Why people ARE NOT using MuseScore 4
Вставка
- Опубліковано 18 тра 2024
- MuseScore 4 is extremely popular among younger composers, teachers, and musicians alike. However, this music notation software is not universally used in the professional music composition world. Why is that?
Chapters:
0:00 - Intro
0:22 - Community Perception
0:54 - Previous Updates
1:18 - Publishers
1:54 - Established Programs
2:28 - Equal Program
2:50 - What Can MuseScore 4 do to fix this?
3:42 - Will MuseScore be used widely?
🎵 Hello musical friends! 🎵
🎼If you DON'T use MuseScore, what is preventing you from using it?
🎼If you DO use MuseScore, why do you use it and why? What improvements would you like to see?
🎵 Have a wonderful, musical day! 🎵
I've been using Musescore intermittently for over a year now because I'm too lazy to recover my Finale install from a dying harddrive. It's given me a good excuse to try MS4 with an open mind and force me to learn it. And I must say I'll won't be sticking with it. Without a midi keyboard, note entry is just so painful - if Musescore had Finale's numpad speedy entry tool, I might actually enjoy using it, but without that it's just pure suffering and I loathe the prospect of having to open it to notate something.
@@JHouse4 There is a letter entry tool, but I agree its really not the same as a midi input
Though a former Sibelius user, I migrated to MuseScore about four years ago. My initial motivation was financial in that my Sibelius version was becoming unsupported, along with the fact that the only other band member in my prog band (Advent) that invested in Sibelius left a while back. Though clunky is some regards, I immediately found that MuseScore made it a lot easier to accomplish certain tasks. The generic workflow definitely got easier with the MS4 upgrade, but some features I used stopped working, which was frustrating.
My biggest complaint in MuseScore is that that there is very little flexibility in regard to importing MIDI files (and the inability to easily assign instruments or even number of staves to an imported MIDI track) is the most frustrating piece--and, in my assessment, one of the easiest to fix.
On the bright side, all band members are now using MuseScore (especially easy in this regard because it's free) and it's really helped us work on new music remotely.
I tried musescore 4 but not all the previous versions. I can say it’s great but two things that I thought sucked and still make it not even usable for professional engraving. First is staff styles workflow in finale are so much better and second is that music spacing is the worst thing ever. You cannot use a platform where in NOT SO LARGE ENSEMBLES beats don’t align propperly and the only way I found on my own and in the internet to fix it is by manually mooving the beats, not to mention that a lot of times when uou move a note it links to another staff that’s not aligned properly and moves it too. Finale as old and non user friendly as it is doesn’t have those problems. Not to mention that note input is much more fluent and you can make any score look however you want thanks to users be able to change any parameter available.
I'm still using MuseScore 2. I used to use it part of the time on an offline older laptop with Windows XP on it (as a digital music stand), and MuseScore 3 doesn't run on that so I never bothered to try it.
MuseScore 2 has some quirks, but given the nature of software "upgrades" I have no great faith in them having been addressed, so I've never put in the time to find out. I use it to show sheet music while I'm practising, and just about the only editing I do with it is changing the key, or arranging it for one instrument instead of for a band, by pasting sections into rests.
I tried the iOS version but I found it too limited, even for showing sheet music, which is all that seems to be for.
The key here is that MuseScore is free and open source. The fact that basically anyone who owns a computer made in the last ten or so years can have professional quality composing and engraving software at no cost is a value proposition that is impossible to beat. It might not yet fit the industry's standards, but having a much lower barrier for entry will make its future widespread adoption much more viable, especially if the software keeps improving at this rate. MU is similarly positioned in the music industry as Blender is in the 3D rendering and animation industry
I agree! I love that it is completely free for the users. I am really hoping it continues to improve so it does disrupt the industry in a positive way.
Comparing this software to blender is an excellent parallel. Blender quickly became the main 3D animation software among hobbyists and professionals alike and I foresee a great future for the app
The playback on Musescore has historically been outclassed. Before MS4, it used General MIDI, whose soundfonts weren't very accurate to the instruments they were playing. MS4 introduced MuseSounds, which does sound more realistic, but is also rather unstable. Sometimes its style/dynamic interpretation is inaccurate. The volume balance isn't very good either, as some instruments (mainly brass) are non existent at softer dynamics, whereas others are inappropriately loud. I hope MuseSounds can be refined to correct these issues.
The dynamic imbalance can be seen perfectly with Trombone a3
It is extremely disappointing that they actually crippled the MIDI support in the mixer in version 4 to make it basically unusable, much worse than it was in version 3 and there seems to be no intention to bring at least the version 3 functionality back. I cannot imagine me being the only one who would actually want to hook up Musescore to a MIDI instrument properly and flexibly? This is something that has worked and does not work any more, also not in the new Musescore Studio 4.3 release
For volume wise, you can fix that within the mixer.
The volume changes with every instrument can be fixed easily via the mixer. Reverb can also be tampered with to make everything equal. And panning helps a lot to make it sound more realistic.
@@Pianisimo1875 As a brass player who often composes for brass quintet, I have to disagree with you because all of the brass instruments have a relatively equal forte and fortissimo. It’s not the volume per se, its the distance between dynamics. For instance: at mezzo-forte the horn is playing cuivre(brassy) while the trombone and trumpet are nearly inaudible. If I change the mix so that the horn is lower and the others are higher, then the same dynamic gap would occur at forte.
@@m44p25 The brass instruments we're made that way because of how instruments honestly sound when you're in an orchestra. That's why bassoon and other instruments in the back have less volume than the instruments in the front.
Either way, tampering with the volume helped for me a lot. Also, they updated the instruments and Musescore itself. I'm not seeing that problem that much anymore.
I'm a hobbyist composer and picked up MuseScore back when it was still on version 2; it was the first free software that actually enabled me to put down full almost unlimited notation and hear everything I wrote, which for me is critical because I don't "hear it in my head" as much as a typical composer seems to do. I've stuck with MuseScore 3.2 as 4 will not run on my current computer and all my scores are optimized for its features at any rate with custom instrument definitions and various other "tricks". I also didn't like that they started adding stuff like telemetry into later versions, that doesn't gain me anything personally so I don't want it. It's true it's open source but building it yourself (I'm also a programmer) is a pain.
Musescore is the only notation software I have used, and I am satisfied with version 4.3. I use the Pianoteq VST for playback, without any problems. As a composer, I would never send my score as an mscz file to a publisher, as it can be modified in Musescore. I would only send a PDF file.
I used this back when 3 was the newest and eventually heard they were making 4.
Never really made any scores recently since I don't need to make music right now, but I do use scores other people make. Neat.
i use musescore but i wish it had less bugs and better performance (it's so laggy when multiple parts are opened)
also noteperformer support would be great because the current musesounds are.. pretty bad, i still use the old soundfonts
The performance is why I use MuseScore 3 and still recommend it for all but professionals. It is a lot more performant in every aspect (and not just on the stuff they improved). It's not laggy at all.
I do have version 4 on my system, but I only import files there. I do all my actual notating in MS3.
@@ZipplyZane i'm probably gonna do this for my next project
@@Temulgeh If you do, look into MuseScore Evolution. It's an updated fork of MuseScore 3 with patches. It's a bit annoying to set up, so I don't blame you if you just use MS 3.6 instead.
You use the old soundfonts??? I legitimately can't stand them, and I used them for years. I've scored short films in MS4 and as long as you know the nuances of the system, you can get it to sound pretty good, same as anything else. Sure, as the standard, Noteperformer is what it is, but I also despise the way it sounds. I want to cry (in a bad way) every time I hear noteperformer oboe. IDK, this is just my opinion, not some attempt at convincing anyone--i am just in actual disbelief that some people prefer the old soundfonts or noteperformer over musesounds.
@@andrewfortmusic here are my reasons for using the old soundfont:
- musesounds is glitchy: sometimes it will play notes that were deleted. i'm not sure how to fix this, but even if i learn a fix it will still add more friction
- it will play the rhythms wrong: for slow stuff it's fine, probably a humanization feature, but as soon as i add a bit of fast syncopation it sounds extremely messy. sure i could work around it by having a separate track for playback but. i just want to get my music done
- performance: musescore 4 is already pretty slow on big projects (lots of parts and lots of measures) but add musesounds and it's painful to work with
- musesounds takes a delay before playing but the devs decided that they didn't want you to wait so instead whenever you press play there's this weird fade in. it's annoying because you have to go back one bar every time you want to hear the current bar. minor annoyance but it adds up
- missing sounds: it's very jarring to have a broken midi tuba playing the euphonium while other instruments are fine
- dynamics: the dynamics are very exaggerated (i think the ones when using the soundfont are too close to each other, something in the middle would be good), i don't want that much dynamic range so that i don't tire my ears out by alternating between very quiet and very loud sections
- i can use the soundfont just fine. sure it may be less "realistic" but it's good enough (with some volume tweaking) that i can imagine what it would sound like played live
MuseScore is primarily notation software and I use it as such; I develop the music using a separate DAW. So, for me, an 'at home musician', it's a matter of using the right tool for the task at hand...
For me it's just the playback in ms4 is too buggy; I prefer the fake sounding instruments of ms3 over the strait up wrong notes and dynamics of ms4
also you can't make a piano slide up like a guitar...
Disagreed lol I like (at least mostly) satisfying playback for free. They definitely have the best free soundfonts out there and I don’t think there’s much competition.
I think MuseScore 4 is a solid base. The complete rework of the sound fonts is evident and will need to be improved, but for a free notation software they definitely aren’t bad relative to the super expensive big notation software. If you are a professional its probably worth the money, but for hobbyists imo MS4 is more than you could ask for. That being said some things that need addressing sooner rather than later are the brass dynamics, the strings playing as if everything is bowed on one string(idk how to solve this, it seems like it’d be complex), the ranges of some instruments aren’t as wide as they are in the real world, and there are intonation issues in most of the high registers across the board.
Re: universities. I'm no pro musician, but in the engineering world many commercial software / lab equipment vendors provide very good deals to universities. The deal is that the students will get familiar with the tools and want to use them in later professional projects... For full fat licence fees.
To compete with that, musescore might offer online courseware lifecycle download/submit/return/etc.... on private servers.
No, to compete with that all they have to do is keep doing what they are doing. A free tool that is of high professional quality. Student's are already coming into Universities already familiar with the product. As an Engineering professional you can appreciate that often the software large organizations adopt is the software people are already familiar with. That's why the business world went to using Windows for instance and not Oracle.
I started a university degree this year, and we have to submit work in either MuseScore or Sibelius format, or in PDF. As far as I know, _everyone_ just uses MuseScore, either because it was what they were familiar with already, or because they previously hadn't used notation software at all, and MuseScore is free.
Just waiting to check out the slilding note adjusment window like Dorico has before making the leap.
Musescore 3 is the first musical notation writing software I used, and I don't see myself using anything else.
I use version 4 now
musescore 4 and musesounds are largely unrefined. i also dont like how limited the formatting is. i say this knowing there are probably ways to get the desired outcomes but things like cover pages, performance notes pages, (etc) are not supported or as immediately easy to achieve compared to things like sibelius etc.
another big reason is that everyone uses Sibelius and Finale etc, submitting a score from musescore to someone who will open it in a program that will inevitably cause the score to look terrible makes less sense thae to just start off on those programs in the first place
I use MS 3.6 for Encoding then MS 4 for playback and export. I was used in MS3 navigation
I use MuseScore 3 instead of 4, because I mainly write for piano and version 4 has an annoying bug where some pedal markings will refuse to play no matter what I do.
You’re missing out on too much by doing this I think. I have also experienced that bug and an easy fix is to just rewrite the problem measures somewhere else.
@@50Steaks68 that's not the only reason though. I generally prefer the piano playback of MuseScore 3 over 4.
@@themobiusfunction you can use older soundfonts with musecore 4. The new soundfonts have to be downloaded through muse hub so by default the old ones remain
I'm using it in a jazz context and although musesounds are nice, I think there are really volume issues with wind instruments and bass. And I don't want to be tweaking the mixer all the time.
I use Musescore 3.6 it is the same
I'm using musescore for film scoring and sometimes it's actually awful. Only one niche plugin to add large time signatures that are extremely glitched, no direct possibility to place measure numbers under the full orchestral staff, changes made on parts mess up the full score...
That's just a few examples but yeah, being a film composer, I don't really feel at home when using Musescore.
I was able to make large time signatures without a plugin
I tried it, didn't like it and switched back to Rhapsody (which is now defunct) but use the new MusicTime which has multiple file outputs.
Rhapsody was and still is my favourite, but Allegro and Finale ruined it with their complicated use. I may go back to pen, ink, and paper.
Musescore is awesome, even back when it was notoriously worse than other software, I always recognised it as being pretty good for something that's free. Now, though? I think it's phenomenal. Besides everything you already mentioned, I think there are a few other huge advantages Musescore has to offer: the option for cloud storage (yay computer memory!), their continuous updates with new free VSTs and effects, plus (especially if this element becomes a bit more active) the social media aspect.
I am using it
Awesome! Glad you like using the program! 🎵
Because downloading sheets of music that have been public domain for eons is a pain in the ass.
I don't use MU4 as I'm still using MU 3.6. This is because MU4 has solved only few of the problems I have with MU3.6 while introducing new problems that don't exist in MU3.6. Still I'm looking forward to switch to MU Studio as soon as the program 1. becomes less buggy and less sluggish, 2. deals with all of its significant regressions 3. enhances performance and 4. improves and polishes its UI to not put look over functionality - stuff like unhiding tempo scaling, putting the mixer button down where I think it would belong or have the piano-keyboard not waste half of the screen while still not fitting all of its 88 keys on it without zooming.
I'm not using MuseScore 4 because it requires macOS 11, so it does not work with on my mac with macOS 10.13 High Sierra. MuseScore 3 does, and fulfills all my current needs.
MuseScore 4 supports 10.14/10.15 as well. The MuseHub/Muse Sounds libraries indeed need 11+
@@jt_jeetee Good to know, thank you!
What I find really annoying about MuseScore ist the lack of progress, actually the worsening of proper MIDI-support. What is in MS4 is not even on par with MS3. And there seems to be no intention of changing anything about this.
Did you see today's release of Version 4.3? It does look like they are trying to make it better over time
@@BryanLu0 yes, I had a look and absolutely nothing has changed with regard to MIDI support :/
What has changed I do not care much about: they changed the branding and they changed things with regard to direct playback from within the software.
I would much have preferred if they would have at least brought back the MIDI support in the mixer that was already present in version 3.
@@JohannPetrak For a couple versions now, you can finally choose the instruments in soundfont files. is there a feature you are looking for? It does support VST plugins so in theory you can use an external plugin to do whatever feature you are looking for. There are ones that play soundfont files. Or is this a Jack sort of thing? I do believe the community is working on that one
@@joshuapettus6973 Just compare what you could do with Version 3 in the mixer and what is in version 4: e.g. in version 3 each of the voices in the mixer could get assigned to a different midi out channel, this is not possible in version 4. My impression was, in general, that playing to MIDI devices or receiving from MIDI does not work properly in version 4, always had problems while the same stuff worked in version 3.
So specifically: how can I assign different MIDI out channels to different instruments or voices within an instrument (e.g. piano) in version 4?
@@JohannPetrak Meh, I can see why they left that out. There is MIDI out functionality in the preferences though I don't have a device to output to. What does it do, output all instruments to a single channel? I'd at least expect each instrument to get their own channel even if you can't choose which channel each instrument goes to. These days many people will output to VST3 which is supported on Mac and Windows. That can be set on a per instrument basis or you can send it to the Aux Sends channel to send it all out at once. Surly there is a midi controller VST? EDIT: Look up the Element VST plugin from kushview. That might have what you are looking for
I've been using MuseScore for nearly 10 years now. As I'm approaching the stage of publishing my music, I've become increasingly dissatisfied with MuseScore. From an engraving and formatting standpoint, it just doesn't look good. In order to keep composers with the program, they need to improve the engraving options.
I've heard that people think the new playback sounds in musescore are too dark and thin. Yes they sound much better than the original trash midi but it still doesn't sound as good as other programs
They sound a lot better with reverb, which by default is set to I think 40% in the mixer, but turned off. Once you enable it for each instrument and maybe turn it up a bit, it sounds great.
Right now, MuseScore 4 is just rather slow. And while it sounds great when it works, it often has playback bugs. It even knows it does, as it will use the older soundfonts for some instruments.
They're trying, but MuseScore 4 still feels like a beta. And, when released, it felt like an alpha.
I play around in MuseScore Evolution and then maybe try to load the results into MuseScore 4 occasionally to try playback. If I actually published my scores, I might also use the new layout engine.
Privet friends...
I am power user of 'Encore', 'Finale', 'Sibelius', 'Notion', StaffPad' and 'Dorico Pro'. I tested every Notator available. At some point I started hating Finale. every update costs lots of money but bug hardly got fixed. I started testing MuseScore few years ago and was not really impressed until I downloaded MuseScore 4. FINALLY I found a free Notator that kicks Finale's behind seriously. I also agree with this lady in the video. MuseScore does not bow before Sibelius, which I still use. Dorico is by far ahead of others. I also like idea of MuseScore users having ability to sell their scores online! Even the sound library of MuseScore beats most of competition Notators. Hang on, MuseScore will get it's well deserved respect soon and it's free!
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i use musescore, and i just wish they would actually work on bettering musesounds like they said they would. musesounds is actual garbage, sounding terrible half the time with overexaggerated articulations, ZERO dynamic range outside of "barely audible" and "blowing your eardrums out", and missing half the instruments thatre commonly written for (seriously they added a contrabass flute but no contrabass clarinet or euphonium?? really??).
i pray for the day they actually fix their crap, but im not too hopeful. in the meantime, ill save for a VST thats actually good.
I can't agree that MS4 is equal to Dorico and Sibelius. It's getting there, but it's not there yet.
I think that's fair! A lot of people seem to think it is (but there are reasons why I use Dorico). Depending on the project, they're really close!
@@TheMusicalNotesOfficial
The thing that really leaves me unconvinced are the little optimizations other apps have that MS doesn't. Dorico, for example, lays things out really well automatically while other apps require a lot more of of micromanaging the look of things.
100% that is true. (I love using Dorico and have been using it since early last year, so I completely agree with you.) It is one of the main reasons why I don't use MuseScore, despite it being completely free.
Some individuals might not find that to be as important and are willing to spend the time fixing the optimizations to save the upfront money. (I think the optimizations are wildly important!)
The program is self is not very user-friendly, unnecessary un-intuitive. The ecosystem is annoying. When you want to buy something it is cumbersome. Contact is difficult and frustrating. I'm still on 2 for playing.midi-scores. Had 3 but went back because of user-friendliness. i think when you could get the first 10 scores for free, they'd get a lot of users,