and 4.4 we introduced sound flags to stave text, and added support for Muse Drumline. Part of this work involved making the existing percussion panel responsive to the sound library chosen in the mixer, allowing it will display available notes at pre-mapped staff positions as determined by the chosen sound library.

We did this because we believe that an optimal percussion experience in MuseScore is one where the relationship between notation and playback is as seamless as possible.

But as many of you know, percussion music presents additional challenges to a computer-based notation system, including the lack of a common notation standard, the challenge of mapping diverse instrument sets onto a single stave, a sprawling myriad of playback libraries with unique mapping conventions, and so on. Percussion is, in short, incredibly complex.

In version 4.5, we'll be introducing a new percussion panel to enable faster note input, greater flexibility and customisability, and enhanced readability and accessibility.

To achieve some of these benefits, we've had to increase the size of the panel. While this won't adversely affect orchestral percussion instruments, it may make very large libraries – including drumlines and expanded drum kits – initially less convenient when used on small screens.

For this reason, we'll continue to support the legacy panel together with new panel, until we can realise the next stage in our percussion story: a universal mapping system.

Universal mapping for percussion in MuseScore has already been designed, but will require extensive refactoring of our percussion standard to bring to fruition. The benefits, however, will be immense. We'll be moving to a hierarchical structure of instruments and sub-instruments which will not only save on UI space, but which will also enable seamless switching and combining of percussion sound libraries while not adversely affecting the notation. Of course, this will also enable virtually limitless customisation of mapping across sound libraries.

The evolution of percussion is going to be a long journey for MuseScore Studio, so we're grateful for your patience and feedback as this system continues to evolve.

Engraving updates

We'll be introducing two highly requested engraving features in version 4.5: laissez vibrer ties, and large time signatures.

In addition, we'll be giving you more control over where system markings like bar numbers, tempo markings, rehearsal marks, and more appear.

And thanks in part to the efforts of one of our community contributors, we'll be bringing the use of custom SMuFL fonts to 4.5.

We've also been working closely with the engraving department of Hal Leonard to better understand the pain points they experience in other notation apps, and to design new solutions for these problems that don't already exist in the market.

One example is how objects like ties, slurs, clefs, and key and time signatures behave at repeats and jumps (including "da capo", "dal segno" and "to coda" marks). In MuseScore 4.5, these elements will get created automatically, based on the presence of musically sensible conditions (E.g. a note of equivalent pitch existing at the start of a repeated section). Where a note can be tied to more than one other note, we'll also provide a nifty way of allowing people to chose which notes it gets tied to.

As always, our engraving specialist Simon Smith will publish a detailed article describing all engraving updates when the next version is ready.

Focus on Finale users

With MakeMusic's announcement in August that it will be discontinuing Finale's development, we understood the need to provide a free and attractive alternative to people wanting to migrate to a different application. We took the opportunity to reach out to Finale users to learn what features they couldn't live without, and have set about making our own equivalents – tweaking them here and there to ensure they integrate comfortably with our own app.

In MuseScore 4.5, we'll be introducing:

The ability to move measures to the previous/next system (using shortcuts or the Properties panel), allowing you to fit as many measures as you want within the same system
The ability to lock systems so they remain as a single unit without reflowing when you make changes elsewhere on the score
The ability to drag measures (or range selections) to quickly copy and paste them to other measures
A new note input mode comparable to Finale's popular "Speedy Entry" system, which provides people with another way to quickly enter pitches and durations using their keyboard and (optionally) their MIDI keyboard too.

Not only are these features beloved by Finale users, we also think they'll greatly enhance the workflow of all MuseScore Studio users too.

And more!

Complementing the new drag-to-copy-and-paste functionality will be a suite of improvements to copy and paste behaviours more generally. For example, when copying a list selection of dynamics and pasting them somewhere else, the relative metrical positions of the dynamics will be retained. It'll also be possible to make proper range selections when starting from something that's not a note or rest.

Before (current in released versions)

After (coming soon in 4.5!)

Version 4.6

While most of the team starts preparing major new features for version 5.0 (see below), we intend to release one more update in the version 4 series that will include a couple of small features and improvements. You can look forward to enhanced features for chord symbols and fretboard diagrams, as well as updates to our selection filter that will speed up your workflow.

Version 5.0 and beyond

From version 5.0 onwards, we'll be setting our sights on a mixture of more ambitious and innovative features that will significantly enhance the way you use MuseScore Studio to create music. Here's a high-level summary of some of our development aims.

Playback

Sitting at the top of our priority list is the eagerly anticipated automation feature, which will finally unlock DAW-like control over dynamics and other playback parameters via intuitive and customizable over-the-stave curve lines.

Having recently introduced the possibility for segment-based notation layout (see above), we're finally in a position to unlock highly valuable note input requirements. This includes placing tuplets across barlines, and moving a range of notes forwards or backwards in time while maintaining their rhythmic integrity. And of course, you'll get more granular control over the timing of each note, enabling more expressive and customizable playback. Once these changes are complete, this will also unlock a new feature we aim to introduce in 2025: a new, multi-capable piano roll.

Another one of our ambitions is to introduce audio staves, which can seamlessly interweave real audio tracks with the playback generated from your notation. Using a time-stretching technology we recently introduced to Audacity, audio staves will retain their relative length even when you change the tempo of your score.

We know how important a flexible MIDI mapping system is to our users, and so designs for this are already in a well-advanced state. This is quite an extensive feature that may end up being rolled out in stages, but we are aware that this is particularly crucial for VST users who need more control over how their plugins perform in MuseScore.

With VST in mind, and with so many new sounds libraries becoming available from MuseSounds, we've also planned a playback profiles system that will allow people to create defaults that map their preferred sound libraries to specific instruments.

Shared framework

An under the hood piece we've started working on is an integrated framework with Audacity, which allows us to share parts of our codebase – a system we are planning to expand until both applications share the same audio engine. When this is in place, we can all look forward to more rapid feature integration as improvements to playback in Audacity get assimilated into MuseScore Studio, and vice versa. This will also make many of Audacity's native effects available for MuseScore Studio users too.

Workflow and UI

We know that people using MuseScore Studio on laptops have to negotiate some fairly tight space constraints. With this in mind, we've now started designing a minimal UI mode that will reduce the amount of screen space taken up by controls, allowing more room for the score.

We also have plans to modernise the increasingly ageing styles dialog, which suffers from accessibility issues, outdated components, and usability problems.

And finally, we know that an in-app video player is a crucial part of our scoring crowd's workflow, and have started investigating solutions for this too.

Engraving

One of the biggest pieces of work for our engraving team will to enable proper instrument stave sharing. For example, imagine two flutes sharing a single stave in the score, but with the possibility of creating an independent part for each of them. Achieving this is currently possible only by writing music in different voices and hiding those that shouldn't appear in each part. Such a workaround is no replacement for a more capable system, but achieving this will require a major overhaul of how instruments, staves, and voices currently work. As part of this, we will implement a much more sophisticated system for instrument labelling and numbering.

We’re also planning a major overhaul of grace notes. Currently, they’re treated as add-ons to real notes, which causes significant engraving issues. To address this, we’ll rework grace notes so they function just like other notes on the stave.

At a macro level, we'll be building new capabilities into the Instruments panel (being renamed to Layout panel in version 4.5) that will enable the creation of larger sections of music – think movements of a sonata or symphony, acts of an opera, and even songs in a songbook. This is currently only partially achievable with page breaks, but requires awkward hackery of objects like clefs, and time and key signatures. Defining the score into proper sections will overcome these problems and more.

A more flexible and intuitive way to control the visibility of staves and measures is also in the pipeline, enabling an improved way of displaying cutouts, among other things. We're also planning a dynamic system for adding cues which will do away with the currently clunky process of needing to create secondary instruments that span the whole score and hiding them.

Extensions framework

Earlier in 2024, we started developing a new extensions framework to replace the existing plugins system. This ended up being a complex piece of work, so we put it aside to focus on more urgent priorities with the intention of coming back to it in 2025.

Aleatoric mode

Another possibility of laying out notation on a per-segment, rather than per-measure basis, is the ability to open up our playback engine to enable multiple simultaneous playback points and a properly fragmented layout. This is a long-term goal, but one which we're ultimately aiming towards as our engraving and playback modules continue to mature.

There's a lot more to come

As mentioned, this is not an exhaustive list, but it hopefully gives you a sense of the big-ticket items that are in our sights.

While pretty much all of the above will be developed by the internal team, it's worth mentioning that a multitude of smaller and medium-sized tasks always needs attention. We've curated a selection of these in our community projects board on GitHub, and invite any interested developers from the community to tackle these.

As always, we're extremely grateful for the support of our developer community, particularly when it comes to testing our nightly and beta builds, and for helping us improve the overall quality of the app by contributing bug fixes and feature improvements.

We hope you continue to enjoy creating music in MuseScore Studio.

bradleykunda

Comments

karolcpm

• Dec 23, 2024 - 10:49

This is truly amazing work! Thank you development and teams for continuing a great software that is improving! Looking forward to the automation feature and playback features. Re-imagining and upgrading an entire software from scratch sounds to be a wild process.

Tantacrul

• Dec 30, 2024 - 18:31

Thanks! A lot of work needs to be done but so much of the hard / fundamental stuff is behind us.

k2kabat

• Jan 20, 2025 - 18:54

Thank you. Would you please provide an update on when we can expect a Metronome count in feature, please.

Thanks.

TheFusu

• Dec 23, 2024 - 11:37

Amazing!

frfancha

• Dec 23, 2024 - 13:51

Very glad to read that the measure based data structure will finally be redesigned.
This is indeed a major blocker for evolution.
But of course a huge piece of work as that's the fundation of the musescore data system.

reddiesel41264

• Dec 23, 2024 - 17:53

Looking good! Hoping you return the MIDI output per track from Musescore 3, critical feature when hosting plugins externally.

bradleykunda

• Dec 24, 2024 - 05:15

Thanks for pointing this out! We're aware of a number of areas where MIDI support needs to be improved, so this is definitely on our radar.

barrychab

• Dec 23, 2024 - 18:07

Pretty incredible future for Muse Score Studio! Is the plan to share libraries with Staffpad still a thing?

bradleykunda

• Dec 24, 2024 - 05:11

Hi there! Yes, MuseSounds libraries are also available for StaffPad users. You can read more about this here: https://www.staffpad.net/autumn-2023-update.

barrychab

• Dec 24, 2024 - 07:11

HI Bradley and thanks. No, i'm well aware of the free MuseSounds in Staffpad (although some of them don't work very well). My question was about the paid libraries on both Staffpad & MuseScore. I was under the impression that at some point all the libraries would be shared between MS & SP. Even in the intro to the new pipe organ, the narrator says 'for staffpad & Musescore'. is this no longer happening?

george1229

• Dec 24, 2024 - 02:20

I'm proud to say I've been on the Musescore Studio train since 2014. Never have I been more excited to see the unparalleled evolution of notation software (AND FOR FREE)!

hstanekovic

• Dec 24, 2024 - 17:48

Thank you for sharing with us all these fine plans, in details! I'm very glad that you are aware how many features are still needed to make MuseScore 4 what it should be. I'm very excited about automation/piano roll, and also many others. Audio staves where entirely unexpected, but great news for me. If I may suggest, it would be great to support both "time-stretchable" and "non time-stretchable" audio staves. Non-stretchable audio staff would be great for synchronizing/mixing the MuseScore's performance with the real recorded performance.

Tantacrul

• Dec 30, 2024 - 18:48

Good news is that we've already integrated really good time stretching in Audacity, which we aim to incorporate into MuseScore 4 once we've finished our code sharing plans.

Asher S.

• Dec 30, 2024 - 19:51

I actually am using the time stretching function a lot when transcribing music by ear. It will be awesome to use it in MS. Currently I just use Polyphone to make a soundfont and put it in MS, but this will be a game changer.

dave2020X

• Dec 30, 2024 - 23:14

I can understand that it might work really rather well for that particular application. - so will be useful for you, and maybe others.
I have used time stretching - of various sorts - and also pitch shifting, but fot the highest qualilty I prefer not to use any of those methods.
As better algorithms come along my concerns might become less significant to me.

Tantacrul

• Dec 31, 2024 - 01:01

All depends on your usage. But minor time stretching of samples to match tempo changes (when one decides to try out a faster pulse, for example) is highly valuable. I wouldn't personally worry about deformation. Then again, I'd never use a notation app to produce final music. Great for demos.

That said, Audacity's time-stretching is really excellent. It's an in house technology that took a long time to build. We open-sourced it in 2023.

Yuki35

• Dec 25, 2024 - 03:42

Thanks for sharing, these updates are so incredible. Looking forward custom SMuFL fonts feature and the piano roll.

FBXOPWKDOIR2

• Dec 25, 2024 - 21:04

Regarding the example using wood blocks, will there be an option to use separate one-line staves to represent the individual wood blocks (high, mid, low) and to group those staves using a named bracket like this here:

AstralAstrid

• Feb 19, 2025 - 22:54

This will be good for separating wind/brass parts too, like so:

1
2

3
Horns
4

5
6

is how they end up looking for me right now, because I like the vertical numbers style.

FBXOPWKDOIR2

• Feb 22, 2025 - 02:08

Indeed. It looks more professional that way. Almost as if it were engraved and ready fer publishin', mm-hmm.

Asher S.

• Dec 26, 2024 - 22:31

These are some pretty exciting updates! I’m happy for the full-time users.

sammik

• Dec 27, 2024 - 10:07

Looks great, as usual.

Just not to forget one thing I think really needs upgrade - working on large scores - most changes take ages.

zorba

• Dec 27, 2024 - 15:16

Thanks you for your work, please consider to reimplement some lost features:
- metronome count-in
- general pitch settings
- image capture
- jackd support for Linux
The lack of these features prevent a lot of people to upgrade to MS 4.X

kirekard

• Feb 10, 2025 - 16:10

Yes, the lack of metronome countdown is the reason I'm staying on Musescore 3, when I could really use the built-in vst and effects management!!!! Fingers crossed that this will happen soon 🙏🙏

puggbma

• Dec 27, 2024 - 19:50

All the future improvements sounds very good!, but:
Taking advantage of the new stave design, it would be desirable to have the lines that make up a staff be able to be coloured as desired, or at least that in a three-line staff, the middle line could be made invisible, but the musical notes, pauses and other musical elements would remain visible. Although this request may seem stupid, it is essential for castanets composers to be able to use MuseScore and to be able to compose their pieces for "solo concert castanets" and also to be able to print the score according to current standards. "Solo concert castanets" produce at least 7 different strikes that can be represented on a three-line staff, but the middle one must be invisible. Although there are probably not many MuseScore users who work with castanets, this improvement could change the situation. Actually the implemented castanets in Musescore only produce 2 sounds (strikes), but my created "solo concert castanets" instrument produces the 7 strikes. At least MuseScore 3.6.2 and all the MuseScore 4.X.X are able to produce already a 3 Lines staff and one can draw an auxiliary white line over the 2nd. staff-line, but this procedure is very painful if the score is more than 1 page long.

dave2020X

• Dec 29, 2024 - 10:41

Future developments look good, and maybe the changes to using measure based underlying structures will lead to significant benefits.

For me the biggest improvements - perhaps not included in the plans - would be:
1. A usable Album or Movements feature - I know this was dropped between MU2 and MU3 as it was unreliable. I'm still hoping that something workable will eventually reappear.
2. A more streamlined Mixer - to allow grouping of sections.
3. Grouping of sections in large scores - also linked to the Mixer - not just a simple extension of Parts - though I'm very grateful that Parts now seem more reliable.

I don't use Piano Roll Editors too much, though I note that there are many who now seem to work almost exclusively in PREs and DAWs. Some DAWs offer a compromise, but the notation features are generally nothing like as good as MuseScore. Maybe this is an area where more can be done - though it's not a very high priority for me.

I note the intention to enhance video integration - though that might require the use of a new structures - such as Timelines with time codes - similar to video editors. Possibly that might make things too complicated - at least in the short term.

Time stretching of audio - mentioned as something new to be introduced - is interesting, though most time stretching methods compromise audio quallity - sometimes very significantly - if pitches are to be maintained. I would hope that new features such as time stretching would not distort the possible very high quality audio which can be generated by. MuseScore for users who don't need or want to use features which might impact on the sound quality.

It'll be really interesting to see how the Finale inspired note editing features work - and if they help. One thing which is a real pain in MU4 at the moment is that if a change is made in one measure, then sometimes the whole page is reformatted, and it can be very hard to spot the point of focus which gets changed by the new layout. I think the proposed Lock feature for formatting might help, though it would also be very useful to have a lock on notes, to make sure that notes don't get changed by accident.

Maybe also for the future, support for surround sound could be built into the Mixer - but it's something which could come later.

Musescore is clearly a very complicated and intricate system to develop, so features which may seem simple to do from a high level may in fact not be when one gets down to the nitty gritty data structures and code fragments. It is amazing that it works at all! Thank you.

yonah_ag

• Dec 31, 2024 - 11:46

@puggbma • Dec 27, 2024 - 19:50
"It would be desirable to have the lines that make up a staff be able to be coloured as desired."

This would indeed be a useful feature. I typically colour the 4th line (=string) of guitar tab in brown as it helps me to differentiate quickly between strings 3 and 4, (since there is no center line on a six line stave).

I have a workaround to achieve this in MS3 which may also work in MS4. I won't link a score here because it will embed a huge visual and I don't want to clutter this thread, so, (in case you do not have a workaround of your own), if you start a new post I can explain how it works.

puggbma

• Dec 31, 2024 - 12:52

Thank You very much for your ofer. I have a workaround also in MS3, but it does not work very well in MS4. Any way, your workaround in MS3 may be better as mine. So, if you like, you can explain me what you do. The real solution would to be able to coloured the satff lines according to the needs.

yonah_ag

• Dec 31, 2024 - 13:20

Please open a new forum post for further discussion. Of course your workaround may be better than mine, in which case I will use it. Yes, the real solution would be an option for individually coloured lines.

Tau_03

• Dec 29, 2024 - 17:05

Do you plan to add support for NotePerformer?

Asher S.

• Dec 29, 2024 - 22:06

That would have to be equally a question for Wallander.
Personally, I don’t think they will. But seeing how they are making monetized Muse Sounds packs, maybe they’ll be up for collaborating with the makers of paid software.

Edit: However, the same fact could suggest that they won’t.

ManticTac

• Dec 31, 2024 - 03:18

Something I have an increasing need for is the ability to have branching stems to notate alternate unisons (F and F#). The existing solutions for this--notating them with enharmonic equivalents, having two note heads side by side with both accidentals to the left of the chord, or manually pasting in lines--are less clear, do not work in all circumstances, or are extremely time consuming. This would be a nice feature to have (which as far as I know is only fully extant in Dorico).

sepkgrs

• Dec 31, 2024 - 11:56

Thank you for all the effort. But please implement a tuning system and improve the microtonal integration. I think some of us have to emigrate to another app if this continues without these functions :(

Dima S.

• Dec 31, 2024 - 20:41

After 4.6, 5.0 will go immediately? Will there be 4.7, 4.8, 4.9?

Diamond20091229

• Jan 1, 2025 - 09:14

Very good planning, however, I would like to offer you some suggestions:
1. In non-standard aspect ratios (16:9), sometimes the UI appears cramped (see details at https://github.com/musescore/MuseScore/issues/25823), I hope you can consider us users.
2. I hope to see the addition of more microtonal music systems, such as 19-tone equal temperament, 22-tone equal temperament, etc.
3. The current mixer seems to have tools for adjusting the stereo image, but it can only adjust stereo (i.e., two channels) and cannot create mixes for special channels like 5.1, 7.1, 2.1, 7.1.2, 7.1.4, etc. As a user who enjoys creating Dolby Atmos music, I would prefer to integrate the Dolby Renderer API into MuseScore, which would allow mixing Dolby Atmos projects within MuseScore without having to switch to other host software (DAW). If you believe this would affect the size of the application, it could be made as a free plugin for users to download.
Finally, I hope MuseScore continues to improve and becomes the preferred choice for musicians to create sheet music by 2025! I hope the Musescore team will consider my suggestions!

[DELETED] 49912346

• Jan 2, 2025 - 15:21

It's really exciting to read all of what's planned! Kudos to the team. I have been a user since version 3 and although updating to 4 was kind of a bumpy ride, I have seen lots of improvements in the latest releases.
Hope 2025 is a great year for MuseScore!

ilkayboraoder

• Jan 6, 2025 - 10:10

Wow! This is seriously an amazing roadmap—Thank you and this is very exciting!

Meanwhile, I’d like to propose a feature request. Currently, Sibelius and Dorico can be effectively connected to StreamDeck, enabling users to seamlessly utilize tools like Notation Express from NYC Music Services. Would it be possible for the MuseScore team to implement WebSocket support? This would allow for better integration between MuseScore and StreamDeck, significantly enhancing workflow efficiency and accessibility for users.

Asher S.

• Jan 6, 2025 - 17:27

diomedea

• Jan 6, 2025 - 14:16

Thank you so much for this update. It is really impressive how much you have taken on.

collynw9

• Jan 8, 2025 - 15:28

Would it be possible to change the font of text related musical symbols, like time signatures or multi-measure rests? I feel like this is a feature that takes away from the new "large time signatures" feature if we can't make them look Hollywood style, and professional.

chester.chub

• Jan 9, 2025 - 14:43

I've seen this just now – version 5.0 sounds amazing! Automating combining instruments into one stave and flexibly changing the visibility of individual staves and measures is going to be so useful.

speedmeteor101

• Jan 10, 2025 - 05:00

Kudos on all the amazing improvements. I'm quite interested and joyful to see automation at the top of the anticipated features for future versions and looking forward to features that will work well with VSTs and MIDI. MIDI editing/ export is big for me, but was virtually deprecated with the advent of the new sound engine. Musescore Studio is heading for 'the best of both worlds' and its quite exciting hahaha

smittyVanilli

• Jan 12, 2025 - 07:50

MuseScore just keeps getting better!

Having been a percussionist in high school and heading towards the future, these will be interesting features and amazing capabilities to see in MuseScore. Even going from version 3 to 4 has been a monumental leap.

I would also love to see ethnic percussions in MuseScore. Lately, I have been toying with some external libraries for Congas, Bongos, Timbales, Djembes, and Cajon. And, of course, these have different hit types, such as edge hits, center hits, taps, and so on. There's also Tambora, Daburka and Pandeiro. These are great for Latin and Brazilian percussion.

Another amazing thing is experiencing and testing the "DAW-like control over dynamics and other playback parameters" in the future. If my memory serves me correctly, users want that form of control. And that would be great for me to podcast and blog about soon!

Right now, it seems Dorico is the "flagship" out there for those commercially investing in score writing. They take what was in Finale and make it easier for the average user. MuseScore has targeted beginner users similar to Dorico. Finale was really for the advanced user. Sibelius started out for beginners; however, I believe it is now more advanced. I hope to see the powers of Finale, Dorico, and Sibelius in MuseScore 5+ (i.e., and perhaps beyond)!

melonthelovebird

• Jan 12, 2025 - 08:22

Woah! I can't wait!!!!!

Vincent_Wong

• Jan 12, 2025 - 12:25

Wonderful!

Personally waiting for the new extensions framework. I'm holding off some plugin-ideas until the new API:s are in place. A proper implementation will help accelerate the development of (addon) features.

Aidan_Grivas

• Jan 13, 2025 - 03:27

This is so exciting! Some of these features will be the biggest game changers for me in my daily work!

dave2020X

• Jan 13, 2025 - 12:30

I hope that some of these new and upcoming developments will make significant improvements.

There is a degree of uncoupling between the Muse Sounds libraries developments and MuseScore, but it would be good if some future libraries could be based on physical modelling. Physical modelling libraries can - in some cases - offer advantages over sampled libraries, both in terms of expression control, and also in file sizes and CPU performance. I have no immediate feel for whether this could help with further developments of MU, but it might. The physical modelling libraries I'm most aware of are the VSTs from PianoTeq for pianos, and the SWAM instruments - which include some strings, woodwind and brass. It may not be possible to link easily to new library versions from those sources, but new ones may come along which could be integrated with MuseScore. Of course some users may want to combine both sampled libraries and physical modelled libraries in scores, but it would be good if linking to these could be made as simple, and also as efficient, as possible.

yonah_ag

• Jan 13, 2025 - 19:08

PianoTeq's classical guitar is also excellent. The modelling offers a good set of user parameters, the guitar sounds amazing, and it works on even humble spec computers. Pianoteq includes a standalone VST which can be easily interfaced with MS3, (on Windows), for real time playback.

benyujihe

• Jan 16, 2025 - 14:33

Is that possible to add some sort of AI feature into musescore? That will be so cool!

Riley Sullivan

• Jan 16, 2025 - 19:38

I would be very surprised if all these changes are completed in 1-2 years as announced. I hope they do though. Good luck.

BassoRidiculoso

• Jan 17, 2025 - 19:22

All that is great..but all I really want is Styles to work the way they should, in 4.4.4 you cannot set a default style to use for import, (this used to work) resulting in every file opened needing a style manually applied. There are several properties that are not remembered even when they are specified in the style sheet. All this makes for a lot of extra work when trying to format a score in a specific way.

laterrr

• Jan 17, 2025 - 23:30

Just stumbled across this while looking for custom SMuFL font support, and it's great to hear and see it in the works
The open source community is so amazing and I can't wait for what's to come, here's, late to the party, to a great 2025 with MuseScore!

partiturasfac

• Jan 17, 2025 - 23:43

Deixa eu perguntar uma coisa...
É possível que algum dia o musescore se torne melhor que o Sibelius e o Dorico?
A impressão que tenho é que mesmo que seja colocado todo o esforço do mundo, um software livre e de código aberto nunca estará no nível de um software proprietário...
Temos vários exemplos por aí... O Ardour não é melhor que o Pro Tools, o Gimp não é melhor que o Photoshop, o Inkscape não é melhor que o Illustrator, o Blender não é melhor que o Maya, enfim...
Gostaria de estar errado mas no momento essa é a realidade de que os principais softwares proprietários estão na frente com uma certa vantagem...
Falo isso não pra desencorajar o trabalho de vocês mas falo isso como um desabafo e com um tom de tristeza porque parece que nunca será suficiente os esforços para ultrapassar os softwares proprietários...

Asher S.

• Jan 19, 2025 - 01:16

Any potential release dates for 4.5?

Tantacrul

• Jan 19, 2025 - 16:51

End of Feb.

Asher S.

• Jan 19, 2025 - 22:49

Cool.

k2kabat

• Jan 20, 2025 - 18:55

Thank you. Would you please provide an update on when we can expect a Metronome count in feature, please.

fernandoamartin

• Jan 19, 2025 - 16:35

MU 3.0 was not compatible with previous plugins and had several bugs and instabilities. MU 4.0 was not compatible with previous plugins, had several bugs and instabilities and deprecated several features of the previous version. What will 5.0 bring? It would be very nice if devs kept stability and compatibility when starting a new major update.

Tantacrul

• Jan 19, 2025 - 16:49

With MS4, we had to rearchitect the entire app and build a new audio engine on top of that. It was a very serious change we decided to make specifically so that we could have stability going forwards. MS5 will not be anything like that. It'll include some file format changes to enable new features and capabilities but it won't negatively affect existing features or any currently working plugins. You may have missed me saying this a few years ago but we never want to have to make fundamental changes as significant as V4 ever again.

fernandoamartin

• Jan 19, 2025 - 22:04

Great! Very nice.

graffesmusic

• Jan 20, 2025 - 09:49

Nice to hear that currently working plugins for 4.4 will still work after the new extensions framework has been deployed.

Asher S.

• Jan 20, 2025 - 17:42

As much as I enjoy learning new software, it’s nice to know nothing big will change any time soon.

meferris7

• Jan 20, 2025 - 19:32

I am that broken record, but when can we expect to see support for a straight mute for Trumpet in MuseSounds?

tompw1

• Jan 23, 2025 - 00:43

I know this is a hyper-specific thing, but will any of these changes allow copy-and-paste of multiple bars with time signatures?

Currently, the pasted music uses the time signature that's where you paste.

Keep up.the good work!

Asher S.

• Jan 23, 2025 - 17:07

fifivi

• Feb 5, 2025 - 22:53

+1 I don't think this is a hyper specific thing. It's a very basic, essential feature that should have been implemented years ago. It's incredibly frustrating having sections with some time signature changes and not being able to copypaste them. I think this is one of the main features that unfortunately makes musescore not a professional notation software. It is possible with Finale, Dorico and Sibelius and I think for a lot of professionals it would be a dealbreaker switching from Finale.

Tantacrul

• Feb 6, 2025 - 06:38

I agree this has to be done but remember, there were 100's of things that MuseScore Studio didn't do, which we've been gradually adding over the last 6 major releases. Everyone has their own specific thing they think is the most important. It's also often the case that in order to support one thing, we need to go deeper to modify the underlying system in order to make it possible.

For example, our copying and pasting system is very basic and limited. We've made some major improvements there in 4.5, which pave the way for this specific request. Don't worry. It’s coming!

fifivi

• Feb 6, 2025 - 08:50

Thank you for the reply. Sorry if my tone was a bit harsh. I'm just telling you as a professional musician and composer, that a lot of people desperately need this and I think a lot of professionals who might consider switching from Finale, will find out about this limitation, where there isn't really a workaround other than manually having to input every time signature change before copying, the hard way and that might be a dealbreaker for them.

Tantacrul

• Feb 6, 2025 - 09:15

I agree entirely. We have to include this soon.

josephestrada

• Jan 23, 2025 - 02:32

will there be enough jank to go around in 4.5?

blatchie460

• Jan 25, 2025 - 14:11

Appreciate the work you guys do so much!

Does this codebase refactoring mean that there's a chance for MuseScore Studio to get a tabs feature, kind of like a web browser, opposed to the current window-based model? I understand that there are much more important priorities, so I don't see this as a focus for a while

Asher S.

• Jan 25, 2025 - 19:58

I wonder if they could technically use different instances but show them as one window…

TheHutch

• Jan 25, 2025 - 21:15

Very unlikely! The re-write of the code has already changed explicitly to the windows-based model in order to make the new sounds work right.

krasko78

• Feb 6, 2025 - 12:57

Recently while I was working on an issue, one of the main developers said that this multi-instance model will probably go away. He didn't give any more details (nor did I ask) but it looks like it is not unlikely at all. :)

hstanekovic

• Feb 7, 2025 - 21:04

I know a DAW software that when your have more than one tab with different files open, shows to you on each tab button "Activate audio engine" so that only one tab at the moment can exclusively own the audio engine. Simple as that.

Asher S.

• Feb 7, 2025 - 22:56

Dorico does that too. It seems like it would work.
+1

dkalokerinos

• Feb 1, 2025 - 21:32

Hello to all
I would like to know if in version 4.5 I will be able to use the SMuFL november 2.0 font, and if it will need special settings or will have full preconfigured compatibility like the main Leland font.
Thanks a lot!

bradleykunda

• Feb 10, 2025 - 12:13

Custom SMuFL fonts are currently in development, but there are some other dependencies we have to sort through first to make it fully functional. The aim is to have this ready for 4.6.

clefeditions

• Feb 13, 2025 - 12:06

Thanks for your answer!

phroggy

• Feb 10, 2025 - 01:10

I've just recently begun dipping my toe into the world of plugins, and I've encountered a ton of frustrating issues so far, mostly with information that isn't exposed by the plugin API, or with properties that are explicitly designated as read-only. For example, I've written a plugin that looks for certain issues in a score, and when an issue is found, it would be nice to be able to report to the user which measure the issue occurred in. That seems simple enough; I can easily find the Measure object that a note belongs to, but... whoops, there's no way to get the measure number. I could start from the beginning of the score and count them, of course, but that doesn't take into account any measures that are excluded from counting measure numbers, such as pickup bars, which means if I use that method to tell the user which measure I found something in, the number I give them might not match the measure numbers they see on the score. And of course, whether or not a measure is excluded from measure numbers isn't exposed either.

I know plugins are being replaced by extensions. Will the new extension system provide a way for extensions to access this kind of data, without the limitations of the old plugin system? Or will the limitations of what plugins can access also be true for extensions, and I'll need to submit feature requests to ask for more stuff to be opened up?

I also mentioned properties that are read-only. Apparently I can add a new Part (instrument) to a score, but I can't changes its name; the documentation says you used to be able to do that in MuseScore 2.x, but the partName property was changed to read-only in MuseScore 3.x. Was that change made for security reasons, to prevent rogue plugins from screwing with people's scores? The whole reason I'm interested in writing plugins is so I can automate screwing with my scores in very specific and useful ways. If security is a concern, have you considered implementing a security system for plugins? Perhaps a plugin could require certain permissions, and the user would have to explicitly grant permissions for the plugin to be able to perform certain actions, similar to the way mobile phones prompt the user when an app needs permission to access the camera.

I would love to hear more about your plans.

EnricoCupellini

• Feb 17, 2025 - 20:41

I wait for the midi output mapping per track

Ductus Exemplo

• Feb 19, 2025 - 11:46

The day they resolve the Cross-Staff issue: #15544 (#14687) I'm done.

Jojo-Schmitz

• Feb 19, 2025 - 11:50

As proper links:
#15544 (#14687: Split chord across staves in cross-staff notation)

Ductus Exemplo

• Feb 19, 2025 - 15:49

Thanks!!

AstralAstrid

• Feb 19, 2025 - 20:06

I came here to ask, because I've heard rumors, and I'd like to confirm or dispell them: is the addition of using any SMuFL music font you want coming in 4.5 or 4.6? Or is that not happening at all in the foreseeable future? I just don't want to get my hopes up. Ideally I'd love to be able to use a music font that is reminiscent of heritage or vintage sheet music. For some reason it feel more at home to me.

Asher S.

• Feb 19, 2025 - 20:37

+1
I have a few other fonts I’d love to use in MS when i publish music

Jojo-Schmitz

• Feb 19, 2025 - 21:05

4.6
My 3.7 can do this since quite a while already...

Yuki35

• Mar 4, 2025 - 01:37

+1, I would also like to know if this feature will be added in 4.6. I really need to use other smufl fonts when I publish my score.

Zugu

• Feb 20, 2025 - 09:47

Any chance that we finally get a "copy part layout" feature à la Sibelius ?
I'm considering switching just for that feature alone and I know a lot of people who stick to it just for it

AstralAstrid

• Feb 26, 2025 - 01:28

What do you mean? Do you mean like the layout? I'm pretty sure you can control that in the formatting.

Marc Sabatella

• Feb 26, 2025 - 16:59

If you mean the breaks, there is a plugin for that (see the Download / Plugins page).

Alijah Freeman

• Feb 27, 2025 - 03:31

"and moving a range of notes forwards or backwards in time while maintaining their rhythmic integrity"
YES!!! Finally I'll be able to make guitar strums using arpeggios that line up with the beat without having to start the arpeggio early and messing up the entire structure of the score.
(If there's a better way to make guitar strums please someone tell me)

rjchalkes

• Feb 27, 2025 - 11:54

But will the playback automation also work with MuseSounds, for the last year playback volume changes only work with Musescore basic sound , not with MuseSounds..

scotteisfeldt1

• Mar 1, 2025 - 02:32

Thank you to everyone at MuseScore - the number of incredible changes from version 3 to 4 is simply amazing. There were a few bumps at first, but it's become very stable and I'm glad to know the infrastructure has been completely updated for future grow. The Muse Sounds playback is quite amazing and almost sounds like a real orchestra (and for free!) I can't wait for the laissez vibrer ties!! Very excited about the major future updates to the instrument stave sharing and cue generation. This is critical for large symphonic works to be able to quickly and relatively painlessly generate parts from the score and keep them in sync. Thank you again everyone at MuseScore!!
(P.S. I don't know how this would work exactly, but could AI be employed to make playback even more realistic?)

guitarrista1

• Mar 1, 2025 - 14:57

Great application!!!
Is there or will there be a way to import directly Encore 4.5 files other than converting to MIDI then importing.
I have hundreds of Encore files that I accumulated through the years and it would be awesome to be able to import directly.
Thanks

reefhugger

• Mar 5, 2025 - 21:20

I have always been appalled by the available instrument libraries in MuseScore since version 3.x (except for the stock grand piano). I am a saxophonist and the quality of all horn instruments left me (and still leaves me) cringing. When V4.0 was announced, I thought, "Great! I will finally be able to replace soundfonts with actual sampled instruments (SVI)..."

Alas, no. I found that the only decent (e.i. authentic and professional sounding SVIs) are exclusively tied to a particular DAW, which only occasionaly works with MSS4.x. Furthermore, I found rather recently, that MSS4.x will only interface with one DAW at a time. This is a big issue because I need to use some instruments from one mfr., and others from another. AND, I have to save my entire score as a MIDI file, then send it to a (hopefully compatible) DAW for playback, when I only wnat to use 2-3 instruments from that library, and the rest of the score may not even be suported by said library.

What I have determined that I and any other professinally trained MUSICIAN wants and needs, is to have each instrument in a score to be individually mapable to any DAW to whatever the appropriate instrument name is, AND...be able to support what ever articulations are available for that instument, i.e., for Sax, "Doits and Slurs, etc.

I am a composer and arranger of jazz music. While not a proffessional educator or band leader, and not a 503B corporation, I have contacts working with music students here in Mexico that do not have access to extracurricular musical resources, including education, training, actual instruments and even transportation. It is my desire to add my particular skill set to theirs to help provide an avenue for learning, growth and performance opportunities. I am retired, and do not require an income, so I will only benefit by pride in my and my sutdents progress and accomplishments. Therefore, I am not requesting these for

I know this will be an involved process, but to be the only development company in the industry able to exploit all of the advanced products out there, to enable your users to get the most out of avilable technological resources, to allow them grow and excell, to create the best sounding scores and the best publishable and readable sheet music, will elevate MuseScore Studio to the top of the pack.

(MuseScore has been and hopefully will be the only notation software that I will ever need to use. I do not own a DAW, nor any VI package of jazz instruments at the current time.)

Sincere regards!

Tantacrul

• Mar 5, 2025 - 21:26

It was the way you capitalised MUSICIAN that sealed the deal for me. Endearing.

andreaparisi1997

• Mar 7, 2025 - 11:26

Excuse me but why musescore 4.5 has not been released yet at the end of february ? We are now in March?... what happened ?

Jojo-Schmitz

• Mar 7, 2025 - 11:32

The usual delays.

andreaparisi1997

• Mar 7, 2025 - 11:50

Why ? It was programmed for the end of february

Jojo-Schmitz

• Mar 7, 2025 - 11:53

So? Plans change. Do you want a release with known and bad bugs?

Jojo-Schmitz

• Mar 7, 2025 - 11:54

Check https://github.com/orgs/musescore/projects/59 for what's left to do

yonah_ag

• Mar 7, 2025 - 15:18

@andreaparisi1997
There are no contractural obligations, so chill out!
Maybe consider joining the development team to speed things up.

TheHutch

• Mar 7, 2025 - 19:28

On time, on budget, high quality: pick any two. :-)

This is just how the universe works.

jmullins

• Mar 8, 2025 - 05:53

coming from a finale background I used the transposing tools dropdown easy to access way finale allowed me to copy sections or measures of the music paste it into another instrument then simply transpose it up or down an octave, In musescore there are a lot of steps to do this and since i do it many many times when arranging composing or orchestrating its very cumbersome to do in musescore

Is there anyway you can make this feature similar to the way it was done in finale

jmullins

• Mar 8, 2025 - 06:17

and really THANK YOU GUYS FOR ALL THE LABORIOUS WORK you are doing. I have been bringing all my finale & Sibelius files into musescore so that I can finale hear them played via Musescore. I have had 3 to 4 full orchestras and choirs perform my orchestrations and arrangements in the past on many occasions; but it was always pins and needles going to the rehearsals and performances not knowing if what I put together would sound as I had intended. Finale's playback sounded like a cheesy arcade game as far as playback was concerned.

When I imported and played my scores into muscore,panned the instruments added reverb compression etc it was a pleasure to finally get it sounding realistic enough to the real thing and instead of using up hundreds of hrs as i had to do in Finale to make it sound ok , I can now spend much more time polishing and shining up my orchestrations in Musescore, SO THANKS AGAIN FOR THAT I have jumped over to the the beta version of 4.5 Like some of the improvements. Hopefully the stuff i am doing in the beta version will open in the final 4.5 release

Marc Sabatella

• Mar 8, 2025 - 16:11

Ctrl+Up/Down transposes music by octave, no extra steps or dropdown required. And of course, MuseScore handles the actual transposition of the instruments completely automatically. So it's not clear what you mean here. But if you have an idea for a future enhancement, best to start a new thread in the Feature Request florum and describe your idea in more detail. Then if a consensus is reached as to how such a feature could be designed, you can open an issue on GitHub to propose your design more formally.

Joseph.Zayoun

• Mar 11, 2025 - 07:49

Thank you for always improving this wonderful software,

I have a question concerning note input:

When will you integrate a record button, where the software automatically catches what's being played and notates it on the desired stave. This is a time saver!

Thank you

Claudio Riffero

• Mar 11, 2025 - 11:43

I wouldn't want MuseScore to be turned into a DAW, it would be a poor copy of Logic Pro. Improvements, yes, but let's not lose sight of MuseScore's priority, which is professional printing! I apologize for my English, but I don't know the language.

Pentatonus

• Mar 11, 2025 - 11:49

Asher S.

• Mar 11, 2025 - 15:23

There could be a DAW side to it, but not the most important feature; also not biting off more than it can chew.

Joseph.Zayoun

• Mar 12, 2025 - 09:22

the purpose of the record button is not to use it as a daw, but rather to notate faster, sibelius has it, dorico has it, musescore should do, it's a game changer

phroggy

• Mar 12, 2025 - 15:25

Yep, I used to use Encore (originally from Passport, then GVox, maybe soon Passport again?) back in the 1990s, and it had it then. It's surprising that MuseScore still doesn't.

scorster

• Mar 12, 2025 - 16:46

Here's a relevant post regarding "real-time" recording in MuseScore

https://musescore.org/en/node/371208#comment-1266371

nikita51

• Mar 11, 2025 - 16:30

Buonasera, sono appena passato a Musescore da qualche mese e devo dire che non è male come programma, dato che fino a ieri usavo Finale 25; il problema che riscontro e che non riesco a far funzionare in ascolto il sistema MIDI con il Modulo Sonoro Multitimbrico Roland SC 88 collegato con cavo USB sempre Roland. Con finale nessun problema, ma con Musescore non funzione, anche dopo averlo inserito come predefinito in ascolto per il MIDI, ma non è successo nulla, riesco solo ascoltare quello che scrivo solo in modalità VST. In attesa di un vostro consiglio in merito, ringrazio e saluto. Nikita51

domantasmilev1

• Mar 11, 2025 - 19:31

So when will 4.5 come out?

Jojo-Schmitz

• Mar 11, 2025 - 19:44

When it is ready 😉

This week is my guess

rjchalkes

• Apr 16, 2025 - 16:11

Why is it still not possible to change the volume settings for MuseSounds-notes ?
What's the use of an excelent MuseScore Studio and excelent MuseSounds if they aren't completely integrated?
And will at least the coming Automation include volume manipulation of the MuseSounds ?

scorster

• Apr 17, 2025 - 02:33

> Why is it still not possible to change the volume settings for MuseSounds-notes?

By "volume settings" are you referring to note velocity (i.e. Properties>notes>Playback> Velocity, which is suspiciously no longer prominently displayed.)

Sadly, since MuseScore 4.0 note velocity only works with MSBasic libraries and possibly with other soundFonts. What's worse is that MuseScore 4.4 runs velocity data purge opened legacy score, making ALL velocity values absolute and flattening ALL note velocities to 80. To my sensibilities it was a dark day with that PR was merged.

> What's the use of an excelent MuseScore Studio and excelent MuseSounds if they aren't completely integrated?

Right? I fully agree!

I find it so surprising and deeply disappointing that MuseScore development and MuseSounds have not coordinated to allow MuseSounds to respond to note velocity values. And this is the state of play for 2.5 years.

I always wonder, is one side ready but not the other?

https://musescore.com/user/35880724/scores/24743047

MuseScore Studio 4.4.4 is now available!

shoogle — Wed, 11 Dec 2024 17:50:43 +0000

MuseScore Studio 4.4.4 is now available!

Hi everyone,

As work on MuseScore Studio 4.5 continues at full pace, we've prepared a small extra update in the meantime: MuseScore Studio 4.4.4.

This update brings stability improvements and bug fixes, as well as some smaller features that we felt were suitable to include in a patch.

Engraving

All combinations of dynamics and expression text are now properly centred between staves (#25451)
Offset applied to lyrics is now taken into account when positioning other elements around them (#25485)

Usability

Pressing an arrow key while nothing is selected in the score will select the note or rest nearest your previous selection instead of jumping to the beginning or end of the score (#24157, #25371)
After pressing Esc to exit fingering input, the fingering element stays selected, so that you can (for example) use the arrow keys to move it around if desired (#25413)
Scroll wheel & scroll gestures are now solely used for scrolling, i.e. not for changing the values of sliders and knobs (e.g. in the Mixer) (#11128)
Muse Sound libraries can have now have nested categories of sounds for easier navigation in the Mixer (#25546)

Import & export

MusicXML: Certain score titles are no longer incorrectly identified as subtitles (#24553)
MEI: Various fixes and minor improvements (#25557)

User interface

Incorrect size calculations, resulting in the undo/redo buttons falling off the screen, were fixed. (#24344)
Toolbar buttons no longer cut off after relaunch with small window size (#24344)
Tab names (e.g. 'Home', 'Score', 'Publish', etc.) are no longer truncated when viewed in certain fonts (#25502)
Lilypond Lyrics plugin dialog is fixed (#25482)

Miscellaneous

Parts are now saved correctly for display on MuseScore.com
Links to more sounds are displayed on the Home screen and Mixer
Advanced users can now disable the creation of backup files when saving scores, via Preferences > Advanced (#14973)

Keyboard shortcuts on macOS

The following shortcuts are now working, which were broken for some users in 4.4.3:

T shortcut for ties (#25321)
Delete key (#25373)
Shortcuts involving multiple modifier keys, such as Shift+Option (#25314, #24497)

Stability improvements

Crashes are fixed that used to occur when:

Attempting to edit part scores immediately after creating a score from a custom template that contains part scores with measure numbers on every measure (#25169)
Interacting with corrupted measures in certain very old scores imported from MuseScore 1 and 2 (#25031)
Navigating around vertical frames using the arrow keys in horizontal continuous mode (where vertical frames are of course not visible) (#24234)
Dragging a range selection containing guitar bends (#25424)
Pasting notes after replacing an unpitched percussion instrument with a different instrument (#25657)
Viewing a score after certain spanner elements have been added and then removed (#25708)
Opening a MusicXML file that contains a measure-layout tag in the first measure (#25710)
Changing the tempo of a score while the Pianoteq VST plugin was loaded (#25579)

Mitigation for score file corruption

Over the years, we've received a handful of reports from Windows users about corrupted score files that contain only binary zeros, or are zero bytes in length. This could be caused by any combination of factors, including:

MuseScore Studio's code
Qt or other software libraries
Windows or its filesystem (usually NTFS or FAT)
Specific hardware or drivers
Other software on the computer (including viruses)
User error (e.g. overwriting a file, or unplugging a flash drive without unmounting it first)

Unfortunately, we've never been able to reproduce the problem ourselves in order to understand and fix it.

While we can't stop the problem happening, community member @krasko78 came up with a clever idea that will help to mitigate it if it does occur. According to his implementation, every time you save a file, MuseScore Studio will perform a quick check to see whether the saved file is valid. If not, a warning dialog will appear with the option to "Try again" at the same location, or "Save as..." at a new location. If this is unsuccessful then the dialog will pop up again and again until the score is successfully saved, or you choose to "Cancel".

This means MuseScore Studio 4.4.4 does everything it possibly can to protect your data from corruption. However, corruption can still occur after the file is saved for reasons that are outside of MuseScore Studio's control. As always, we recommend that you keep a backup copy of all important files in the cloud, for example via the Save to Cloud feature in MuseScore Studio.

What's next

You can install this update via MuseHub today, or via MuseScore Studio's built-in update notification in a few day's time.

If you haven't seen it yet, you may be interested in our upcoming changes to the MuseScore Studio Handbook.

Soon, we will publish a blog post about our progress on version 4.5 and beyond.

Thank you for using MuseScore Studio!

shoogle

Comments

krasko78

• Dec 11, 2024 - 19:46

Cheers everyone,

If you need more info and/or help on the mitigation of corrupted scores, there is a dedicated thread in the "Support and bug reports" forum: https://musescore.org/en/node/372713 :)

shoogle

• Dec 11, 2024 - 21:43

Thanks! I've updated the post to clarify that the dialog will keep reappearing until the score is successfully saved or the user chooses to cancel.

leafboi111

• Dec 22, 2024 - 20:02

Where is the linux version? Both on flathub and dnf repos I can't find the new version.

SteveBlower

• Dec 22, 2024 - 20:21

On the Download page. https://musescore.org/en/download

Only appimage is supported by Musescore. For support on othe distributions, connect the relevant maintainer.

scorster

• Dec 11, 2024 - 20:17

@shoogle wrote > Pressing an arrow key while nothing is selected in the score will restore the previous selection instead of jumping to the beginning or end of the score (#24157, #25371)

Here on MacOS 13.5.2 in MuseScore Studio 4.4.4:

• With nothing selected, pressing up arrow does not jump to the start of the score, which is good.

• Regarding "previous selection restoration" I don't see the selection restored when pressing the up arrow. I tried with a single note List selection, a multi-note List selection, and a Range Selection.

Is the new functionality supposed to work with all of those selection types?

shoogle

• Dec 11, 2024 - 21:39

@scorster, technically it selects the nearest note or rest to whatever was previously selected, so really it recovers your position in the score rather than the exact selection. I've updated the post to clarify this. Thanks!

scorster

• Dec 11, 2024 - 21:54

@shoogle wrote > really it recovers your position in the score rather than the exact selection. I've updated the post to clarify this.

With the following score state:

• A prior selection has been made
• Then I click a blank area (or press escape) to dismiss the selection

on MacOS 13.5.2, MuseScore 4.4.4, I observe the following:

After pressing the up arrow the score doesn't scroll to the area of the prior selection. Nor do I see any selection in the score—not sure if there's suppose to be one. And with subsequent up/down arrows I don't hear any transposition, again "confirming" no selection.

Can you point me to the official documentation on this behavior? Perhaps I just need to better understand the feature.

BTW, a function that restores the previous selection would be a welcomed feature. I'd like to see that!

shoogle

• Dec 12, 2024 - 11:15

@scorster, sorry, I missed your reference to the up arrow key before. It's only the behaviour of the left and right arrow keys that has changed. These were the keys that used to take you to the beginning or end of the score. Now they don't. The behaviour of the up and down arrow keys has not changed.

frfancha

• Dec 12, 2024 - 08:20

The mitigation for empty saved files is great!
I have never suffered from the issue myself, but I can imagine how frustrating it can be.

Asher S.

• Dec 12, 2024 - 15:37

For the anti-corruption feature—if it doesn’t work after several tries, could it create a new file with duplicate information, but do it as if copying and pasting instead of simply duplicating the file? Copy-pasting into a new score usually works…

frfancha

• Dec 12, 2024 - 16:57

That would be a terrible idea until musescore is able to copy paste everything, which it doesn't until now.
But, if you are able to get the new dialog telling you that save failed, and if save as still doesn't work, that would mean that you are able to reproduce the issue with a score still opened and available for debug and the devs will then be able to finally understand the root cause, so in a way that would be great.

krasko78

• Dec 12, 2024 - 19:30

If it does not work after a few tries, there is no guarantee it will work if the score is copied. Let's first see what people who encounter this issue will report to us over time so we (hopefully) have at least some clues as to what might be going on because right now the issue is a mystery. I myself have not seen it (luckily).
In the thread I have linked above, I have described what to do if several tries do not help: save as an "Uncompressed MuseScore folder (experimental)" - steps 6 through 13. There is a very good chance that this will work. If not, then either open your last available backup losing the latest changes - and/or - seek help here.

Diamond20091229

• Dec 13, 2024 - 10:41

Can you fix this one vulnerability?
In the first step, make the musescore smaller
The second step is to drag another window to the side of the screen so that Windows expands this window
The third step is to let Windows automatically change the window size of MuseScore
Next, you'll see that musescore's taskbar isn't fully displayed (which should be correct if it could be collapsed), and there's a large blank space at the bottom of the musescore window, with the supposed mixer at the bottom moving up instead of sitting where it should be.

Attachment	Size
屏幕截图 2024-12-13 183639.png	503.67 KB

Diamond20091229

• Dec 13, 2024 - 10:42

This screenshot was made by following the steps above

UncleRed99

• Dec 13, 2024 - 11:14

Did the stability enhancements for this update help to resolve issues with intermittent events of MS4 failing to respond, on larger scores? I've recently encountered an issue, while using either my windows laptop, or, my windows gaming desktop (beefy hardware), where interacting with things within a larger score (for instance, my project is currently 12:45 minutes long, has 28 parts, and is almost 200 measures in length), causes the studio to freeze, windows to paint the window a translucent white color, and add the tag (not responding) at the top of the window. However, if playback was set to play, it would still play the playback accurately while not responding, and when it does come back, it just picks up with the playback bar where it was when the program wakes back up again, and continues as normal.

I also noticed that if I spend a lengthy period of time working on a singular large scale score, progressively, interaction latency becomes unbearably delayed... (ex. attempting to select a note or measure via Shift+ L click, or L click, the selection isn't selected after the command is issued for approx. 800ms - 1000ms... at times it's been even longer. Force quitting the application and reloading tends to resolve the issue, temporarily. however, the intermittent application crashes still occurred no matter how long I was in my scores. This happened across ALL of my scores, during the last build release. I'm going to do some independent testing with this new build to see if it performs any better. But I figured I'd at least make mention of the problem. It seems program related, given that it happened on both my desktop and laptop at around the same frequency.)

Diamond20091229

• Dec 13, 2024 - 11:17

I used to have the same issue with my laptop

fernandoamartin

• Dec 13, 2024 - 22:42

"Scroll wheel & scroll gestures are now solely used for scrolling, i.e. not for changing the values of sliders and knobs (e.g. in the Mixer) (#11128)"

This creates a big new problem in the mixer. For those who have a mouse wheel with a gear-like mechanism we could feel how much we were sliding the volume up and down and keep track of it in order to make precise adjustments. Now we can't. And the mixer volume value doesn't have a type-able number like the panning has. So we are completely lost about how much we increase or decrease volume in the mixer.

cshook9x9

• Dec 14, 2024 - 02:30

FYI...
I've noticed this with the previous version of Musescore and this one also, when using the application my cpu% increases about 25%, I've closed all other applications and restarted the computer, with the same result. I can end the application and the cpu% drops back down to the 5-7% range.

Minirex_96

• Dec 14, 2024 - 19:12

I have seen similar in the past on systems with Muse Hub installed, but never on systems without Muse Hub.

Sprinkiler

• Dec 15, 2024 - 21:23

Selecting a measure that has a dynamic marking like piano or forte and changing it to something else just puts it over the previous marking, not removing it and replacing it.

dj frank rose

• Dec 16, 2024 - 00:43

I created a report, thank you: https://github.com/musescore/MuseScore/issues/25846#issue-2741040688.

pavelowotsm55

• Dec 17, 2024 - 00:19

Still hadn't fixed the "m" Dynamic marker? ;w;

Jojo-Schmitz

• Dec 17, 2024 - 09:18

dj frank rose

• Dec 17, 2024 - 14:09

If you mean the mezzo dynamic playback, it's in the list for version 4.5. See https://github.com/musescore/MuseScore/issues/25309#issue-2613881180.

spd2468

• Dec 20, 2024 - 21:26

This Version causes occasional notes to hang sounding indefinitely, until playback is stopped.
When notes are affected, the repro is 100%. Removing the offending note removes the hanging sound.
Recreating the note, recreates the hanging sound.
I even tried deleting the bar and scoring it from scratch, but problem persists.
Seems to be short notes marked staccato.
Rolling back to 4.4.3 cured the problem, so sticking with that for now.

spd2468

• Dec 20, 2024 - 22:20

Regarding the corruption of saved scores. I have had this happen a few times, (many years ago).
I use a well known DAW which provides an automatic backup facility, which is also useful for providing history of file changes.
Everytime you save your work, the file on disk is renamed *.ext.bak01 (say) before the save is written to disk.
Any existing backups have their numeral incremented by one, until the maximum number of backups is reached, then they are deleted from disk.
Depth of backup can be specified in Preferences.

hamdiy27g

• Dec 21, 2024 - 20:09

Just want to thank you for keeping it current - you guys are great - I wish I could code better. <3

ComposingTubist

• Dec 27, 2024 - 03:28

When will the synthesizer be reincorporated?

Asher S.

• Jan 1, 2025 - 21:12

MS4 doesn’t use the synthesizer anymore. The synthesizer had to do with how MS3 played (with just raw midi) but MuseScore 4 has an entirely unique playback system that doesn’t require the synthesizer.

dcocharro

• Dec 30, 2024 - 09:48

♥️💪🏻
Thank you musescore team!

macleodkaren

• Jan 1, 2025 - 20:17

Here on MacBook Air running Sequoia 15.2, and unable to drag 4.4.4 to Applications folder.
Downloaded, and after 3 unsuccessful click/drags the 4.4.4 hard drive icon switched to 'blank page' with shortcut arrow. Still not able to drag to Applications folder. Lots of room to run it, so that's no the problem.

Guesses?

shoogle

• Jan 15, 2025 - 17:11

Was MuseScore Studio running at the time? If so, try fully quitting the application and then drag to /Applications again.

mankhumbajone

• Jan 27, 2025 - 10:19

Thanks for the new release. It will be of help to me

igonza4118

• Feb 11, 2025 - 18:07

Mira Musescore i tried to install it but yall dont let me it just kicks me out give me the fricking thing so i can uptade it and dont ask me to update it if it isnt going to let me......

Asher S.

• Feb 12, 2025 - 20:49

Can you be a bit more clear?

See Gee

• Mar 4, 2025 - 14:21

I'm an avid Musescore user but don't know how to load the app again. My laptop have been formatted and all apps have been deleted. Please help me get one. Thanks a lot

Jojo-Schmitz

• Mar 4, 2025 - 14:22

Start at https://musescore.org/en/download

MuseScore Studio 4.4 is now available!

shoogle — Mon, 26 Aug 2024 23:58:05 +0000

MuseScore Studio 4.4 is now available!

We are delighted to announce the release of MuseScore Studio 4.4.

This version includes support for the long awaited Muse Drumline, a free sound library from Muse Sounds. It also contains a wealth of new engraving features, as well as numerous performance improvements and bug fixes, making it the biggest update to the app since version 4.0.

Watch the release video

How to get MuseScore Studio 4.4 and Muse Drumline

I’m new to MuseScore Studio

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.
- Please note that Muse Drumline is not yet available for Linux but we're working to address this as quickly as possible.

You can find additional builds on our GitHub Releases page, including a portable Windows EXE, as well as AppImages for 32-bit and 64-bit ARM Linux. (Muse Sounds Manager is not currently available for ARM Linux.)

I already have MuseScore Studio (version 4 onwards)

You’ll see a message about the 4.4 update next time you launch the app. If you don’t see the message, go to Help > Check for update, or download the app manually instead.

To get the latest Muse Sounds, you’ll need to install the recently refreshed Muse Hub on Windows or macOS, or Muse Sounds Manager on Linux. You can download these from musehub.com. If you already have an old version of Muse Hub installed, it's best to uninstall it first before you install the new version. Please note that Muse Drumline is not yet available for Linux but we're working to address this as quickly as possible.

New features in 4.4

Percussion

New percussion collections: Muse Drumline, plus a Muse Sounds version of Tapspace's VDL (comprising two separate collections: Virtual Drumline and Virtual Percussion), available in the new Muse Hub
Optional migration for scores created with the MuseScore 3 Drumline extension
Sticking is now centered on the notehead and aligned to a common baseline across the system
Sticking is able to trigger different samples for more nuanced playback (Muse Sounds only)

Guitar

New style options for fretboard diagrams, including ability to add fingerings
Improved alignment and interactions for ghost/dead notes in tablature staves

Dynamics

More flexible anchor positioning; now you can have a crescendo start and end part way through a note!
Proper centering between staves for grand staff instruments
Snapping to other dynamics while dragging and resizing
New style options to control default positioning
Assignment to specific staves & voices for playback (depends on sound technology used) and engraving
Expressive playback; not just volume modulation (depends on sound technology used)

Accidentals

Layout system completely rewritten
SMuFL cut-outs used for elegant and compact layout in chords
New style options for further customization

Beams

French-style!
Better vertical spacing for cross-staff beams
Option to set cross-staff beams above, below, or between the grand staff

Text

Multi-line copyright text
New options for showing/hiding instrument labels
Increased use of SMuFL symbols within text for pedal markings, ottavas, codas/segno markings, and tuplet numbers

Explode & implode

Dynamics and text annotations are copied with voice assignment
Grace notes are are copied when exploding measures

Other engraving

Frames are now scalable with staff size
New option for separating layout of similarly-stemmed voices
Thickness of slurs and ties can now be set independently
Grace note slashes can now be toggled on or off in Properties
Many other improvements, including MusicXML improvements (see detailed summary)

Mixer

Hidden instruments can now be muted/soloed

Performance

Reduced note-input latency when using a MIDI keyboard
Lower minimum buffer sizes (128 samples on macOS; 512 on Windows)
Faster audio exports

Qt 6

Better scrolling & support for touch gestures
Native support for Apple Silicon

Please note: Plugins must be updated for Qt 6 or they won't appear in the Home screen or Plugins menu in MuseScore Studio 4.4. Plugin developers, please see #21659 for details, and these commits for the required changes.

Wayland display protocol (Linux)

Resolved issue with bundled Wayland libraries in the AppImage
Resolved positioning issue with popups, menus and tooltips
Run with QT_QPA_PLATFORM=wayland to force Wayland to be used

And more!

See the release notes and completed tasks in the 4.4 project for the full list of changes.

shoogle

Comments

JonasEM

• Aug 27, 2024 - 16:39

Virtual Drumline!? 😱

Can’t wait to try this out! Thanks to everyone that helped develop it!

Hoberspelicea

• Aug 27, 2024 - 17:22

This new update makes me so happy.

landonhollonp

• Aug 27, 2024 - 17:24

What is the timeline for Muse Drumline for Linux? Also thank you to all the developers that have worked on making MuseScore become one of the best notation softwares currently available.

TheHutch

• Aug 27, 2024 - 18:41

Very small typo: Under Explode & Implode, the second bullet point repeats the word "are".

[DELETED] 33733253

• Aug 27, 2024 - 19:22

Oh yeah, this really ROCKS

scorster

• Aug 27, 2024 - 19:54

I suspect it's unintended that, on MacOS, the file name for the MuseScore Studio 4.4 app is:

MuseScore 4 2.app

Looking forward to seeing 4.4's improvements and trying the new features!

scorster

• Aug 27, 2024 - 20:49

Similarly, when I hover the MS 4.4 shortcut (which I added to the Toolbar after renaming the app "MuseScore 4.4.app") the tooltip shows "MuseScore 4 2"

Marc Sabatella

• Aug 29, 2024 - 15:45

Probably you ended up with two copies of the app in the same folder and that's how your system is differentiating them.

lucasdanielp@hotmail.com

• Aug 27, 2024 - 21:36

Is it normal that some third-party plugins are not possible to open in this version 4.4.0 and need an update?

Jacob Nater

• Aug 27, 2024 - 22:22

Currently unable to add a payment method to Muse Hub to purchase VDL.

"Failed to create setup intent! Error: Unexpected error."
API issues?

dominic_musehub

• Aug 28, 2024 - 00:40

https://support.musehub.com/hc/en-gb/community/posts/21170475056797

Jacob Nater

• Aug 28, 2024 - 05:44

Thank you!

readingthebib

• Aug 28, 2024 - 01:59

Muse Drumline was definitely worth the wait, it sounds awesome!

Diamond20091229

• Aug 28, 2024 - 06:46

I just want to ask for one thing, can you improve the experience for users in Chinese mainland? The use of musehub in Chinese mainland is very unsatisfactory.

dmitemp12

• Aug 28, 2024 - 08:23

The new anchor positioning for dynamics & playback is a welcomed addition! also, I really note huge improvements in stability. Great work!

MK140221

• Aug 29, 2024 - 03:57

I didn't receive an update notification when I open MuseScore 4.3 - when I click "check for updates" it tells me I'm up to date (on 4.3). I don't know if it's just my end, or maybe most users of MuseScore aren't getting notified of the update to 4.4?

notefarm

• Aug 29, 2024 - 14:00

I had the same issue. I updated muse hub and installed MuseScore 4.4 from there.

Marc Sabatella

• Aug 29, 2024 - 15:44

This is normal for every release - automatic updates usually aren't enabled for a couple of days until the initial rush on the servers is through and there is a chance to deal with any last-minute showstoppers.

bill0287

• Aug 29, 2024 - 17:17

If this is true, then that little piece of information should be in the announcements which describe the update process. Saves everyone a lot of wasted time.

Marc Sabatella

• Aug 29, 2024 - 17:20

Instructions on how to get the update are in the announcement. Instructions on how to not get the update are not :-)

Jojo-Schmitz

• Aug 29, 2024 - 17:41

😂

Magnus Johansson

• Aug 30, 2024 - 07:31

Where in the above announcement does it say that updates are delayed?

bill0287

• Aug 30, 2024 - 15:24

It doesn't. It was a snarky comment. If there truly is a delay to the published update process, it should be mentioned in the document.

Magnus Johansson

• Aug 30, 2024 - 15:34

Yes, I agree.

Marc Sabatella

• Aug 30, 2024 - 15:28

They aren’t “delayed”. Every single release ever, the normal process is that automatic updates are not enabled right away. This is not anything out of the ordinary. A sentence to that effect would have been useful sure, but nothing to get worked up over.

Magnus Johansson

• Aug 30, 2024 - 15:39

Of course there is a delay when the update isn't done like the announcement says. I am not worked up over it, and I do not believe Bill is either, but it should be made clear.

Marc Sabatella

• Aug 30, 2024 - 18:16

The announcement does not say or imply the automatic update facility has been enabled - on the contrary, it explains exactly how to get the new version. Delay implies a change from the original or usual schedule. Again, every single release of MuseScore ever has done the exact same thing - there is no delay whatsoever, since everything is exactly according to the usual schedule. So yes, it wouldn't have hurt to add a statement clarifying that this release works exactly like every other release and that, yes, the way to get the update is to follow the directions given and not try to improvise by following some other process. But it's moot now, though, as the autoupdate does now seem to be in effect.

Magnus Johansson

• Aug 30, 2024 - 19:51

The announcement says: "You’ll see a message about the 4.4 update next time you launch the app."

This wasn't true. The sentence should have read: "You’ll see a message about the 4.4 update after a few days from now when you launch the app."

a23hofmann

• Aug 29, 2024 - 16:16

Will Virtual Percussion add the ability of Musescore to play buzz rolls? At present various percussive techniques cannot be produced by the application, and before spending money on fancy sounds I'd love to be able to produce the sound of basic skillsets.

Marcato428

• Aug 29, 2024 - 18:55

If you've installed Musesounds, pretty much all instruments that apply buzz rolls includes it in its sound. I am not entirely sure about the MS basic sounds; I'll have to look at that.

Juan Emanuel Tenorio Sánchez

• Aug 29, 2024 - 16:51

This version no longer allowed me to use some community plugins:

-GenSATB
-checkParallels
-Filter Similar Note Levels-Orig

Martin_Lorenz

• Aug 31, 2024 - 13:52

Also "Chord Identifier (Pop & Jazz)" is not working anymore.

Jojo-Schmitz

• Aug 31, 2024 - 15:28

It never worked for Mu4 if I'm not mistaken?
My PR to port it to Mu4 hasn't been merged since 2 years and now with 4.4 even doesn't work anymore

Davi Benjamim Oliveira

• Aug 29, 2024 - 19:24

I have got a bug: my Musescore is now in Chinese! I am from Brazil, so my Musescore is in Brazilian Portuguese, but since 4.4 is released, Musescore is now in Chinese, and only some words are in Portuguese!

Attachment	Size
Screenshot_1.png	105.78 KB

Davi Benjamim Oliveira

• Aug 29, 2024 - 19:25

I don't know if that's Chinese, but it looks like it!

Jojo-Schmitz

• Aug 29, 2024 - 19:32

Can you switch to English? Or to Portuguese?

Davi Benjamim Oliveira

• Aug 29, 2024 - 19:35

I try, but everything is on that language I don't know, so I have no way to distinguish the languages! Some languages are even writen in Russian, I guess!

Attachment	Size
Screenshot_2.png	97.9 KB

Jojo-Schmitz

• Aug 29, 2024 - 19:34

No, it is not, it is just gibberish from some strange font, like that dadlock is surely nor a Chinese glyph
Neither is that diskette or the Ped. symbol

Jojo-Schmitz

• Aug 29, 2024 - 19:35

Try Reverting to factory settings

Davi Benjamim Oliveira

• Aug 29, 2024 - 19:36

How can I do that?

ikaragicheva

• Aug 30, 2024 - 12:18

How can I download MuseScore Studio without Muse Hub?

Jojo-Schmitz

• Aug 30, 2024 - 13:06

From https://musescore.org/en/download, as well as from https://github.com/musescore/MuseScore/releases

Marc Sabatella

• Aug 29, 2024 - 19:36

I don’t think that is Chinese - I think it’s just a non-alphabetic font. Seeems whichever font you had configured might no longer exist on your system, or might be incompatible with the Qt 6 libraries MuseScore relies on. Try Help / Revert to
factory settings (last item in Help menu, which is second to last menu overall). or yoh could try to find Format / Style / Appearance and change the font directly.

Davi Benjamim Oliveira

• Aug 29, 2024 - 19:45

Thank you both!

Davi Benjamim Oliveira

• Aug 29, 2024 - 19:58

It worked!

eismailzada

• Feb 3, 2025 - 13:04

Hi!
Are you still facing this problem? If so, can you provide diagnostic files? Diagnostic->Save diagnostic file. I'll investigate. Thanks

TheHutch

• Feb 3, 2025 - 17:39

They say "better late than never", but five months? Especially when the thread clearly says that OP responded "It works!"

edwardcarlin9

• Aug 29, 2024 - 20:18

Under the expanded release notes, I saw this under the Playback enhancements: "Support for Muse Sounds choral libraries, including lyric text to trigger different phoneme samples."

I'm using the Muse Sounds Muse Choir but don't see any way to attach specific phonemes to my lyric text. Is there more documentation for how to do this somewhere or does this just mean that developers for Muse Sounds choral libraries could implement the ability to read lyric text to adjust phonemes?

Does any such choral library exist currently?

scorster

• Aug 29, 2024 - 20:43

This may be related to

https://github.com/orgs/musescore/projects/60?pane=issue&itemId=76685672

So hopefully fixed in MS 4.4.1

Marc Sabatella

• Aug 29, 2024 - 21:03

Muse Choir only supports ah, oh, and mm, but the feature where this triggers from lyrics isn't working yet, should be in 4.4.1

I believe there are third party libraries that support additional sounds - Voxos? - but I don't think it's anything like full text-to-speech. Would be happy to be wrong about that though.

ohbks

• Aug 30, 2024 - 02:02

I'm pretty sure this is broken as of this realease, but file (path) containing unicode characters are now unable to be opened by double clicking the file itself. Workaround is to drag and drop the file into an open instance of MuseScore app

It says "Cannot read file _______

This file does not exist or cannot be accessed at the moment"

lucasdanielp@hotmail.com

• Aug 30, 2024 - 04:56

I noticed this here too.

ikaragicheva

• Aug 30, 2024 - 06:53

I have the same problem. Had to uninstall and reinstall the program last night. But now everything is really bad. You have ruined everything. Why? The best is the enemy of the good. Disappointment (((((

ohbks

• Aug 30, 2024 - 16:51

I posted to report the issue. You've been posting to just complain and $hit talk.

Do you want a refund or something? This is free product created and maintained by volunteer workers. You have absolutely zero right to complain about it.

Learn to appreciate their work and stop complaining. Better yet, go take your "business" somewhere else.

ikaragicheva

• Aug 30, 2024 - 17:07

I didn't want to offend anyone and posted to report a problem just like you. How can I help?

ikaragicheva

• Aug 30, 2024 - 20:47

Consider changing the names of folders and files to be more accurate. It works!

做梦的铃铛

• Aug 30, 2024 - 03:04

Great improvement, but I observed that the pointer and mixer functions in Musescore 4.4 lacked smoothness compared to previous versions.

youxizhanshen

• Aug 30, 2024 - 06:36

请问musesocre4.4挂载康泰克音源后如何在musesocre4.4里面修改那个由康泰克挂载音源的音符的力度，我今天挂载康泰克的The Orchestra Complete 3管风琴音源，发现无论我是修改他单个声音力度还是给他挂载ppff之类的标记都无法修改他播放系统的力度

DanielR

• Aug 30, 2024 - 09:46

Google Translate offers this translation from Chinese:
"How can I modify the note dynamics of the Contec sound source in musesocre 4.4? I installed the Contec The Orchestra Complete 3 organ sound source today and found that no matter I modify the single sound dynamics or add ppff or other tags to it, I cannot modify the dynamics of its playback system."

ikaragicheva

• Aug 30, 2024 - 10:29

I have the same problem

Xinerity

• Aug 30, 2024 - 10:01

It is quite unfortunate that after the update I can no longer open my files and it is in complete gibberish codes. Now I have to revert back to 4.3.2 and skip this version. Anyone having the same issue?

Jojo-Schmitz

• Aug 30, 2024 - 10:08

See https://github.com/musescore/MuseScore/issues/23811, workaround mentioned there too

Jojo-Schmitz

• Aug 30, 2024 - 10:09

And reg. the complete gibberish codes: revert to factory settings

ikaragicheva

• Aug 30, 2024 - 10:33

I have the same issue. After the update I can no longer open my files and it is in complete gibberish codes. And I can't revert back to 4.3.2 and skip this version. What can I do?

Jojo-Schmitz

• Aug 30, 2024 - 10:49

See my 2 replies above

ikaragicheva

• Aug 30, 2024 - 12:20

How can I download MuseScore Studio.4 without Muse Hub?
It is not installed

ikaragicheva

• Aug 30, 2024 - 21:04

Thank you ! Great!

ikaragicheva

• Aug 30, 2024 - 21:02

My daughter advised me to switch the names of folders and files to ones that are more appropriate in English. It worked!

ikaragicheva

• Aug 30, 2024 - 12:34

You ruined all my work.......

ikaragicheva

• Aug 30, 2024 - 13:17

Previous MuseScore versions were really better

Marc Sabatella

• Aug 30, 2024 - 21:40

Hmm, sounds like you are having some sort of trouble learning to use MuseScore, but it isn't clear what specifically you are struggling with. I recommend starting a new thread in the Support forum and describe your difficulty in more detail, then we can understand and assist better.

ikaragicheva

• Aug 31, 2024 - 15:48

I am very sorry for my nervousness. The problem has been resolved. I appreciate your help, guidance, and teaching. And I love MuseScore! Thank you so much!

MichelCA

• Aug 31, 2024 - 01:49

It has been nice to see the new update but I find something I think it should be good to fix in a next update or at least, if someone knows how to fix it, I would thank you.

1) Panoramic view deletes the title, composer and other text elements when you use it, or may be it doesn't delete it at all, but is not showing them. It should be nice to keep the same elements in vertical and horizontal view!

2) It should be nice to add a feature to generate chord fretboards, especially for sharps/flat tones such like Bb, Eb, Db, Ab, major, minor, etc. That they are not by default in the palette. Cause it can really take a lot of time to create custom fretboards instead of picking standard options. This is a nightmare when transcribing to be honest, where saving time is a priority.

3) For some reason, custom templates delete pictures/logos and composer/title information every time you use it, it seems like a bug or something maybe I'm not doing good, maybe, but whenever I open one of my custom templates, they're not showing the logo picture, or some of the tiles I chose.

4) Playback has a small delay. If you use the New Muse sounds library, i.e. piano, you will notice when you hit the play button, it sounds like the first second of sound is missing, like if doesn't load at all. I don't know if this is a problem due a configuration or something.

Marc Sabatella

• Aug 31, 2024 - 01:59

It's by design that continuous view doesn't display frames, because there would be no obvious place to put them since they appear between systems and there is only one system

It's also by design that templates preserve the structure of your score but not it's content.

A fuller palette of fret diagrams - and a possible way to generate them via transposition - is currently being looked at. Meanwhile, I encourage you to ask on the Support forum and you may find someone has already created a custom palette they would share.

The small delay with Muse Sounds is unfortunate but not new.

MichelCA

• Aug 31, 2024 - 02:12

Do you think this issues can be improved or fix in a new update? I already asked in the forum section but I didn't have any response

Marc Sabatella

• Aug 31, 2024 - 16:15

As explained, most of what you describe is by design, meaning it’s supposed to work that way. If you have a special reason to wish different behavior, best to start a new thread in the support or feature request forums to discuss your ideas in more depth. If you do t get much response, there’s a good indication that others don’t yet see the value of your idea, and explaining it better could help. Or it could be that you simply need to learn to use the software as already designed. In any case, again, that’s a discussion to have elsewhere.

Also as explained the fretboard diagram enhancements are already being looked at.

thorin1

• Aug 31, 2024 - 10:25

great update, but I found also a bug, The '}'-shortcut doesn't work any longer.

scorster

• Aug 31, 2024 - 21:16

At some point { } were changed to [ ] ... at least that's how it is here on MacOS

Jojo-Schmitz

• Sep 1, 2024 - 14:03

Certainly not on Windows (doesn't work though):

And I don't recall any change to them on other platforms
https://musescore.org/en/handbook/4/all-keyboard-shortcuts#score-setup-… doesn't mention any either.
Also see https://github.com/musescore/MuseScore/blob/186c925cb4255e38b6f609868ad…

Jojo-Schmitz

• Sep 1, 2024 - 14:05

Confirmed, now reported in https://github.com/musescore/MuseScore/issues/24358

scorster

• Sep 1, 2024 - 17:11

There's already a year-old post on Github post regardingthe switch to [ ] measure stretch shortcuts on MacOS:

Presently in MS 4.4. MuseScore Studio>Preferences>Shortcuts show

Decrease measure stretch = {
Increase measure stretch = }

... but they have no effect.

Instead, as noted in the Github post, [ ] are the operative shortcuts. U.S. Apple extended qwerty keyboard

Jojo-Schmitz

• Sep 1, 2024 - 17:14

Interesting, so a bug, not by design or on purpose

scorster

• Sep 1, 2024 - 17:22

Yes, a bug.

On MacOS, MS4.4's shortcut dialog shows the { } keystrokes, just like the image you posted for Windows layout stretch shortcuts:

rednoise99

• Sep 1, 2024 - 23:03

Am I understanding the issue correctly? Both { and } still work for me to increase/decrease one or more measure's stretch the way I would expect.

OS: Windows 10 Version 2009 or later, Arch.: x86_64, MuseScore Studio version (64-bit): 4.4.0-242390800, revision: 0fcd11b

Seems to work OK on my Windows 11 box, too.

Jojo-Schmitz

• Sep 1, 2024 - 23:10

} doesn't work for me, Windows 11, German QWERTZ keyboard

rednoise99

• Sep 1, 2024 - 23:14

Is it the keyboard that's the problem, then? Mine's a typical US QUERTY keyboard.

Jojo-Schmitz

• Sep 4, 2024 - 21:15

Apparently so. see https://github.com/musescore/MuseScore/issues/24358

Skremon

• Sep 2, 2024 - 00:02

I'm having an issue since I updated. Day before doing the update all my files worked fine, after update I can only open like 1 or 2 of my files, all others won't open from the folders they are located in. "Can't read C:\users....... file" "This file doesn't exist or is unavailable at the moment".

When I try to open them through musescore itself when it shows new and recent scores you have worked on, it does work, which is good, but a little bit inconvenient with the amount of scores I've got.

Any solution?
Opening it through new and recent scores tab and then re saving it to the folder doesn't fix it.
Also tried using the repair assistant, this also didn't work.
Opening it through a zip file works as well, but like I said before, it still won't work if I re save it to the original folder.

Skremon

• Sep 2, 2024 - 00:20

So I've figured out that it does work when I run musescore as administrator, but I shouldn't have to do this of course. Anyone got any idea why this is since new update and how to fix this maybe? For some reason musescore isn't allowed to read my folders all of a sudden

Marc Sabatella

• Sep 2, 2024 - 03:26

Probably the file or folder name has special characters in it, and on some systems this apparently causes problems. There should be a fix soon, but meanwhile, simply renaming the file/folder should do the tricks

Skremon

• Sep 2, 2024 - 03:57

You were correctc main folder where everything was stored had 'èè' in the name, thanks for the help!

Jørgen Larsen

• Sep 2, 2024 - 14:06

I can´t open older files. Vers. 4.4.0

Attachment	Size
9 Forårsvals.mscz	35.77 KB

Jojo-Schmitz

• Sep 2, 2024 - 16:09

Known issue with non-ASCII chars in filename (or path to it), fixed for 4.4.12 already.
Until that gets released the File > Open or drag the file into an open MuseScore Window, or rename the file

devinryanrobe

• Sep 2, 2024 - 20:38

Why has the figured bass been altered in this update? I used to be able to add a roman numeral analysis and create my figured bass along with my roman numeral. The figured now looks hideous as it doesn't change size. It look especially bad for a 6/4 chord. Is there an alternate way to write figured bass now?

Jojo-Schmitz

• Sep 2, 2024 - 20:41

That's a bug, and a known and even fixed one. Just wait for 4.4.1 to get released in a couple days

devinryanrobe

• Sep 2, 2024 - 20:56

thank you!

ikaragicheva

• Sep 2, 2024 - 21:20

Yes, of course. Thank you so much for your work and support!
I renamed a directory containing my MuseScore documents, and it's functioning perfectly!

t_klein_ms

• Sep 2, 2024 - 21:37

Installed the latest update, but when I started the program, I only got a blank screen and nothing further happened. I could only open the task manager and kill the program.
Even a restart of the computer didn't help. So I went back to version 4.3.2, installed and started fine.
Don't know why version 4,4 doesn't work on my computer. It's a Dell pentium quadcore with 16GB RAM.

Jojo-Schmitz

• Sep 2, 2024 - 21:59

Known issue and under investigation, see https://github.com/musescore/MuseScore/issues/24269, which also has a possible workaround

blapblups

• Sep 3, 2024 - 11:30

A big thank you for everyone! A working MIDI OUT would be great in one of the next updates ;)

Shoichi

• Sep 3, 2024 - 20:02

Congratulations from the other side of the pond https://musescore.org/it/node/368054

Inflight

• Dec 30, 2024 - 16:47

YES! 😫

Maestro Ashford

• Sep 4, 2024 - 18:02

Hello
I downloaded muse score 4.4
It installed in the normal way.
When I launch it all I get is a white blank screen and no launch.
I am running windows 10
and the program should launch.
Can anybody comment on this problem with a view to solving it.
Thank you
Maestro Ashford
Brendan

Jojo-Schmitz

• Sep 4, 2024 - 18:39

See https://musescore.org/en/node/367548#comment-1256191

Maestro Ashford

• Sep 4, 2024 - 20:33

Hi Joe
It worked when I down loaded the file
But the sounds are a bit shaky
Maybe the samples weren't
fully loaded,
Anyway the program loaded and is working.
Thank you
Brendan

Marc Sabatella

• Sep 4, 2024 - 21:18

Glitches in sound are normally due to a mismatch in sample rates between MuseScore Studio and your audio device. MuseScore Studio needs to be able to set your device to 44.1 kHz, and if the device or your OS has locked that possibility out, you get glitches and/or wrong pitch & speed. So see if you can find the settings for your audio device and set it to 44.1 kHz manually.

sharpiemarker

• Sep 4, 2024 - 21:07

After updating to 4.4, Musescore won't open for me at all. The screen is gray and nothing happens. I've tried uninstalling and reinstalling it, but it didn't work. I don't know what's going on but I have a project I need to do and I can't use Musescore.

Marc Sabatella

• Sep 4, 2024 - 21:13

This seems to happen for certain graphics drivers. See https://github.com/musescore/MuseScore/issues/24269, which contains a workaround and a link to an updated build that should solve it. An update should be released very soon containing that fix.

Jojo-Schmitz

• Sep 4, 2024 - 21:14

Or see my post above

ikaragicheva

• Sep 5, 2024 - 08:06

Thank you for MuseScore! It helps me optimize my approach to teaching music theory and harmony.

sarah_evensta1

• Sep 5, 2024 - 03:59

I love this. MuseScore is my jam when it comes to composing and arranging music.

Kid Cass

• Sep 7, 2024 - 22:38

I was so excited for this update! Unfortunately, after updating, decrescendos are cutting off very abruptly. I can set the end dynamic impossibly low, but it won't fade out cleanly anymore like it (kind of) did in 4.3. Dynamics on many Muse Sounds instruments make dramatic jumps between mezzo-piano and mezzo-forte, and dynamics on the first solo violin make no sense at all — pianissimo and mezzo-forte sound the same, but piano is quieter than both.

I would love to see an improvement on those playback features, because the update has made all my existing scores sound worse off than they did before. The MuseScore team has always been great about listening to their users, and I hope they can help solve this issue quickly!

Marc Sabatella

• Sep 7, 2024 - 23:21

Have you opened an issue to report this yet? If it affects only Muse Sounds, do so through Muse Hub. But if it also affects soundfonts or VST instruments, the issue is within MuseScore Studio itself, so report it via GitHub. Either way, be sure to attach the score with the problem and say exactly which measures in which instruments aren’t playing as you expect.

Kid Cass

• Sep 8, 2024 - 12:57

Thank you, I will!

[DELETED] 33733253

• Sep 29, 2024 - 00:55

I love the sound of musesounds Drumline

philippe888

• Dec 13, 2024 - 17:11

My 4th attempt to move from Musescore 3 to Musescore 4 ... the same disappointment at the end
Most of the previous obstacles have disappeared, true, but now I just discovered the Musecore 3 plugins have not been converted. And I am a big user of Expand Chord Symbols plugin, I like the way this plugin creates the chords notes according to a given rhythm.
On the plus side, not much for my utilization, sounds are nicer true (but you got to pay for most of them) and I use Musescore to accompany me, as a backing track, so the sounds of Musescore 3 are good enough.
I guess it means I will again revert back to Musescore 3 ....

Marc Sabatella

• Dec 13, 2024 - 17:15

That's too bad, because the free sounds in MU4 aremuch better than in MU3, so you're really missing out on you're backing tracks. What did the author of that plugin say when you asked him to spend a few minutes updating it? If they refuse, and no one else is willing to spend the time, you could certainly still use MU3 to enter the chords and run the plugin, then use the vastly improved playback and engraving of MU4 to generate the recordings and sheet music.

Asher S.

• Dec 13, 2024 - 17:21

About the sounds—you could say that they are better in some respects, but they are still a huge pain to use. If I primarily used MS still, I would likely get high quality Soundfonts or vsts to use instead, or even just use MS basic. Other than the guitar, keyboards, and drumline. But yes, Muse Sounds are much more realistic.

Marc Sabatella

• Dec 13, 2024 - 18:25

? Muse Sounds are dead simple to use, and indeed they are selected by default once installed. Unless you mean, you don't want to use the sound normally, but wish to experiment with hacking their playback to work other than as designed. That's harder indeed than with a soundfont.

Asher S.

• Dec 13, 2024 - 20:07

No, they are easy to use, but very hard to make sound good. I would not attempt to modify them, especially as it is a unique filetype.
Funny story, someone has described the Solo Violin 1 as drenched “in olive oil”.

Marc Sabatella

• Dec 13, 2024 - 20:13

For the vast majority of scores they sound utterly incredible right out of the box - far superior to the default output of any music notation that has ever existed in history. However, it is certainly true that for some scores at least, the solo violin 1 sound is too “romantic”. So, you simply pick the solo violin 2 variant instead, or add the “classic phrasing” sound flag.

Asher S.

• Dec 13, 2024 - 20:28

I usually do that. Nevertheless I feel like both violins (solo and section) are always slidy and out of time. It works for free but I don’t prefer it. As an owner of NotePerformer, I prefer even its simple sound library when it comes with cleanness and realistic playback.

The samples though—👌. It just needs some changes in programming. I know not to complain to the MuseScore staff about this—I should go to the Muse Hub forums. I just was pointing out what people might be seeing in the sounds.

Don’t think I don’t appreciate Muse Group’s work. Yet, everybody I talk to seems utterly ignorant of these issues—on all sites. Even fellow users on Musescore.com.

philippe888

• Dec 13, 2024 - 17:46

Thank you Marc for your quick answer
I have no idea who is the author of this plugin …

Marc Sabatella

• Dec 13, 2024 - 18:22

All you need to do is visit the download page for the plugin - https://musescore.org/en/project/expand-chord-symbols-notes. From there you can get to the GitHub page, etc.

Bottom line, it's kind of pointless to complain here if some third party developer isn't keeping up - you need to contact the third-party developer directly.

philippe888

• Dec 13, 2024 - 19:46

I don’t complain !
I just state my point, and for me there is no advantage to migrate to Musescore 4 which, moreover, would oblige me to adjust all my scores.
The Musescore 4 is more a business strategy to make more money than a user strategy.

Marc Sabatella

• Dec 13, 2024 - 20:08

No advantages except vastly superior playback and engraving, plus tons of new user-requested features - all of which reflect an extremely user-focused strategy! Not sure where you got the idea that providing a vastly superior update to a tool for free is somehow only a strategy to make money. But if they happen to also be able to increase usage of their paid services while providing all of these incredible improvements for free, so much the better! More revenue for the company means they can continue providing even more fantastic improvements that benefit everyone.

BTW, it’s also not generally true that you’d need to adjust your scores to use them in MU4 - most will sound and look much better right out of the box, no adjustment required. But it is true that if you made lots manual adjustments - like, to work around the limitations and defiencies of MU3 - you might need to revisit some of those.

Anyhow if you find you can get by with the less professional playback and engraving of MU3, that’s great too!

philippe888

• Dec 13, 2024 - 19:48

I have lived many windows or mac upgrades and I have never seen a windows key responsible telling a windows user that he or she should not complain … because they have covered everything before the get go … or else they do what’s necessary …

Marc Sabatella

• Dec 13, 2024 - 20:24

To be clear, no one is telling anyone they shouldn’t complain about anything - just that this MuseScore Studio release announcement is not a very appropriate place to complain that a third party volunteer developer hasn’t acted fast enough to also provide you with his own updates. There isn’t anything the MuseScore team can do about that. But even for things they can do - like fix bugs in the MuseScore Studio software itself, or add new features to it - release announcements aren’t the place to raise these issues. That’s what the issue tracker on GitHub is for. Or better, first ask for help on one of the other forums here to be sure there isn’t a simple solution already that you are overlooking, and once there is consensus that there is indeed a bug or missing feature, then open the issue on GitHub. But again, a release announcement isn’t the place for those sorts of discussions. See instead the Support forum.

MuseScore Studio 4.4.4 Release Candidate

shoogle — Fri, 06 Dec 2024 16:21:06 +0000

MuseScore Studio 4.4.4 Release Candidate

Hi everyone,

While we've been hard at work preparing version 4.5, we've decided it's necessary to release another patch in the 4.4 series, namely 4.4.4.

You can download a Release Candidate (RC) of 4.4.4 for Windows, macOS and Linux. The RC will show up on your machine as "MuseScore Studio Testing". You can install it alongside the regular version.

This update brings:

Stability improvements
Minor engraving fixes
Shortcut fixes on macOS
Links to more sounds on the Home screen and Mixer
Mitigation for corruption issues involving unreadable scores
Small usability improvements

All going well, we aim to push the update to all users some time next week. We'd appreciate any help with testing that you can provide over the weekend and the first few days next week.

shoogle

Comments

[DELETED] 1307581

• Dec 7, 2024 - 08:28

Thank you for 4.4.4, it's a great birthday present!

shoogle

• Dec 9, 2024 - 16:39

Happy Birthday! 🎂

[DELETED] 1307581

• Dec 9, 2024 - 22:19

thx

BrunoCatt

• Dec 11, 2024 - 10:33

No fix for the problem that midi export bypasses the settings in the mixer? Maybe in 4.5? I still have to use Musescore 3.7.0 Evolution for midi export...

Asher S.

• Dec 11, 2024 - 13:42

Well, great. Now we have ads in the editor too. Can we hide them?

graffesmusic

• Dec 11, 2024 - 14:41

So for Linux users, in the Mixer: "Get more effects" leads to Muse Hub, while there is absolutely nothing there that can be used. "Get more sounds" also leads to Muse Hub. There is nothing mentioned on this page about Muse Sounds Manager, and of course, the vast majority cannot be used neither. Same on the Muse Sounds ads page.

Muse Sounds Manager update for Linux users

shoogle — Thu, 05 Dec 2024 18:38:22 +0000

Muse Sounds Manager update for Linux users

Hi everyone,

We're pleased to announce that an updated version of Muse Sounds Manager is now available for x86_64 Linux users on the Download page.

Muse Sounds Manager was created based on feedback from the Linux community. It runs without a background process and only prompts for administrator privileges when required to complete a specific task.

New features in this version:

Added support for Muse Drumline
Updates to all existing Muse Sounds
Removed P2P community acceleration
Released new unpackaged TAR variant for non-DEB/RPM distros

Thank you for your patience while finalized this update. We hope you enjoy the new sounds and library updates, and can't wait to hear the music you create!

Please note, Muse Sounds Manager is only available for x68_64 Linux systems. On Windows and macOS, its functionality is provided by MuseHub.

shoogle

Comments

landonhollonp

• Dec 6, 2024 - 05:02

Thank you! Linux support is often overlooked and undervalued, so this is incredible news! I wasn't sure it was actually coming to Linux, but I am happy that it has.

Richard Cooke

• Dec 6, 2024 - 07:28

Great. Is support for the MuseFX and other Muse Sounds instruments still planned for Linux?

graffesmusic

• Dec 6, 2024 - 09:03

For MuseFX to work, vst3 support must be implemented first. For this, we are waiting for a volunteer (this can easily be 'never'). Of course, MuseFX Linux vst3's must be available as well.
For the paid Muse Sounds, Muse Sounds Manager must be capable of handling the payments and DRM.
Given the fact that we had to wait for an updated Muse Sounds Manager - that has no new functionality - for 4 months, this does not look promising.
It has never been planned AFAICS (as confirmed on Discord Aug. 14th: 'the commercial libraries are not coming to linux').
This is clearly a management decision (see Muse Guitars 2, not available neither)
Probably they think there is no money in it.

Richard Cooke

• Dec 6, 2024 - 09:10

Oh, that's a pity, I didn't know that. I run all my VSTs and Reaper through WINE anyway. I'll try install MuseHub and MuseScore there instead so I can use the paid instruments too. The choir looks good.

Richard Cooke

• Dec 6, 2024 - 09:14

But also, why didn't they use CLAP for the MuseSounds, which is completely open source and cross-platform, instead of VST, which is proprietary and doesn't work on Linux?

graffesmusic

• Dec 6, 2024 - 09:33

You can try my lxvst build: https://musescore.org/en/node/351813
Only works with native linux vst's build with JUCE, and Windows vst's with wine.
CLAP may be open source and cross platform, but major sample library vendors do not support it (nor do they support Linux, evidently). What good would CLAP support do for Linux MS users (and Windows/Mac users)? Any FX one would want is available either as native Linux Juce VST (open source or not) or Windows vst. Sample libraries are not available at all. (isn't there a GPL license for the VST3 SDK's?)
Anyway, we are waiting for a volunteer to implement CLAP as well: https://github.com/musescore/MuseScore/issues/16805
Edit: Muse Sounds are not VST's, but completely proprietary.

I'll try install MuseHub and MuseScore there instead . Good luck. Let us know how it goes.

reddiesel41264

• Dec 9, 2024 - 14:59

What is the license of Muse Sounds Manager please?

graffesmusic

• Dec 9, 2024 - 15:03

Proprietary.

reddiesel41264

• Dec 9, 2024 - 15:11

:( Well that's a no from me.

themobiusproject

• Mar 17, 2025 - 21:22

First of all, thank you.

As a gentoo user, I am using the tar version of Muse Sounds Manager. Muse Sounds Manager successfully downloads the sounds to ~/Muse Sounds/. MuseScore itself is looking deeper in ~/.local/share/MuseScore/MuseScore4/ for plugins (whose directory doesn't currently exist on my machine). Is there any documentation on how to go from the Muse Sounds Manager's downloaded Muse Sounds to using these as plugins in MuseScore4?

Also, as this is currently proprietary, is there any documentation for how to download the sounds without the Muse Sounds Manager? My intent would be to start a more open project to download and better integrate into MuseScore itself (essentially the process of the previous question).

graffesmusic

• Mar 17, 2025 - 22:05

Muse Sounds are accessed by MuseSampler, located normally:
~/.local/share/MuseSampler/lib/libMuseSamplerCoreLib.so
This is a closed source library. Without it, you cannot use Muse Sounds.
the location of Muse Sounds (by default "~/Muse Sounds") is specified in
~/.local/share/MuseSampler/lib/.config

You can't download Muse Sounds without Muse Sounds Manager. (maybe you could with some effort, but what's the point?) You need in any case the sampler library which is closed source.
MuseScore does not look for plugins in ~/.local/share/MuseScore/MuseScore4/ ; unless you configured it as such. Normal location for plugins is ~/Documents/MuseScore4/Plugins. (again, unless you changed it yourself)
So, ~/.local/share/MuseScore/MuseScore4/ does not exist on your machine?
Do you use the Appimage?

A New Chapter for the MuseScore Handbook

shoogle — Tue, 12 Nov 2024 15:23:58 +0000

A New Chapter for the MuseScore Handbook

Hi everyone,

The MuseScore 4 Handbook is the central resource for MuseScore Studio, providing essential guidance to newcomers as well as experienced users looking to make the most of the application.

While the current documentation system has served us well for many years, it's beginning to show its age, and its limitations are becoming increasingly clear. We believe it's high time for an upgrade!

That's why we're excited to announce:

The MuseScore 4 Handbook is moving to GitBook.
Translation of the new handbook will take place on Transifex alongside translation of the desktop program.

People reading the handbook will benefit from a fresh layout, improved organization and navigation, more embedded content, and (hopefully!) more complete translations.

Why GitBook?

GitBook offers features not available in the current handbook, such as the ability to:

Review community edits before they go live.
Create tabbed and expandable sections.
(More easily) embed YouTube videos and interactive content, including all Iframely-supported domains.
Display a full table of contents for the entire handbook.
Edit via a WYSIWYG interface in addition to Markdown source files.
Synchronize content with a Git repository.

In addition, GitBook's rendering engine is open source, and they offer a free Community plan for open source projects.

We at Muse Group already have experience with GitBook, having used it to host the Audacity Support pages.

Why Transifex?

Although GitBook is capable of displaying translated content, it has no built-in tools to facilitate translation. Fortunately, thanks to GitBook's ability to sync content with a Git repository, we're able to extract strings and upload them to Transifex in much the same way as we have been doing with the desktop program for over a decade.

This means handbook translators will benefit from all the advanced features Transifex provides:

Automatic notifications when source text is added or updated.
Individual strings are marked outdated rather than the entire file (so you don't have to work out what changed).
Ability to maintain a glossary of common terms and their agreed translations (to ensure consistency).
Translation suggestions based on the glossary and earlier translations of similar strings.
Translation auto-fill when a deleted string is restored.
Automatic translation checks (e.g. to ensure it contains all HTML formatting present in the source text).
Source structure of headings, subheadings, tables, etc. is guaranteed to be preserved in translations.
Submitted translations can be reviewed (and marked as such) by more experienced translators.

Thanks to your efforts, the current handbook is partially translated in at least 16 languages besides English. Considering that none of the above features are available on the current handbook, that's quite an achievement!

By moving to Transifex, we hope you'll be able to help us get the handbook to a similar level of translation as MuseScore Studio itself, which is currently over 90% translated in 25 languages besides English (and partially translated in many more).

The transition

As of right now, the current handbook has been locked to prevent further contribution, but its pages will remain visible throughout the transition, and we will accept contributions at the new location once it's up and running.

The steps are as follows:

Review pages and transfer to GitBook
- Starting today, we will begin systematically reviewing pages of the existing handbook and copying their content to GitBook.
- In some cases we may decide to revert a page to an older revision if we think it's more useful than the current revision.
Sync to GitHub and Transifex
- On Transifex, handbook strings will appear in a new resource alongside the existing musescore and instruments resources.
- Sadly, it's not possible to import existing handbook translations into Transifex. Existing translations are file-based rather than string-based, and the structure of translations in the current handbook doesn't always match the structure of the English text.
Perform initial translation with AI model
- To give translators a helping hand, we'll perform an initial translation with an AI model that we trained on strings & translations from the desktop program.
- As soon as the AI is finished, translators are welcome to start checking and amending its translations, and filling in any languages that were not translated by the AI.
Download translations to GitHub
- An automated script will periodically check for translations, download them, and insert them into copies of the original Markdown files.
- These copies will be stored in separate branches of the repository, so handbook contributors don't need to checkout all languages at once on their machine.
Sync to language variants on GitBook
- We have to create a variant space for each language we want the handbook to be available in.
- This is a manual process, and we'll only do it when a language reaches a significant level of completion on Transifex.
- Once created, the variant will automatically sync translated strings from the relevant branch on GitHub.
Redirect from old handbook
- When we're ready, we'll set up a redirect from the current handbook to the new one, and update links accordingly.
- Around this time, we will begin accepting contributions to the new handbook's English source text.

We expect this process will take about 2 weeks to complete.

During this process, we'll be making editorial decisions in the interests of clarity and brevity that may significantly alter some of the current content. In particular, we’ll be removing out-of-scope content, such as technical or musically didactic information, or details that prevent the reader from easily locating the steps needed to achieve their goals. For the new handbook, we’ll aim to provide clearer editorial guidelines to ensure the handbook remains as accessible and easy to understand as possible.

Contributing to the new handbook

Source content

Contributions to the English source text will be accepted via GitBook and GitHub. Changes made on either platform are automatically synced to the other.

GitBook has a WYSIWYG editor and visual diff, which is better for changes that affect formatting or embedded content.

GitHub shows a raw textual diff, which is better for systematic text changes, such as a find-and-replace across multiple files.

Translations

Translations of text content will take place on Transifex, including translations of URL components for handbook pages.

As with the current handbook, URL components will be limited to just lowercase ASCII letters (a-z), numeric digits (0-9), and hypen-minus (-). If necessary, we could allow some more punctuation characters (+_.), but GitBook doesn't allow anything else.

Initially, it will not be possible to submit translated versions of images or embedded content, such as screenshots or videos taken with MuseScore's UI set to a language other than English. We may enable this in the future via pull request to the handbook's repository on GitHub.

shoogle

Comments

Henk De Groot

• Nov 12, 2024 - 18:45

Sounds like a very good improvement, as translator I am really hoping the translated versions of images or embedded content will be added sooner rather than later as that is one the main reasons to help with the translation, as screenshots and video's not shown in the users language can be really confusing for generic users and is one of the few things not being possible when using AI or the browser to translate pages for you.
Guess it will be a matter of time before that is also possible.

Looking forward to contribute using the new solution.

DanielR

• Nov 17, 2024 - 14:24

I really look forward to an improvement in the indexing of the Handbook.

At present a Google search for "MuseScore Handbbook [topic]" often takes you to the obsolete MuseScore 3 Handbbook, with a message like this:
This page shows old instructions for MuseScore 3. For MuseScore 4 users, see Lyrics.

But very rarely does the link take you directly to the required Handbook 4 section. In the example above, the link provides a long list of topics - some relevant and others virtually irrelevant. The correct Lyrics section appeared only 4th in the list, after Braille, Full Table of Contents, All keyboard shortcuts ... and then Lyrics, followed by 12 other topics which mention Lyrics.

This behaviour is crazily frustrating and inefficient. The direct link to the correct Handbook section should always appear first in the list of search results! In the "good old days" of Mu3, a Google search usually took us straight to the required Handbook section.

Navid Lancaster

• Nov 19, 2024 - 13:40

Sounds like a plan. Looking forward to its new and updated home.

scorster

• Nov 19, 2024 - 21:46

Sounds like good news!

Along the way I hope the use of autoplaying animated GIFs is reconsidered:

https://musescore.org/en/node/371868

I know that some browsers have a means of preventing GIF autoplay, but ideally a user could experience a less hyperactive Handbook without resorting to modify their browser settings.

Thomas

• Nov 20, 2024 - 08:08

Consider syncing a copy from the handbook on GitBook to musescore.org.

Jojo-Schmitz

• Nov 20, 2024 - 09:07

AFAIK that's the plan, once the handbook is on GitBook/GitHub

shoogle

• Dec 2, 2024 - 15:17

The new handbook will be hosted on GitBook's servers, but it will appear on a subdomain of our own website, such as:

handbook.musescore.org/en (English)
handbook.musescore.org/de (German)

We're hoping to set up redirects from old handbook pages to the new pages, at least for the English handbook.

TheHutch

• Nov 20, 2024 - 17:07

Does this mean that all the old links to pages of the Manual will be broken? Ugh!

shoogle

• Dec 2, 2024 - 15:18

Hi all! Just a quick update to say we're delaying the rollout of the new handbook by a few weeks while we deal with some issues that have come to our attention while reviewing the current handbook. I'll keep you posted when there's more news in this area.

Jm6stringer

• Dec 3, 2024 - 06:57

...we're delaying the rollout ...while we deal with some issues that have come to our attention while reviewing the current handbook.

Hopefully, you will minimize using quick-playing animated GIF files which make information assimilation and comprehension difficult - especially when viewed by someone trying to learn something new.
While not a GIF file, here's an example of the case in point:

(Important steps just fly by! :-)

Andy Fielding

• Dec 21, 2024 - 09:29

😆👍
Michaelangelo said that sculpting marble wasn't such a big deal, either; you just had to remove everything that didn't look like the thing you were sculpting.

patterroni82

• Dec 3, 2024 - 10:45

I completely understand your frustration. The search results for the MuseScore 4 Handbook can be a bit chaotic right now, especially with the outdated MuseScore 3 pages still appearing in the results. It’s clear that Google’s indexing isn’t prioritizing the most relevant pages for MuseScore 4 users, which makes finding the correct information much more time-consuming than it should be.

Improving the indexing and ensuring that the most accurate and up-to-date Handbook sections appear first in the search results would certainly make the user experience much smoother. This could involve adjusting how the Handbook pages are indexed or updating metadata on the website to clearly distinguish MuseScore 4 content from older versions.

It’s also a good idea for users to directly bookmark or use specific URLs for MuseScore 4-related content until the search results are more optimized. Hopefully, the team behind MuseScore will prioritize improving this indexing issue in future updates, making it as easy as it was with MuseScore 3 to get directly to the needed Handbook section!

bobjp

• Dec 4, 2024 - 16:28

Personally, I download the Manual and use Acrobat's search function. I realize that doesn't include updates. I have no problem with GIF's. I find them helpful.

Andy Fielding

• Dec 21, 2024 - 09:38

For what it's worth, I always save the "printable" Handbook version as HTML, so I can continue seeing it in my browser's Dark Mode (dark gray background, white text).
I can't quite use MS's Dark Mode for notation (preferring a light green or blue background there), but it's great not to have to stare into a glaring 2000s-style white page to read the documentation. Many of us with sensitive vision can't handle that. It'll be a happy day when PDF printing finally allows us to choose background and text colours. 😐

Jojo-Schmitz

• Jan 17, 2025 - 18:00

Still no news on this, 2 months later?

TheHutch

• Jan 17, 2025 - 18:34

I've been wondering for a couple of weeks now, too.

shoogle

• Jan 23, 2025 - 14:52

We're working on overhauling the handbook content on GitBook. It'll probably be another month at least before we're ready to do the grand switchover.