MuseScore 2.0 released!

[MIDI Life Crisis]

I have to downgrade it to a C-.

You mean Cb, don't you?

[mikehalloran]

I have to downgrade it to a C-.

You mean Cb, don't you?

I suppose I do!

[bayswater]

Hold on ... that's a B.

The tutorials are essential given the state of the manual. They specifically address how to do things like changing the length of rests.

[mikehalloran]

Tutorials do not interest me except on complicated tasks. I'm a 'crack open the book and read' person when it comes to software. Searchable .pdf files are my friend and I am thankful that MOTU finally released them for DP. That MuseScore finally released 2.01 from beta without updating the documentation or even releasing an addendum is inexcusable.

The user forums are chock full of people preaching to the choir. It's a bit tight knit in a way that this place is not. I've not seen the reaction to my posts yet.

Feature-wise, the absence of a rests palate makes MuseScore fairly useless for me -- too many mouse clicks. If they change that in a future release, I may look at it again. For now, I am done with it.

I had a Fostex FD-8. Actually, three at one time or another. It had a quick start guide and a manual. In a weird bit of pretzel logic, the manual did not include anything covered in the guide. Ok but Fostex only had the manual online and then took down the USA site including the user support group where I had posted a scan of the guide. For years, people emailed me from all over the globe for a copy of that guide until Fostex contacted me for a copy that they finally made available for download on the Japanese site.

[ZackTheCardshark]

Hi everybody,

I just thought I'd put this out there: we did answer some of @mikehalloran's questions on the MuseScore forum, at https://musescore.org/en/node/62271. If anybody has any further questions about the software or suggestions for improving the documentation, please do ask your questions or bring your ideas to us at https://musescore.org/en/forum. Thanks!

Exceptionally,

ZackTheCardshark

[stubbsonic]

Thanks for those links. It is an interesting thread.

The functionality of the software is certainly harder to judge when the docs have fallen a little behind. That said, it looks like there are other resources to help get one up to speed with it.

I've got Finale 2012, but am reluctant to update it since my notation needs don't really warrant it.

[ZackTheCardshark]

@stubbsonic: as to "the docs have fallen a little behind," as far as I know they're pretty much up-to-date. Mike Halloran caught one hole, where the different music fonts weren't mentioned where they should have been, and that was corrected almost immediately. And it's not actually the case that rests weren't explained—Mike just missed it. If you do find any cases of the docs having fallen behind, though, the best thing you can do is what Mike Halloran did: point it out.

Also, Mike, if you're still around and reading this, you left a tantalizing suggestion that you thought there were "many examples of what's wrong," but then disappeared without elaborating. If we don't know what's wrong, we can't fix it. (I say "we" because, though I'm not on MuseScore's development team, I have personally done a fair amount of Handbook editing as a regular user.)

Anyway, I would naturally encourage people to try out MuseScore and form opinions for themselves—as MuseScore is entirely free, there's no downside to downloading it (https://musescore.org/), and the potential upside (discovering something really useful that's free) is pretty good—at least that's what I think.

EDIT: On the other hand, if you have Finale already you're probably okay.

[mikehalloran]

Has that terrible documentation on the rests been fixed? Explaining the pretzel logic doesn't do it for me.

Anyway, that isn't a deal killer. The decision not to have a rest palate is. That one lack of a feature makes it more difficult to use than Finale or Encore for me (I have current licenses for both).

If you want to experience it through my perspective, do the following: Strap your dominant arm to a chair then work the program with the one that's left (right in my case). Easier to take my word for it.

For others, the lack of real-time entry makes it unacceptable. Go back seven years and I would have passed on it for that reason. No longer my issue nowadays.

I have not disappeared. OTOH, having disqualified MuseScore as a product that I can use, I have lost my desire to participate. This is too bad … I really wanted to like it.

EDIT: On the other hand, if you have Finale already you're probably okay.

I can see why you'd think that but for choral music or my Christmas book, Encore has easier note and lyric entry. The bear for me is that it only supports MusicXML 1.3 (I think). Anyway, lyrics aren't supported and expressions, not so good. I wind up doing note entry in Encore, exporting to XML, then importing into Finale.

If MuseScore could make any of that process easier and faster, that would be great. I'd be in and working on cleaning up that manual.

Of course, it could be worse. This could be 40 years ago and I would have to do everything with a pen in the wrong hand.

[ZackTheCardshark]

I'm really not sure what's so hard to understand about it: https://musescore.org/en/handbook/note- ... nter-pitch

But, if it comes down to it, you may not have noticed, but MuseScore doesn't have a note palette, either! You can even switch to the Advanced workspace (the default is Basic) for the full set of palettes on the left, and you won't find one. There is,however, the toolbar, which includes the option to to select a duration for a note or rest, and which applies equally to notes A, B, C, D, E, F, G, or 0 (rest). As stated before, mouse entry is not what this is intended for, and usually people do it the way it says to in the Handbook (or in the Getting Started tutorial score). However, it may be a valid idea to add detailed instructions on using the mouse to the Note Input page.

I did try putting my dominant arm behind my back and notating a simple four-bar melody/rhythm (including rests), first with the keyboard, then with the mouse (though I would hesitate to say this enables me to experience your perspective). With the keyboard (one-handed), it took twenty-five seconds. With the mouse, I barely completed one measure in that amount of time. This brings to mind the fact that a significant effort went into improving accessibility with the latest version of MuseScore, and it was a given that making more things keyboard-controlled, instead of forcing possibly handicapped users to use the mouse, would advance that goal.

As to real-time entry, my personal feeling is that that would be a very nice feature. I gather that the developers' position on it is somewhere between "It's just a gimmick that no serious user would ever really be interested in" and "Great idea, do you want to figure out how to make it work?".

I'm glad you haven't disappeared. But… you still haven't elaborated. You don't owe MuseScore anything, but won't you share, just with the general goal of making the world a better place?

My edit about Finale was a nod to @stubbsonic, but honestly, unless Encore has as well-developed a set of keyboard controls as MuseScore, I would dare to suggest that you might genuinely find it easier and faster for the very reason of the note entry keyboard shortcuts. I guess it may seem like a completely ridiculous concept to you, but please believe me that it's a lot easier than doing it all with the mouse, even one-handed. I once used a program that I hope we can all agree was terrible—Finale Notepad—and I would do everything with the mouse, and it was a long, slow, difficult process (difficult because it's easy to miss the right spot on the staff). When I switched to MuseScore, with its emphasis on keyboard shortcuts, I gradually began to use them and found that I could put in notes way faster. I subsequently discovered that even in Finale Notepad there were similar shortcuts for some things, and it was possible to work a little bit faster, but the shortcuts were not well exposed—and anyway MuseScore was objectively vastly more capable than Finale Notepad.

But, you know what, forget MuseScore for the moment. Is it possible that there are keyboard shortcuts in Finale that you don't know about? You could find yourself able to work faster in completely unexpected ways. I would urge you to see what you can learn about Finale's shortcuts, and let me know how it turns out, would you?

[mikehalloran]

I'll make this as simple as I can.

The handbook is poorly written. Why? Because, reading and following it exactly, I couldn't figure out how to do certain simple tasks basic to all notation programs. Explaining that I should read someone's book or pointing out that certain basic functions are cryptically mentioned in lists or other pages does not change my observation that the manual is 180 pages written by committee without the guidance of an editor.

The correct response to my complaint is for someone to rewrite the basic note entry page so that someone new to the program can figure out how to enter rests correctly. Good grief!

MuseScore has a row of note icons, each with a different duration, just like any serious notation program. That is a note palate. Other programs have a similar palate for rests, visible alongside the note palate. The lack of this basic feature means that MuseScore is useless to me.

Keyboard shortcuts should not be used as the sole access basic functions of any notation program. In my case, those require extra steps and slow down the work process. Any process that requires two hands is useless to me and anyone in my situation. I'm really not interested in exploring them.

True, all of this is my opinion but all the chatter and rebuttals and explaining why I am wrong will not make me like MuseScore when I have rejected it for such basic reasons. I am not interested in a free notation program, only in tools that I can use.

If MuseScore adds a basic rests palate, I will be interested in looking at it again, both for my own use and as something I can recommend for those who can use a program that does not have real time note entry (the deal killer for most keyboard players). Till then I am done with this subject.

[ZackTheCardshark]

But how is a rest different from a note? I've been told by more than one conductor that a rest is not a pause, it's simply a note of silence. Thus, having chosen a duration from the toolbar (which is not a note palette), you can enter the note as an A, B, C, D, E, F, G, or none of the above—0—for a rest. It would be useless clutter to have a second row of icons featuring rests, as it would be to have another toolbar with note icons with the stems down instead of up.

But let's take this further. If MuseScore is lacking a basic rests palette, then why are you not concerned that MuseScore is lacking a massive stack of similar basic palettes? It turns out that, most unfortunately, MuseScore does not feature a separate set of buttons for each duration of each different pitch on the staff, either. Without those, MuseScore is useless! The user is expected to choose from a single row of generic duration buttons, and the Handbook does not clearly explain how based on these duration selectors the user can actually produce distinctly different notes on the staff.*

Sadly, the developers are unwilling to add this basic feature. Why? Because even if we assume just one clef, no ledger lines, and no accidentals, adding these essential basic note palettes would still require eleven toolbars, one on top of another. Taking into account ledger lines, accidentals, and the multiple different clefs (which would require entirely different note palettes), these would probably take up the entire screen.

On the other hand, I guess it's possible you would actually like that.

On the other other hand, it really seems like the single toolbar works well enough for all the different possible pitches, doesn't it?

And for rests.


But, again, in my case, working one-handed with my non-dominant hand, it's still faster for me to type CDEFG than it is to carefully position the mouse and click… C … D … E … E (no that was supposed to be an F, delete and try again) … . And that's nothing to do with MuseScore. I just thought I might be able to make things easier for you using your current preferred software. Never mind.


*Actually, it does explain how to make different pitches on the staff perfectly clearly, as it does rests. If I pretend I've never used MuseScore before, reading and following exactly https://musescore.org/en/handbook/note-input is perfectly clear.

[stubbsonic]

I'll need to spend more time, but my first impression of MuseScore 2.01 was pretty positive. I was tipped off by this thread about how to do rests, so that part didn't get me stuck. I also found the tuplet function to be pretty speedy as well. I was able to get nested tuplets without much effort-- playing them is another matter.

As for realtime entry, I can't imagine wanting to do any sequencing in ANY notation program. I'd always rather edit everything in DP and import a finished piece into whatever notation program I'm working with. Then do any corrections and alterations to make line breaks and page breaks work well.

The ability to alter note/measure spacing on a dynamic (read: manual) basis is pretty critical for making a nice readable score. I'll have to crack the manual to figure that out.

[bayswater]

I agree. This does a few things the score editors in DP and Logic won't, and it's free. Next time someone sends me a MIDI file and asks for a score back, I'll dig in deeper.

[mikehalloran]

I agree. This does a few things the score editors in DP and Logic won't, and it's free. Next time someone sends me a MIDI file and asks for a score back, I'll dig in deeper.

If Logic or DP 9, even easier if they export as MusicXML.

Encore imports MIDI cleaner than Finale or MuseScore. The easiest way for me to import MIDI into Finale is to a) import into Encore b) Export as MusicXML c) import into Finale.

I suppose I could use Logic Pro in the middle but I can get it done using Encore in less time than it takes Logic to load.

[bayswater]

Muse transfers with Logic OK via XML, although it's a one way street with Logic. We'll see if it works with DP 9, one way, or the other, or both. And .. where is DP 9 anyway?