MuseScore 3.0 released

[Schneider]

Hi all,
You can download right now the version 3.0 of MuseScore.
See here the new features of this version.

Frohe Weihnachten, peaceful Christmas, glad jul, joyeux Noël à tous,
Pierre

[OCTO]

Did anyone have time to test it? I am on v2 because of the project.

[bicinium]

Did anyone have time to test it? I am on v2 because of the project.

On the whole, I am very enthusiastic, although the biggest feature - the autoplacement - will have a greater impact on ad-hoc and educational users compared to professional engravers who occupy themselves with minutiae. As for me, I have a large score that used to look like chicken scratch but now looks presentable (though not quite finished) without any manual adjustments; and the parts are immediately usable, sometimes even professional-looking to my novice eyes. The two things I like most are slurs dodging intervening material, sometimes even nudging beams and accidentals out of the way; and hairpins making space for dynamics, which was the most asinine manual adjustment that we had to do previously. Despite the "local relayout", performance actually seems to have worsened on my score with many staves (although I have a toaster for a laptop), but I guess its primary purpose is to make the program scale better with length. Finally, menus were redesigned and options were moved to places where they make far more sense - although they changed things from what I was used to, which makes it bad. The new timeline is excellent and very customizable - it does a far better job of navigating sections in a score than the old navigator, which slowed down performance to boot.

There are, as expected, bugs; I seem to have a problem with time signatures duplicating, and not being able to remove them. But the developers are actively fixing them (we're on version 3.0.2 already) and building on the groundwork laid by autoplacement as well - since release, they improved the placement of dynamics so that they are level with any adjacent hairpins, good for when either the hairpin or the dynamic had to be moved to avoid a collision.

So in all, the update made musescore a lot more practical for people who want to send out material quickly without having to fix collisions everywhere, thereby reinforcing its position in amateur and educational use, but I don't see must-have features that will entice professional engravers to switch. And I still find that some aspects of large scores are not made easy in the program; for instance, the "implode" and "explode" tools for combining and splitting winds notated in pairs still gets confused when the notation is a mix of chordal and polyphonic (as is standard). To my knowledge, there is no easy way to hide staves only for specific sections (like during a solo cadenza, or when instruments are absent from a movement). Also, I don't know of any playback improvements; rightfully not a focus of the program, but I've begun to feel limited by the absence of crescendo/diminuendo on single notes, and the lack of muted brass/stopped horn sounds. But the autoplacement engine is so good that I immediately moved over all of my work.

[benwiggy]

Thanks, that's a nice review.

It's very welcome that software can empower people to get their music onto the page in functional, reasonably attractive documents without too much effort.
Engravers will always want more, of course!

[OCTO]

So in all, the update made musescore a lot more practical ...

Thanks for the review!
I still fight with a deadline, but in couple of weeks I could start working on my score which I started in MS2. You can read more here:
viewtopic.php?f=7&t=341

It would be great to hear how you use MS and show us some of the examples. It is very hard to find appealing scores done with MS, but not impossible to do many great things with the software. All the best, O.

[bicinium]

It would be great to hear how you use MS and show us some of the examples. It is very hard to find appealing scores done with MS, but not impossible to do many great things with the software. All the best, O.

I've already seen and read your thread some time ago with great interest, and I think we have very different use cases, me being primarily an early music fan, so I typically only need basic common practice notation - I've tried hacking in mensural elements before but will consider using Lilypond for that instead in the future. For what it's worth, figured bass and historical tablature are well-supported (the latter maybe even ridiculously so). The score I worked the hardest on so far is this one, in MuseScore 2.0.3: viewtopic.php?f=3&t=420 Most of my time went to fixing collisions which should be greatly mitigated now, second most was deciding on optimal system/page breaks and probably failing.

You may like this one, which exploits the capabilities of the program a lot more, although I'm not sure much effort went into making the engraving truly appealing: https://musescore.com/user/2749876/scores/5171003

If you're wondering why I use MuseScore, it's mostly open source fanaticism (though not full Stallman), although I do think it's a good program which can surely compete with the versions of Finale and SIbelius from when they conquered the market, if not their current incarnations - although Dorico is getting more and more scary.

[OCTO]

If you're wondering why I use MuseScore, it's mostly open source fanaticism (though not full Stallman), although I do think it's a good program which can surely compete with the versions of Finale and SIbelius from when they conquered the market, if not their current incarnations - although Dorico is getting more and more scary.

You are my man!

[bicinium]

Here's a recent, original composition (not by me) with what I thought was a very appealing engraving:
https://musescore.com/r_d/scores/548238 ... nt-5180196

By the way, they're on version 3.0.5 now. A lot of the fixes are on the level of "how was this program functioning before???" but I do see incremental engraving improvements, and also optimization, although I haven't noticed anything go faster on my potato laptop.

Also, I went back and updated an older engraving of mine (double bass, 2 violins, continuo) and did a complete relayout in the process. The layout was a rush job (the focus was on incorporating material from a new musical source) and it's obviously not as refined as the previous version, but the fact that I could rush it like I did and still have workable score and parts is a testament to version 3's improved workflow. I did notice that the "local relayout" feature can be a bit buggy and sometimes rerenders too little, causing some measures or even a whole page to be swallowed by the program. The missing material will reappear if I move something in the vicinity or press save, so nothing is ever lost, but it shows that are still many bugs to iron out. On the whole, the experience is much better than what I remember from early MuseScore 2.

[OCTO]

Interesting this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hZxo96x48A
(ps. warning: to much intensive, but some of the points well done).

[bicinium]

Interesting this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hZxo96x48A
(ps. warning: to much intensive, but some of the points well done).

I love that video. Aside from the extremely long section on iconography, it's a great video to show someone what MuseScore is about. And as someone who did classical studies in high school, I'd never heard of Oizys...

I think the overall message is rather positive. The program has a good basic design philosophy and is headed in the right direction. Indeed, some of the "notation finesse" he talks about at the end can be easily added (and actually was added before he finished the video), but other things - like dynamics and hairpin manipulation - are structural.

Also this:

I've begun to feel limited by the absence of crescendo/diminuendo on single notes

... was added in the new beta released today. Even though playback isn't absolutely important to me, it made my score come to life.