More of a “I’m surprised this basic functionality isn’t supported so I asked someone who works for MuseScore and he said they’re aware it’s broken but it’s not a priority for them right now.” But ok.
Learning can be difficult when documentation for MuseScore 3.6 rank so highly on Google search results. Also there are a TON of people nowadays whose first (and maybe only) engraving program was MuseScore, since it's free. I'd wager that 90% of the negative comments are people who are looking through that lens.
Well Dave. Can you please explain why there is no option to write artificial harmonics with the diamond shape that is written a forth above of the written note and hear it in the playback? That's what string player like to see when writing artificial harmonics. But, when writing it, there's no sound. All we have is the option to use an natural harmonic (Circle) that appear in the top of the staff, and that's not how artificial harmonics are written. If you know how Musescore works, show us how to change it?
@@Dave1507 You gave everyone the impression when you wrote: "So all I hear is "it's bad, because I don't know how it works." And the comments support this impression." That makes you sound like a Musescore Master that knows almost everything about Musescore.
Okay... let's be real. My pencil and paper is professional level music composition apparatus. This is true because I am a professional composer. The issue is about if I can get the end that I want, given a knowledge of the tools that I'm using. I could gripe about every software default assumptions. But if I have control... my gripes are meaningless. Can you be a top shelf composer and engrave in MuseScore? Of course! It's not 'missing' core features or the ability to customize. And like any other tool, you have to conform to some of its functions. I think this is a weak critical evaluation. The bigger issue is what can other software do than M4 can't? Like a/v sync and live midi interpretation with a DAW. If these features are needed... then you have found a real hole in the capability. I moved to MuseScore from Finale and Sibelius nearly 20 years ago and never looked back.
Complaining about Musescore is like complaining about Blender. Those of us who cannot afford premium software, vst's and samples are liberated. This is our dream come true.
The MuseScore problem you mention at 3:54 happens because you are not using the screen view with the keyboard enabled, there you will notice that you can get shortcuts on the keys of the on-screen music keyboard.
But to get those "shortcuts," I need to either have my MIDI keyboard plugged in OR use the mouse/trackpad to play the onscreen keyboard. They are so so close with this one-hope this gets addressed in the new version (beta release is out now).
Thank you. It didn't work for me the first time I tried this and I didn't bother to try it again. Working now. But also: overwriting style to the defaults when making an edit is INSANE. Can you imagine fixing a typo in MS Word or Figma and having it change the style too?
to change (e.g.) the size of all the chord symbols in your score, select a chord symbol, change the size in the properties menu, click '...' above and then 'save as default style for this score'. this applies to each default style setting. best, andy
@andysjazztopics thanks! I hadn’t done it this way-seems like a quick low-friction alternative to doing right-click→Style (which is how I’m doing it now). And the bug where items with non-default settings are switched to default settings on reload seems solved. Now my wish list is down to: 1. Crash less 2. Better drum note input 3. Keyboard shortcuts for palette items 4. Follow MacOS conventions on Mac (eg text selection key commands don’t work) Thanks again!
I've used Sibelius since version 5 and was a Sibelius Training Partner until Avid killed that too 😢. I've started investing time in Musescore since they released v4. There are still plenty of bugs, particularly with playback and audio, but there are many improvements over the clutter and BS that Sibelius became over time. I agree, the drums in Musescore are very frustrating - totally unintuitive which is weird, because so many other things make sense. I'll never update Sibelius again. Come on Musescore - get the bugs fixed and you'll be the 'only' choice. The potential is there, but there's still a way to go. The other thing that shits me about Musescore is thst they charge people to download scores that users upload to their site, but don't offer any payment to the composer. NOT COOL!
Hi There: Personally, i think "LilyPond" has a much better layout,and we can control every aspect; this automatic settings on Musescore are pretty annoying.Wish we could compile its syntax there; some kind of "LilyPound Mode".
something I find annoying is how difficult it is to write music without barlines. some people have suggested workarounds for this but it still should be a feature of the app imo. There are a few other things about it that make it very difficult for writing any sort of avant garde music.
It should. Unfortunately (as with most music software, historically) the whole model is built around bars/measures as a central concept, which means it's especially hard to do anything that goes outside of that without ripping the guts out of the code and rewriting it all. We do have a strategy for this, though, and it is coming (I just can't promise it will be particularly soon).
> "make it very difficult for writing any sort of avant garde music." It's humbling to think about how many "customer avatars" a scorewriter app has to address. Even if you can deliver all the features asked for by the various constituencies, there's still so much opportunity cost & prioritization to consider.
@@joshuaskaja7873 this is true, but I still think there are ways to make everyone happy. These sorts of apps just have to be very customizable, which sometimes they aren’t.
@@sgt_yeet how exactly do you deal with all of the notes being bunched up on top of each other? And how do you split this one measure across multiple lines? When I press enter, nothing happens. And do you really expect me to create a new time signature every time I need more space? “To an infinite extent” is just false. Even typing in 1000 in the time signature crashed musescore. I appreciate the attempt at a workaround, but you have to accept when something isnt working. I shouldn’t have to do black magic just to get something as simple as a score with no barlines.
@@its_not_nice if it was easy we wouldn't have the need for "thinking outside of the box", because everything would be in that box already. Sounds boring.
I had sibelius and I had a really hard time with polyrythms and polymetres. The music I write is very complex and when I spend all the time to input all that I want (which was 4 bars) it immediately put it into something that I did not want, i think I will just do what I have always done...write out my own scores by hand....much faster and reliable.
I'll be honest, musescore 3.6 was the goat. It was literally perfection. I'm currently doing professional gigs for orchestra and I literally use 3.6. MuseScore 4 was simplyna mistake, I'm literally so mad, ruined some of the amazing snappiness that 3.6 had and now it's clunky and ugly.
I totally agree with you; Musescore 4 is obsessed with realistic sound, and throws all its human resources at that; falling behind on the rest that Musescore 3.6 does have. musesscore 4 urgently needs; easy customization of the sizes palletes; a line of drum sounds just like the line of icons of the different note tempos, whole, half, quarter, eighth, this should be available in the mesh, nut, gear that adds icons to the note bar
My pet peeve is actually starting to go away. About 2 years ago Musescore released version 4, and it came with massive regressions. It was about as stable as the previous US president, and lost features like support for the JACK sound system (only affecting a tiny amount of users, myself included). Today, version 4.x largely works, it no longer crashes (losing your work) or corrupts your score whenever you do something unexpected like… clicking a menu button or something. Still, to this day I'm on Musescore 3.6.2. It has all the annoying quirks and limitations that will never go away, but at least it works. Musescore 4 burned me BAD.
That's crazy we seem to be in the same boat. I'm currently doing professional gigs for orchs but I STILL am sticking to 3.6.2. it JUST WORKED. I had once started a project on 4 (about a year ago) and literally had to abandon and redo like 15 hours of work because of 4's instability.
I use 3.6.2 mainly due to the 4.xes heavily taxing my potato laptop. It can get so hot as to literally burn me if place my hand near the possessors. 3.6.2 also is smoother, again cause a non-performance focused laptop.
I see a lot of people mad about how CPU intensive MuseHub is. I did a manual install without MuseHub, but do find it slows down my machine (a pretty robust M1 MacBook).
for open highhat, find MS symbol for openhat and edit it--creating a circled x and decreasing rendered note value by a whole step. MS will retain this notation across documents.
musesscore 4 urgently needs; easy customization of the sizes palletes; a line of drum sounds just like the line of icons of the different note tempos, whole, half, quarter, eighth, this should be available in the mesh, nut, gear that adds icons to the note bar
I hear they hired a guy that was criticizing them a lot on their interface because they realized he could improve the software so much and that was recently, would that happen to be you ? 😂😂
This is true, but they insist on using their own schema for open hi-hat. ie the most common notation for hi-hat is the G above the staff, and open hat is shown by adding a “°” above it. For some reason theirs is done with two different pitches (iirc F & G). To get “normal” notation that both sounds & looks correct, I have to make both notes G, then manually add the ° (which of course is like 3 mouse clicks deep and can’t be assigned to a keyboard shortcut). It’s a good program, but I wish they’d get serious about updating the elements that feel like Windows 95.
Personally I mainly avoid musescore because they refuse to include a scrollbar. I use rosegarden and synthesia instead. It's sad that maybe I'd be more incline not to reject traditional music notation if it's proponents got their act together and wrote some good open source software.
I think your "scrollbar" means a piano-roll right? But like at that point, just don't use *notation software* but a DAW instead. Btw musescore is open source, so I guess you're saying it's just bad then?
@@stalcher1699 Nah, I mean when I have a 30 page score, and what to move between sections. I have to hold shift and use the scroll wheel for like 30 seconds to get from the start to the end. I just want to download some midi files, and display them in a format that I can read and play along to on my keyboard. On Linux I can use rosegarden which supports showing the score for a track with a scrollbar so I can jump to any part of the song in one click-drag action. On Windows though, rosegarden is not available, so I need to use other software. If my time was free, maybe I'd modify the source code to musescore to add a scrollbar or compile rosegarden for windows. But ATM I don't know of any software for Windows that cost less than $20 that can open a midi file and display it's contents with a scroll bar, other than synthesia.
@@kaisfp I guess he's talking about the Score collection on the MuseScore website. You can put your scores there, but then others need to have a subscription, or credits, to download a lot of them.
So all I hear is "it's bad, because I don't know how it works." And the comments support this impression.
More of a “I’m surprised this basic functionality isn’t supported so I asked someone who works for MuseScore and he said they’re aware it’s broken but it’s not a priority for them right now.”
But ok.
Learning can be difficult when documentation for MuseScore 3.6 rank so highly on Google search results. Also there are a TON of people nowadays whose first (and maybe only) engraving program was MuseScore, since it's free. I'd wager that 90% of the negative comments are people who are looking through that lens.
Well Dave. Can you please explain why there is no option to write artificial harmonics with the diamond shape that is written a forth above of the written note and hear it in the playback? That's what string player like to see when writing artificial harmonics. But, when writing it, there's no sound.
All we have is the option to use an natural harmonic (Circle) that appear in the top of the staff, and that's not how artificial harmonics are written.
If you know how Musescore works, show us how to change it?
@@laylasmart Where did you get the impression that I know any of this? In short, no I can't. Maybe ask the makers of Musescore.
@@Dave1507
You gave everyone the impression when you wrote:
"So all I hear is "it's bad, because I don't know how it works." And the comments support this impression."
That makes you sound like a Musescore Master that knows almost everything about Musescore.
Okay... let's be real. My pencil and paper is professional level music composition apparatus.
This is true because I am a professional composer.
The issue is about if I can get the end that I want, given a knowledge of the tools that I'm using. I could gripe about every software default assumptions. But if I have control... my gripes are meaningless.
Can you be a top shelf composer and engrave in MuseScore? Of course! It's not 'missing' core features or the ability to customize. And like any other tool, you have to conform to some of its functions.
I think this is a weak critical evaluation. The bigger issue is what can other software do than M4 can't? Like a/v sync and live midi interpretation with a DAW. If these features are needed... then you have found a real hole in the capability.
I moved to MuseScore from Finale and Sibelius nearly 20 years ago and never looked back.
you are so right man
I agree. i moved to Musescore 4 after discovered it. never look back to Sibelius at all.
Complaining about Musescore is like complaining about Blender. Those of us who cannot afford premium software, vst's and samples are liberated. This is our dream come true.
The MuseScore problem you mention at 3:54 happens because you are not using the screen view with the keyboard enabled, there you will notice that you can get shortcuts on the keys of the on-screen music keyboard.
But to get those "shortcuts," I need to either have my MIDI keyboard plugged in OR use the mouse/trackpad to play the onscreen keyboard.
They are so so close with this one-hope this gets addressed in the new version (beta release is out now).
For Chord symbol sizes. "Format -> Style -> Text Styles -> Chord symbol" and change from there. The same for the measure number styling.
Thank you. It didn't work for me the first time I tried this and I didn't bother to try it again. Working now.
But also: overwriting style to the defaults when making an edit is INSANE. Can you imagine fixing a typo in MS Word or Figma and having it change the style too?
to change (e.g.) the size of all the chord symbols in your score, select a chord symbol, change the size in the properties menu, click '...' above and then 'save as default style for this score'. this applies to each default style setting. best, andy
@andysjazztopics thanks! I hadn’t done it this way-seems like a quick low-friction alternative to doing right-click→Style (which is how I’m doing it now).
And the bug where items with non-default settings are switched to default settings on reload seems solved.
Now my wish list is down to:
1. Crash less
2. Better drum note input
3. Keyboard shortcuts for palette items
4. Follow MacOS conventions on Mac (eg text selection key commands don’t work)
Thanks again!
I've used Sibelius since version 5 and was a Sibelius Training Partner until Avid killed that too 😢. I've started investing time in Musescore since they released v4. There are still plenty of bugs, particularly with playback and audio, but there are many improvements over the clutter and BS that Sibelius became over time. I agree, the drums in Musescore are very frustrating - totally unintuitive which is weird, because so many other things make sense. I'll never update Sibelius again.
Come on Musescore - get the bugs fixed and you'll be the 'only' choice. The potential is there, but there's still a way to go.
The other thing that shits me about Musescore is thst they charge people to download scores that users upload to their site, but don't offer any payment to the composer. NOT COOL!
re charging for scores but not sharing that revenue
Makes perfect sense once you realize that MuseScore's parent company is now Ultimate Guitar. 😆
putting in drums are a nightmare compared to noteflight.
Hi There: Personally, i think "LilyPond" has a much better layout,and we can control every aspect;
this automatic settings on Musescore are pretty annoying.Wish we could compile its syntax there;
some kind of "LilyPound Mode".
Okay Can you imagine being blind like me and having to put up with all of that? I can't use a mouse so just imagine my frustration.
something I find annoying is how difficult it is to write music without barlines. some people have suggested workarounds for this but it still should be a feature of the app imo. There are a few other things about it that make it very difficult for writing any sort of avant garde music.
It should. Unfortunately (as with most music software, historically) the whole model is built around bars/measures as a central concept, which means it's especially hard to do anything that goes outside of that without ripping the guts out of the code and rewriting it all. We do have a strategy for this, though, and it is coming (I just can't promise it will be particularly soon).
> "make it very difficult for writing any sort of avant garde music."
It's humbling to think about how many "customer avatars" a scorewriter app has to address. Even if you can deliver all the features asked for by the various constituencies, there's still so much opportunity cost & prioritization to consider.
@@joshuaskaja7873 this is true, but I still think there are ways to make everyone happy. These sorts of apps just have to be very customizable, which sometimes they aren’t.
@@sgt_yeet how exactly do you deal with all of the notes being bunched up on top of each other? And how do you split this one measure across multiple lines? When I press enter, nothing happens. And do you really expect me to create a new time signature every time I need more space? “To an infinite extent” is just false. Even typing in 1000 in the time signature crashed musescore. I appreciate the attempt at a workaround, but you have to accept when something isnt working. I shouldn’t have to do black magic just to get something as simple as a score with no barlines.
@@its_not_nice if it was easy we wouldn't have the need for "thinking outside of the box", because everything would be in that box already. Sounds boring.
I had sibelius and I had a really hard time with polyrythms and polymetres. The music I write is very complex and when I spend all the time to input all that I want (which was 4 bars) it immediately put it into something that I did not want, i think I will just do what I have always done...write out my own scores by hand....much faster and reliable.
I'll be honest, musescore 3.6 was the goat. It was literally perfection. I'm currently doing professional gigs for orchestra and I literally use 3.6. MuseScore 4 was simplyna mistake, I'm literally so mad, ruined some of the amazing snappiness that 3.6 had and now it's clunky and ugly.
I totally agree with you; Musescore 4 is obsessed with realistic sound, and throws all its human resources at that; falling behind on the rest that Musescore 3.6 does have. musesscore 4 urgently needs; easy customization of the sizes palletes; a line of drum sounds just like the line of icons of the different note tempos, whole, half, quarter, eighth, this should be available in the mesh, nut, gear that adds icons to the note bar
They also got rid of the note nudging and other changes you could make in the piano roll editor in 3.6.
100% agree and I use musescore for pretty much everything
My pet peeve is actually starting to go away. About 2 years ago Musescore released version 4, and it came with massive regressions. It was about as stable as the previous US president, and lost features like support for the JACK sound system (only affecting a tiny amount of users, myself included). Today, version 4.x largely works, it no longer crashes (losing your work) or corrupts your score whenever you do something unexpected like… clicking a menu button or something.
Still, to this day I'm on Musescore 3.6.2. It has all the annoying quirks and limitations that will never go away, but at least it works. Musescore 4 burned me BAD.
That's crazy we seem to be in the same boat. I'm currently doing professional gigs for orchs but I STILL am sticking to 3.6.2. it JUST WORKED. I had once started a project on 4 (about a year ago) and literally had to abandon and redo like 15 hours of work because of 4's instability.
I use 3.6.2 mainly due to the 4.xes heavily taxing my potato laptop. It can get so hot as to literally burn me if place my hand near the possessors. 3.6.2 also is smoother, again cause a non-performance focused laptop.
I see a lot of people mad about how CPU intensive MuseHub is. I did a manual install without MuseHub, but do find it slows down my machine (a pretty robust M1 MacBook).
for open highhat, find MS symbol for openhat and edit it--creating a circled
x and decreasing rendered note value by a whole step. MS will retain this notation
across documents.
musesscore 4 urgently needs; easy customization of the sizes palletes; a line of drum sounds just like the line of icons of the different note tempos, whole, half, quarter, eighth, this should be available in the mesh, nut, gear that adds icons to the note bar
You think that's maddening try Logic Pro music scoring window
I hear they hired a guy that was criticizing them a lot on their interface because they realized he could improve the software so much and that was recently, would that happen to be you ? 😂😂
That guy is tantacrule (or something similar) and he is now the head of the design. If i am not mistaken
Open hi-hat will sound if you use the drum template
This is true, but they insist on using their own schema for open hi-hat.
ie the most common notation for hi-hat is the G above the staff, and open hat is shown by adding a “°” above it.
For some reason theirs is done with two different pitches (iirc F & G).
To get “normal” notation that both sounds & looks correct, I have to make both notes G, then manually add the ° (which of course is like 3 mouse clicks deep and can’t be assigned to a keyboard shortcut).
It’s a good program, but I wish they’d get serious about updating the elements that feel like Windows 95.
Personally I mainly avoid musescore because they refuse to include a scrollbar. I use rosegarden and synthesia instead. It's sad that maybe I'd be more incline not to reject traditional music notation if it's proponents got their act together and wrote some good open source software.
I think your "scrollbar" means a piano-roll right? But like at that point, just don't use *notation software* but a DAW instead. Btw musescore is open source, so I guess you're saying it's just bad then?
@@stalcher1699 Nah, I mean when I have a 30 page score, and what to move between sections. I have to hold shift and use the scroll wheel for like 30 seconds to get from the start to the end. I just want to download some midi files, and display them in a format that I can read and play along to on my keyboard. On Linux I can use rosegarden which supports showing the score for a track with a scrollbar so I can jump to any part of the song in one click-drag action. On Windows though, rosegarden is not available, so I need to use other software. If my time was free, maybe I'd modify the source code to musescore to add a scrollbar or compile rosegarden for windows. But ATM I don't know of any software for Windows that cost less than $20 that can open a midi file and display it's contents with a scroll bar, other than synthesia.
View > Navigator gets you the scrollbar.
He meant piano roll and they had it in 3.6 with a right click menu. It is absent in version 4 unfortunately.
Piano roll is coming back.
they are selling user-content as their APP ! shame on you, musescore!
Um, they're not? This is talking about the software? And like... you're on RUclips.
Which exact user content precisely?
@@kaisfp I guess he's talking about the Score collection on the MuseScore website. You can put your scores there, but then others need to have a subscription, or credits, to download a lot of them.
Agreed, totally!
BTW...get Dorico, and you are set for LIFE!
Yes! Dorico is the absolute best of all!
At $840 US, you are set for life, alright, a life of debt!
@@PracticaProphetica$579. It’s a lot but let’s not be hyperbolic and add $300 more to that price.
@@piersoncomposer It shows as $840 for Dorico Pro 5 when I go to the website.
@@piersoncomposer That's the amount the website gave me when I looked up Dorico 5 Pro.