Steve PMHA good scorewriter needs to allow for fast corrections, flexible editing, easy sharing and uniform layout of sheet music. This means creating, editing and printing your music becomes a lot easier.
Most music notation editing tools are pretty expensive yet do not offer the kind of features one would expect for a top-notch editor.
With Musescore, things are a little different. It is powerful, versatile and free. It does not come with all the bells and whistles offered by the paid competitors but the core functionality is provided. So, is it really worth a shot? Well, that’s what this Musescore Software review will help you find out.
What is Musescore?
Musescore is a score-writing software. It supports a wide variety of file formats and input methods. The software is compatible with Windows, Mac and Linux released as free and open-source software. It includes a freemium mobile score viewer and playback app with an online score sharing platform.
The platform was created as a split in the development of MusE. In 2002, one of MusE’s developers, Werner Schweer, removed notation support from MusE and forked the code into an independent notation software.
In 2008, the musescore.org was created and Musescore reached 15,000 downloads per month rate by December 2008. They released version 0.9.5 in August 2009 which increased the download rate to more than a thousand downloads per day by October 2009 and reached 80,000 downloads per month by October 2010.
Musescore moved from SourceForge to GitHub at the end of 2013 and a press release in March 2015 stated that Musescore had reached over 8million downloads. In 2018, Ultimate Guitar acquired Musescore and added full-time paid developers to the team.
Key Features
MuseScore focuses on creating, editing and printing high-quality musical scores which are realized by the vast features on the platform.
Musescore’s interface is very intuitive and easy to use. You get a toolbar that sits cleanly above your score, where you can quickly access all your basic file menu options and notation tools.
It also comes with a metronome, a feature that is usually reserved for paid software. Here you can add your notes as you play them on time and in tempo.
Concert Pitch
With the concert pitch button, you can view transposed instruments. For example, you can view the B-flat trumpet or the tenor sax, and the best part is that you can do all this without any transposition.
This feature makes it very easy for a piano player, for example, to notate for these instruments too exactly as they would sound in a concert pitch.
Be sure to turn off the concert pitch button before printing or exportation, though.
Plugin functionality
MuseScore is a basic music notation software. It allows you to easily create, playback, and print your sheet music. However, the reason it really stands out is that it is free and completely open-source.
This means that the basic capabilities of MuseScore can be extended in a massive way by using plugins. Musescore.org has an ever-growing repository of many free plugins submitted by MuseScore users that you can take advantage of.
Customizable workspace
MuseScore allows you to easily customize your workspace. To the left of your score, you can move things around and even select and display only the tool palettes you use most.
It also comes with a basic and an advanced palette preset. The basic present contains only simple basic tools. With the advanced preset, you get more palettes, including more advanced tools like accidentals, arpeggios, and articulations.
If you find that there are only a few tools that you use often, Musescore allows you to hide everything else and display only your favorites.
File formats supported
MuseScore allows you to import and export to many formats. Visual representations and audio are export-only while native files from some music notation programs are import-only. MuseScore has two native file formats;
- .mscz which contains compressed files of the score and other media
- .mscx which is compressed in the .mscz files
The .mscx format uses less space and supports images so it is preferred most of the time.
MuseScore can also import and export compressed .mxl and uncompressed .xml MusicXML files. This lets you open a music score in other music notation programs.
You can also import and export MIDI(.mid, .midi and .kar) supported by many other programs. Other music software natives are also supported by MuseScore:
- Band-in-a-Box(.sgu and .mgu ),
- Bagpipe Music Writer(.bww),
- Guitar Pro(.gtp,.gp3,.gp4,gp5 and .gpx),
- Overture
- Capella (.cap and .capx) formats. Your Capella must be version 2000(3.0) or later.
The feature also allows you to import MuseData (.md). MuseData was however superseded by MusicXML.
Audio can be exported to WAV, FLAC, OGG and MP3 files. Score representations can be exported to PDF, SVG and PNG formats or printed.
Solo piano music
Solo parts of piano are common in most musical styles. It could be either more prominent than other instruments or played entirely unaccompanied. The solo piano music feature allows you to create a musical composition solely for piano.
Other features
Online score sharing
The Save Online feature enables you to publish and share your music online through musescore.com. The sharing site allows your score to playback in any browser that supports HTML5 audio tag. You can also link your score to YouTube and follow the sheet music while watching a video that features it.
Mobile player
MuseScore created a mobile app for both Android and iOS in May 2014. The app links to the MuseScore score sharing site. Rather than sharing your score, the app also lets you play scores and change transposition and part extraction. The app is a major plus but you cannot create or edit scores.
How it works
A scorewriter is to music notation what a word processor is to text. MuseScore is no different. The program lets you create, edit and print as well as share sheet music.
Creating a score using MuseScore is quite straightforward. You can create a new score either from a template or from scratch. It provides you with tons of instruments that you can take advantage of to create and edit your sheet music. All you have to do is choose your key signature and start creating.
To create your notations, turn on note mode. Here you will find all the musical notes you need. You will also be able to hear every note that you add and can always play the notations as you create.
MuseScore offers all the palettes you require to create your music, including grace notes, drums, key signatures, barlines, accidentals, dynamics, and many more. You also get all the notation features needed by 99% of users.
After you have finished creating and editing your sheet music you can print it out and share it.
Prices and plans
MuseScore is free to use.
However, it is also a membership type of platform. If you really want to enjoy all the features it has to offer, you will need to sign up for the yearly or monthly subscription. It will cost you $49 for the yearly subscription and $6.99 for the monthly subscription.
For MuseScore pro, the prices are not clearly laid out. However, you get a one month free trial for it.
Free accounts are limited to the five most recent uploads being visible while paying subscribers are allowed to share unlimited scores.
Pros
- The platform is free to use. This makes it accessible to more people.
- It has an easy to use interface and a very smooth learning curve.
- The notations look excellent.
- You also get very simple control over the placements of elements
- High quality of the printed score. Almost as good as, if not equally comparable or better than those of the paid competitors.
- It comes with high-quality playback options.
Cons
- The mouse methodology is occasionally unintuitive
- The platform takes quite some time before releasing updates
- Poor contact between customers and MuseScore
Verdict
When all is said and done, Musescore stands out as a really great program for anyone in the music industry. Besides being among the few free platforms, it offers 99% of what all users need to create music easily.
MuseScore comes packed with powerful features that allow it to compete with expensive commercial alternatives. The only trade-off is the fact that there are some things that Musescore cannot do. For instance, there are some types of notation that would be difficult to achieve with MuseScore.
Nevertheless, I would definitely recommend trying it out for yourself especially if you want to do your first notation or just to see how powerful a free platform like this one can be.
7 comments
Very good but how does one do a full score online?
MUSESCORE Pro is bad scam. Their aggressive subscription process ensures that your free trial is converted into a yearlong subscription that is difficult to change. I got caught a year ago and emailed them. They had zero care and claimed the payment was authorised. While technically true it doesn’t provide goodwill amongst a supposed community. A year has just passed and because the issues was dealt with and I never used the product at all, I had forgotten about it. Without any notification of pending renewal they took another yesr, which because of exchange rate was $85AUD. Again when I contacted them, they are unsympathetic. Unwilling to refund in full only part, despite the fact I have never used the product and made it clear a year ago. Very very poor corporate behaviour and a good example of what is wrong with corporate sector.
Thanks for sharing your feedback Sarah! That’s very bad indeed.
Horrible subscription company. I had a free trial and went to use it and it didn’t recognize my account. So I thought something went wrong. Then I got charged a yearly subscription and I contacted them stating that I tried to use it and cancel it prior to the trial being up and the account was not found. They didn’t care and sent me an email that was associated with my account… it wasn’t even me and it wasn’t my email. They said I cancelled the day they charged me and I did but I had to do it through PayPal because my subscription still wasn’t found on their website. Scam artists – DON’T use!!
They are owned by Russians, which explains everything. That country does not care about customer service.
Musescore is now sadly a POS. I downloaded and installed the latest version but it doesn't recognize my audio device. The MIDI icons are greyed out and nothing shows up in the I/O tab in Preferences. Uninstalled it, rebooted computer, still nothing. As much as I can't stand using Sibelius, I never encountered this problem. I googled around and discovered this crippling glitch was reported over a year ago. It's absolutely inexcusable for this kind of issue goes unfixed for so long. Musescore may be open source but in 2018, the company was acquired by Ultimate Guitar, the largest guitarist community website including guitar and bass guitar tablature and chord sheets. And judging by the low customer ratings here, Ultimate Guitar apparently is just as incompetent and crooked as Avid and the rest of the music big boys. Alas, I guess it's back to Sibelius…
$50 dollars a year is nothing. I may consider signing up for the yearly subscription. There’s songs on this music platform that I want to learn on the piano that are ONLY. FOUND. HERE., which really sucks.