We are conducting a survey to learn more about how you use MuseScore. It takes 5 min to complete: http://goo.gl/bexlI
If you have some time left, here is the very first MuseScore newsletter: http://eepurl.com/vyS7X In case you like to receive the next newsletters, sign up here.
Don't hesitate to share the survey and newsletter. Any feedback is very welcome. Thank you!
Last month we conducted the first MuseScore community survey. We received 722 complete submissions which are much more than expected. So thanks to those who participated! If you didn’t have a chance to add your voice, no worries, we plan to run more surveys in the future to follow up on how MuseScore is doing. That being said, what did we learn?
Wow! You like the MuseScore a lot :) 72% of the participants to the survey gave MuseScore a score of 8 or more. We can deduct from it that the software is meeting most of your expectations. But we don’t want to stop there and aim even higher. So let’s have a look at the details and find out where we can improve on.
Ease of Use
The MuseScore software is overall considered to be easy to use. That’s quite an accomplishment given that designing a simple workflow for a complex task such as making sheet music is very challenging.
Print Quality
You are quite satisfied with the print quality of MuseScore which can be attributed to the combination of the quality musical font, the engraving rules built into MuseScore and more.
Software Stability
The stability of MuseScore seems to meet your expectations. It is a good sign of the effectiveness of the MuseScore contributor and developer community in reporting bugs and getting those fixed.
Documentation
The documentation needs more attention. There is a learning curve to MuseScore so guiding our first time users to understand MuseScore’s workflow should be our mission. Thus we have a plan. A reference handbook will be created of MuseScore 2.0, available to everyone to dive into and learn about the internals of MuseScore. If you ever thought of writing a guide for MuseScore like Katie Wardrobe has done with her Essential Beginner’s Guide, this reference handbook will greatly lower your investment to get to know all about MuseScore. So we want to support anyone who has ambition to write books about MuseScore, even when it’s a book for purchase.
Audio Quality
Playback quality in MuseScore is ok but a lot of the respondents were somewhat disappointed. This is not a surprise as due to limited developer resources, MuseScore’s mantra has always been notation first, playback after. But this doesn’t mean that we are neglecting playback. As a testimony of that, listen to the sound of MuseScore 2.0.
Support & Forums
A lot of people answered ‘not applicable’ for the support, helpdesk, forums and community. Perhaps this means that they didn’t find their way yet to the MuseScore forums, or perhaps they simply don’t need support. In any case, we plan to improve the musescore.org website for the next MuseScore release and lower the barrier to ask for help.
How likely are you to recommend the MuseScore software to a friend or a colleague?
Based on yours answers, we were able to calculate the word-of-mouth level of MuseScore, or in marketing terms the Net Promoter Score: it is a stunning 68!
It means that the net percentage of people claiming they would recommend MuseScore as music notation software is 68%. It was calculated as the difference between 74% (lovers answering 9 or 10) and 6% (detractors answering 6 or lower) following to the methodology used with this NPS approach.
Next year we'll do a survey again and share the results. Hopefully with even more submissions and more insight!
Almost three years ago, I shared my thoughts with you on The State of MuseScore. With that post lasconic, werner and myself introduced the creation of musescore.com, a sister website to musescore.org. While musescore.org was meant to facilitate collaboration between MuseScore users and developers, musescore.com served the purpose to easily share your sheet music on the web.
Even though musescore.com is a much younger site, it quickly surpassed musescore.org in terms of user accounts and traffic. For most of our new users today, MuseScore is a sheet music sharing community but many don't know about the notation software. It also happens the other way around of course, where users only knew about the software. From a communication point of view, MuseScore clearly missed the opportunity to explain that it is both: notation software and a sheet music sharing site.
On top of this, both websites had their own separate user registration and login flow. This created a confusing barrier for MuseScore users to really get engaged and become a contributing member.
To tackle both the communication and the log in issue at once, we are introducing changes to both sites. Both will share the same site header form now on, so they nicely cross link to each other. Also the login system will be unified, by phasing out the standalone log in system on musescore.org. Instead, you will be logging in now with one username and one password. As an extra, it's now also possible to login with your Facebook account. Becoming a MuseScore member takes literally just a couple of clicks.
1. In case you have an account already on musescore.com and you use it to log in on musescore.org, nothing will change for you.
2. In case you have a separate account on both musescore.com and musescore.org, then those will automatically be linked with each other when you use the same email addresses on both sites. So no worries for you. In case you use different email addresses for both sites, please change the email address on musescore.com. Once done, your two accounts will be linked on the next login.
3. In case you don't have an account yet on musescore.com, while you did already have one on musescore.org, then create a new account using the email address you used before to register on musescore.org.
If you find yourself stuck with the log in process or the site is reporting some error, please contact me and explain with which username you don't manage log in with on musescore.org.
Thanks for sticking with us during this period of transition. We understand this may cause some confusion but on the long term this will help the MuseScore community to grow even faster.
This past week marked the end of Google Summer of Code 2013. Google announced over a thousand successful projects. It was the first year that MuseScore was selected and it turned out to be successful.
Andrey Tokarev, mentored by David Bolton did a very nice job. The import of MIDI files in the future MuseScore 2.0 will be hugely improved over version 1.3. To read all about it, visit Andrey's page in the developer handbook. Andrey also documented the new MIDI import interface in the user handbook.
Kyle Messner had the ambitious goal to port the core of MuseScore to Javascript using Emscripten. We knew it was a tough job, and Kyle did incredibly well. He doesn't have yet a way to display a score in the browser but he managed to parse a MuseScore file and extract some metadata. All in a browser! Read Kyle's wrap up report about his project.
MuseScore was awarded with only two slots from Google, so we had to disappoint many of the students who requested to code on MuseScore during the summer. However one student didn't take a no for an answer, and decide to still spend his summertime on MuseScore. Manan Dang, a student from India implement continiuous translation for MuseScore. Read about the outcome of his project
All projects were very different, one very practical, the other very experimental and the last one lowering the adoption barrier. However it was a runaway success. All students passed big time. Good job guys and thank you! Thanks to David Bolton and Thomas Bonte for helping out mentoring and dealing with the administration.
My personal hope is that Kyle, Andrey and Manan will stick around. From our discussion on IRC, Kyle is really eager to have some notes displayed in the browser and Andrey wants to make the MIDI import event better by detecting voices and keep the MIDI timing in the score. Manan had a larger vision to create a full fledged resource manager in MuseScore. But whatever they decide to do in the future, I wish them all the best with their professional careers.
Thomas Bonte and I will represent MuseScore at the Google Summer of Code Mentor Summit on October 19th and 20th and we are eager to share our experience with other open source organisations. We will be in the San Francisco Bay Area during a week between Oct. 16th and Oct. 24th, let us know if you want to meet.
Google Summer of Code is a great program and I hope MuseScore will be able to be a part of it next year. Thanks Google!
MuseScore is part again of Google Summer of Code 2014 (GSoC)! If you are a student and you have aspirations to help improve the open source MuseScore notation software during the summertime, this is an unique opportunity to work together with the MuseScore developers and getting paid for it. Learn all about GSoC and how to apply for it.
If you are considering applying, we have a list of ideas you can choose from. You can also apply with your own idea. Don’t hesitate to contact the potential mentors from the ideas list or contact us via IRC (#musescore on freenode.net), via the developer mailing list or by leaving a comment on this post.
Don’t let you scare off by the knowledge prerequisites; you don’t need to be an expert, and there is some time for learning within the GSoC period. However, familiarity with Qt/C++ and interest in music and music notation will be helpful. If you are still doubting, read Am I good Enough?
The submission deadline for students who wanted to participate in Google Summer of Code 2014 was today on March 21st. In total, we got 35 proposals! In the past 3 weeks, we got in contact with over 20+ students on IRC and on the developer mailing list. Last year, there were 21 proposals
Here is the number of new proposals per day. As expected, this year again it went a bit crazy at the end of the period!
This year we didn't get spam. For what I read so far, the quality of the proposals is unequal, but most of them are "valid". 33 students submitted proposals.
Proposals are coming from all over the world, Europe, North and South America, Asia.
Now, we will review and rank the proposals, choose the students and assign mentors, and ask slots to Google. We will know how many slots we will receive on Wednesday, April 9, 2014. Google will announce the list of selected students on Monday, April 21, 2014.
The most basic feature of a music notation program is note layout and rendering. In MuseScore, layout of notes - including chords, augmentation dots, ties, and accidentals - has not changed appreciably for years. But while MuseScore has always done a good job in the simple cases, there are a number of not uncommon situations where MuseScore made surprisingly poor decisions. This requires the user to adjust things manually - assuming he can even figure out what the correct layout is and how to do the necessary adjustments. For even moderately complex scores (especially piano or guitar music), this could be a time-consuming and error-prone process.
For MuseScore 2.0, the basic layout algorithms have been overhauled over the past few weeks to greatly reduce if not all but eliminate the need for manual adjustment of notes, chords, dots, ties, or accidentals. We used Elaine Gould's "Behind Bars" as our primary reference for what correct layout should look like, although we also consulted other references and published scores.
You can check out the results in any recent nightly build (for testing purposes only; still not ready for "real" use). For scores created in 1.3 or earlier 2.0 builds, you may need to first remove any manual adjustments you had already applied.
Some of the specific improvements are shown below. Note again that in most simple cases, MuseScore already did a good job, but the examples included here are not especially rare or unusual, either.
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Regarding this point specifically, we also owe a debt to Daniel Spreadbury of Steinberg - a company in the process of developing their own notation program - for posting an article on accidental stacking and a comparison between a number of different programs. This came out right at the time we were looking at this ourselves, and it led us to a number of further refinements. You can see his article here, his comparison here (MuseScore 1.3 is "Product E"), and the results obtained by MuseScore 2.0 here.
This one has actually been in place for a long time, but seems worth mentioning here.
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After: 
Finally, here for your consideration is a piano score that was created with no manual adjustments whatsoever. In 1.3, there are over 20 separate sets of manual adjustments that would have been needed to render this score correctly, but with the current 2.0 builds, it is practically perfect right out of the box:
By way of comparison, the 1.3 version is here. See if you can spot all of the places where manual adjustment would have been needed to correct this :-)
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
| Mystic Reverie unadjusted.png | 81.87 KB |
The list of students selected for Google Summer of Code 2014 has been announced by Google. Among the 1307 students selected, 5 of them will be working on MuseScore this summer!
Now the community bonding period officially starts. Students will get to know their mentors and prepare for the program by reading documentation, hanging out in the IRC channel (#musescore on freenode.net), and familiarizing themselves with MuseScore. They will also introduce themselves to the community on the forum or on the developer mailing list.
For more information on the work undertaken by these students for MuseScore, see our dedicated page.
The selected students and their projects are:
John Pirie (jpirie) will be enhancing MuseScore’s support for Guitar Pro files. Guitar Pro is a very popular program for creating guitar scores (including tablature), and there are many scores available online in this format. John will be extending MuseScore to support a wider range of Guitar Pro files, including ones created with the latest version of Guitar Pro. His mentor will be Maurizio Gavioli (Miwarre).
Ruchit Agrawal (shredpub) will make MuseScore properly swing. He plans to implement configurable swing markings with effect on the playback, allowing you to switch between straight and swing eighth notes, control the degree of swing, and even have different swing settings for different instruments. He will be mentored by Marc Sabatella.
Andrei Tuicu will make MuseScore more accessible to visually impaired and blind people but also improve usability for the average MuseScore user. Dialog boxes, palettes, and other controls will be made fully accessible by keyboard, and feedback will be provided by screenreader for blind users. He will be mentored by Marc Sabatella.
Bartłomiej Lewandowski will improve MuseScore selection and copy paste capabilities. You want to copy only one voice to a new staff, or copy notes with dynamics but without lyrics, Bartłomiej will make it happen. His mentor will be Nicolas Froment (lasconic).
Maxim Grishin (igevorse) will make MuseScore work with Jack MIDI. It might sound cryptic but it will make it easier to use MuseScore with VSTi or to score for movies, by allowing MuseScore to control the playback of other programs. He will be mentored by Nicolas Froment (lasconic).
The MuseScore team is excited to announce the first Beta release of MuseScore 2.0! This is your opportunity to try out the new features, see if your "favorite" bugs have been fixed, and provide feedback that we can use to make sure the final MuseScore 2.0 release is as stable as the well-established 1.X series of releases have proven to be. This first Beta release is our way of saying we think we're done adding features for 2.0 and everything basically seems to work – so we invite you to help us test it further. You can keep your existing MuseScore 1.3 (or earlier) installation with no fear of them interfering with each other.
If you do find bugs in MuseScore 2.0 Beta 1, please report them via the issue tracker. You can also discuss your experiences with MuseScore 2.0 Beta 1 on the Technology Preview forum. Read on to learn what's new.
MuseScore 2.0 will represent the culmination of the past four years of development effort, beginning even before the release of MuseScore 1.0 in 2011. We knew that implementing all of the new features that we were planning for the next major release was such a big undertaking that it would take a long time to get right, so we kept this work separate from that of the 1.0, 1.1. 1.2, and 1.3 releases. While the 1.X releases introduced just incremental changes over the past four years, we think you will be "wowed" by all that is new with MuseScore 2.0.
Here are some of the major changes you will find in MuseScore 2.0 Beta 1:
With such a long list of new features, you may be wondering if you will still be able to find your way around. You may also be wondering about compatibility.
The good news is, most things in MuseScore 2.0 actually look and work about the same as always - just better. The new features never get in your way but are there to make life easier, and many happen completely automatically. For example, the layout and playback improvements will take effect even when opening a score created with previous versions of MuseScore. You can take advantage of linked parts, flexible chord symbols, dynamic text styles without your needing to do anything differently than you are accustomed to. And completely new features like continuous view, tablature, and fret diagrams are designed to be as intuitive as possible.
As suggested above, scores created in 1.3 or earlier releases should load into MuseScore 2.0 Beta 1 with no problems. In most cases they will look the same or better due to the layout improvements. Due to the magnitude of the changes under the hood, in a few cases you might need to revisit some manual adjustments you had made previously. Scores created in MuseScore 2.0 Beta 1 should open with no problems whatsoever in the final release, although to be safe you may wish to also export any scores you care about as MusicXML before installing the final release.
The one compatibility issue to keep in mind is this: scores created in MuseScore 2.0 (Beta or final release) will not open in earlier versions. This is unavoidable when making such major changes. However, you can still export MuseScore 2.0 files as MusicXML and import into 1.3 that way, thus preserving most of your work should you see the need to revert.
There is no ETA set for the final MuseScore 2.0 release. If you would like to get notified when it will be available for download, subscribe on the MuseScore newsletter, or follow MuseScore on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ or LinkedIn.
The MuseScore team's commitment to open source software development remains as strong as ever. The MuseScore music notation software remains completely free - free as in free beer, free as in free speech. And with the MuseScore 2.0 release, MuseScore is easily the most powerful free and open source music notation program that has ever existed, doing almost everything the expensive proprietary commercial programs do. Over 300 developers, translators, designers, and testers – users just like you – worked to make this possible, and we continue to welcome new contributors.
You can financially support the open source development of MuseScore via our donation campaign. Having said this, the best support you can give to MuseScore is by recommending it to your friends and by spreading the word. Thank you for your support!
To wrap up this GSoC season, Google traditionally invites 2 mentors per project for a Google Summer of Code Summit in Mountain View. This year, it was the 10th anniversary so it was special. Google invited mentors and students, even organising a lottery to get more people in. The event was not taking place at the Google Headquarters in Mountain View but at the Marriott San José, spanning over 3 days. The reunion schedule was packed.
I attended the event and was looking forward meeting up with Marc Sabatella for the very first time "in real life". Marc and I have been working together online for 4 years now and in the past 2-3 years we have been communicating almost daily on #musescore IRC.
We arrived almost at the same time at the hotel and a couple minutes later, John Pirie joined us. John was one of the 5 GSoC students working on MuseScore this year. He worked on the Guitar Pro import feature. He won the lottery and I was not sure he could make it but it was a great surprise to meet him.
The first day of the reunion was all about having fun and talk with other open source project. For the 10th anniversary, Google did things well. They rented an attraction park just for us, so we discussed about MuseScore and open source development while riding roller coasters during the morning.
We spent the afternoon discussing future development, how to attract more developers etc. In the evening we attended a dressed event at the San José innovation museum listening to great speakers such as Peter Norvig or Linus Torvald. I learnt that next to git and the linux kernel, Linus is also the author of a Qt software for dive logs: SubSurface. Unfortunately, Marc had to leave after this party to play and conduct in his hometown on Saturday. So he was not around for the Saturday night jam session but John and I did our best to rock the place :)
Saturday and Sunday were reserved for unconferences about GSoC, open source software and programming at large. Topics were ranging from accessibility in open source and biology, or from crowdsourcing to the Go language. One of the best I attended was about "Making your open source project approachable". The discussion was led by Angie "webchick" Byron from the Drupal project. If you don't know Drupal, it's an awesome CMS powering awesome websites like MuseScore.org, MuseScore.com, or WhiteHouse.gov.
Drupal, being a software for developers by developers, is taking several actions to increase the number of contributors to the core of the software. Some of these actions could be an inspiration for MuseScore, even if the context is different. The outcome of the discussion with Angie is available online.
Another interesting talk, lead by Robert Kaiser from Mozilla, about crash report collection and analysis. Firefox is using Google Breakpad across all their supported platforms to collect crashlogs. The resulting crashes are sent to a Socorro instance. Socorro is developed by Mozilla for this purpose and it's open source. I would love to have this kind of tool for MuseScore.
The reunion was a blast. I enjoyed meeting Marc and John, even if it was just for day with the 3 of us. I hope we will meet again to work together IRL. The GSoC summits are the perfect place to meet and learn from other open source projects. Google has already launched GSoC 2015, let's make sure that MuseScore will be part of it! I just opened a GSoC Ideas 2015 page, feel free to contribute.
Just in time for Christmas, we are happy to present to you MuseScore 2.0 Beta 2. This beta release includes hundreds of bug fixes and other improvements made as a result of feedback from users of the Beta 1 release and subsequently nightly builds. There are even a few new features that have been added during these last few months. See below for more information on what’s changed.
The official release of MuseScore 2.0 is still yet to come, but we would like you to try out this Beta 2 release to help us find whatever problems may still remain. Please report your findings in the Technology Preview forum on musescore.org, or, if you are sure you have found a bug, in the Issue Tracker.
Update Dec 23, 4:39pm: The beta2 packages above have been reissued fixing a few critical bugs.
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In addition to the many new features introduced in the Beta 1 release, two significant new features are added. First we are introducing the Start Center. This startup window will initially invite you to create a new score, guiding you to the revamped score wizard featuring new visualized templates. Next time you startup MuseScore, the Start Center will list your most recent works. Also shown is a community section where you can search for scores and find each day a MuseScore user put in the spotlight.
Another new feature is the Edit → Tools menu, which contains a number of useful functions like explode/implode, slash notation, add/remove line breaks, and automatic rehearsal mark sequencing.
There are a few other improvements as well, such as new options for more control over chord symbols, some enhancements to automatic fingering layout, and refinements to palette customization. But most of all, tons of bug fixes!
This beta release will hopefully be the last one before the official release of MuseScore 2.0. In the coming weeks we will keep on fixing bugs. As always, your bug reports are very welcome in our forum or the issue tracker.
To let everyone enjoy the final MuseScore 2.0 release, we are calling upon everybody to help translate the software. Head over to the Transifex online translation service and help us to get your language up to 100%. In case of doubt, you are welcome to discuss in the translation forum.
We have a first draft available of the 2.0 Handbook so you can learn about all the great new features. In case you spot a mistake or you believe something is missing, please leave a comment on the handbook page so the editors can take note and improve the handbook.
If you would like to support our efforts toward the final release of MuseScore 2.0, consider making a donation. We are still short on reaching our donation goal for 2014. Any support on this is very welcome!
We are calling up everyone to help us translate the coming release of MuseScore 2.0 in your own language. Currently 2.0 is being translated in 53 languages but if your language is missing, please leave a comment so we can add it.
Step 1: Use MuseScore 2.0 Beta 2 or if you are tech savvy, run the latest nightly build.
Step 2: Register and login on Transifex, select your language in the MuseScore project, click on the Join team button and start translating one of the two resources (MuseScore or Instruments).
Step 3: To test your work, go to the menu Help > Resource Manager in MuseScore and update your language. Don't forget to restart MuseScore after you updated your language!
For a more detailed overview, please check the video below. If you have questions, don't hesitate to leave a comment.
With all the blocking issues being addressed and the plethora of other bugs fixed since beta 2, we have now set a release date for MuseScore 2.0!
* March 12th 13th: 2.0 Release Candidate (RC) for Windows and Mac
* March 24th: Final MuseScore 2.0 release for all platforms
So what will happen between now and the release date:
* Translating the MuseScore interface
* Reviewing and improving the 2.0 handbook
* Create a press release and prepare for media buzz
* Also, you will be able to upload 2.0 files on your account at
* We continue to fix more bugs until the RC
* After the RC, only critical issues will be fixed. Other code contributions will not be accepted during this period.
If you have any questions about the release schedule, feel free to answer to this post or to ping me on IRC #musescore on freenode.net.
From our first MuseScore users survey back in 2013, we learnt that the number one request was more and better documentation. In the meantime, as we were packing great new features into MuseScore 2.0, the need for good documentation would become even more necessary. So with the 2.0 release nearing, let's check what the state is of the documentation and what we can still do in the weeks to come.
First there is the 2.0 handbook which is an ongoing community collaboration effort. It is already far more extensive than the original 1.x handbook. What is currently missing is a downloadable PDF version of the handbook. This PDF file will be made available around the time of the Release Candidate (RC) and from that moment on, the PDF will be regularly updated as the handbook is a living document.
Secondly, there will be put more emphasis on writing how-to's. A how-to is different from the handbook as it tries to give a very concise answer on a specific question. There are many questions and answers in the forums which could be turned into an easy readable HowTo. Here is a good example. So frequently asked questions should be easily answered by pointing to a how-to. If it doesn't exist yet, we can/should create one.
Thirdly, there are tutorials which are basically long reads concerning a specific use case. In that list you will see a "lead sheet" tutorial, but we want much more of these, e.g. on using MuseScore to make scores for piano, guitar, choir, orchestra, ....
These three types of documentation (handbook page, how-to, tutorial) will be clustered in help topics. These topics will be linked with the MuseScore software through the contextual help. So when you place your mouse pointer on a measure and press F1, MuseScore will launch the browser and return the measure help topic page. Another way is that you right click on a note head and press help in the menu, you'll get to know everything about notes. We hope this contextual help will turn into a powerful self-support tool.
Finally a word on books. We had a few for MuseScore 1.x, but we definitely lacked a definitive bible to learn about all the little details in MuseScore. This is about to change as Marc Sabatella is currently writing this book. It will go on presale just before the release of MuseScore 2.0. If anyone else wants to write a book on MuseScore, don't hesitate to reach out to me. There is place for many books on the market targeted to specific audiences and use cases.
The Getting Started in 10 Steps video tutorials have served MuseScore very well. Hundreds of thousands of new MuseScore users learnt to use the software through these videos. There are two initiatives going on to create a new video series for 2.x: Churchorganist and George Hess. As the creation of these videos require the 2.0 software to be finished, this work will only get started as soon as the RC is out.
Another visual solution is to make very short screencasts which can assist written documentation. I personally use a free tool named Licecap. Here is an example. I see these screencasts in particular handy for how-to's.
At this stage of the development of 2.0, I'm very interested to brainstorm about more ideas which can lower the barrier to help first time users to get started with MuseScore, as well as turning existing users into MuseScore experts.
One of the ideas is to create a search facility in the MuseScore software which visually shows you what you are looking for. For instance, if you are looking to add a fermata but you don't know it listed under the Articulation & Ornaments palette, MuseScore would expand that palette for you and show with a pointer where you can find the fermata.
Another idea is to make worksheets giving users easy tasks to solve together with the instructions. This way first time users can learn about common tasks like how to add notes in multiple voices, how to input slurs or ties and more.
If you have more ideas on how you want to improve the documentation for 2.0, please don't hesitate to leave a comment.
Today, we are announcing the release of the MuseScore 2.0 "Release Candidate". A release candidate means that we have done everything we plan to do for the 2.0 release, but we are welcoming one final round of testing to be sure we have not forgotten anything. Assuming all goes well, there will be a final official release of MuseScore 2.0 on March 24 that will be identical to this release candidate except for updated translations (see below). At that point, you can expect another announcement with full details on everything you need to know about MuseScore 2.0.
So far, we have had two highly successful beta releases with tens of thousands of downloads and lots of great feedback. Hundreds of bugs have been fixed, including approximately 200 just since the last beta in December. For more information on the two beta releases and what new features were added, see http://musescore.org/en/node/30866 and http://musescore.org/en/node/42051. Our thanks to everyone who participated and helped us identify ways to improve MuseScore!
If you find issues in this release candidate, we encourage you to post about them to our support forum at http://musescore.org/en/forum/687. If you are sure you have found a bug and that it has not been reported already, you may post directly to the issue tracker at http://musescore.org/en/project/issues. That is also where you can check to see if an issue has already been reported.
As of this release candidate, MuseScore 2.0 has been fully translated into 10 different languages (in addition to the default, US English), with another 7 more than 80% translated and another 6 more than 50% translated. In all, there are 54 translations underway. We can still use your help completing as many of these translations as possible. If you would like to participate in the translation effort, you can get started by visiting https://www.transifex.com/projects/p/musescore/.
Here is a list of the languages that have been or are being translated so far:
| Status | Language |
|---|---|
| 100% | Czech, Danish, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Polish, Russian, Spanish, Romanian |
| +90% | Dutch, Galician |
| +80% | Portuguese (Brazil), Norwegian Bokmål, Catalan (Valencian), Ukrainian |
| +50% | Swedish, Greek, Chinese (China), Hungarian, Catalan, Finnish |
| Under 50% | Portuguese, Vietnamese, Slovak, Hebrew, Serbian, Slovenian, Bulgarian, Persian, Lithuanian, Basque, Asturian, Croatian, Faroese, Arabic, Estonian, Thai, Turkish, Korean, Belarusian, Georgian, Indonesian, Afrikaans, Hindi, Mongolian, Uzbek, Latvian, Norwegian Nynorsk |
In addition to the bug fixes and updated translations, this release candidate comes with one important new feature - upload to musescore.com is now supported. So you can now share you scores online, just as was possible with MuseScore 1.3. In addition, when uploading a new version of a score you had uploaded previously, MuseScore will now ask if you want to update your existing online score or upload it as a new score. Support for MuseScore 2.0 scores in the mobile apps (Android, iOS) is still in the works.
Today we are thrilled to announce the availability of the official MuseScore 2.0 release! This release represents the culmination of over four years of development, including technical contributions from over 400 people and feedback from hundreds more users to make this the best free and open source notation program in the world.
MuseScore 2.0 represents a tremendous leap forward in almost every possible aspect over the previous release, MuseScore 1.3. For a more complete listing of the new features, see What's New in MuseScore 2 and the release notes. Some of the highlights include:
MuseScore 2.0 allows you to save your scores directly to MuseScore.com with an improved upload facility. You can view and play your MuseScore 2.0 scores using our mobile apps. The Android apps support MuseScore 2.0 format already. Support in the iOS apps will be coming very soon.
With such a long list of new features, you may be wondering if you will still be able to find your way around. The good news is, most things in MuseScore 2.0 actually look and work about the same as always - just better. Scores created in 1.3 or earlier releases should load into MuseScore 2.0 with no problems. In most cases they will look the same or better due to the layout improvements. Due to the magnitude of the changes under the hood, in a few cases you might need to revisit some manual adjustments you had made previously. The one thing to keep in mind: scores created with or saved from MuseScore 2.0 will not open in earlier versions. This is unavoidable when making such major changes. If you want to edit a score from MuseScore 2.0 with an earlier version of MuseScore, you will have to export to MusicXML.
Stay updated on all the MuseScore news via the newsletter, Facebook, Twitter and Google+. If you would like to support MuseScore, you can always make a donation so we can grow the server that hosts the musescore.org site along with the MuseScore community. But above all, you can help MuseScore most by spreading the word and sharing MuseScore with your friends and family!
Last month we conducted the first MuseScore community survey. We received 722 complete submissions which are much more than expected. So thanks to those who participated! If you didn’t have a chance to add your voice, no worries, we plan to run more surveys in the future to follow up on how MuseScore is doing. That being said, what did we learn?
Wow! You like the MuseScore a lot :) 72% of the participants to the survey gave MuseScore a score of 8 or more. We can deduct from it that the software is meeting most of your expectations. But we don’t want to stop there and aim even higher. So let’s have a look at the details and find out where we can improve on.
Ease of Use
The MuseScore software is overall considered to be easy to use. That’s quite an accomplishment given that designing a simple workflow for a complex task such as making sheet music is very challenging.
Print Quality
You are quite satisfied with the print quality of MuseScore which can be attributed to the combination of the quality musical font, the engraving rules built into MuseScore and more.
Software Stability
The stability of MuseScore seems to meet your expectations. It is a good sign of the effectiveness of the MuseScore contributor and developer community in reporting bugs and getting those fixed.
Documentation
The documentation needs more attention. There is a learning curve to MuseScore so guiding our first time users to understand MuseScore’s workflow should be our mission. Thus we have a plan. A reference handbook will be created of MuseScore 2.0, available to everyone to dive into and learn about the internals of MuseScore. If you ever thought of writing a guide for MuseScore like Katie Wardrobe has done with her Essential Beginner’s Guide, this reference handbook will greatly lower your investment to get to know all about MuseScore. So we want to support anyone who has ambition to write books about MuseScore, even when it’s a book for purchase.
Audio Quality
Playback quality in MuseScore is ok but a lot of the respondents were somewhat disappointed. This is not a surprise as due to limited developer resources, MuseScore’s mantra has always been notation first, playback after. But this doesn’t mean that we are neglecting playback. As a testimony of that, listen to the sound of MuseScore 2.0.
Support & Forums
A lot of people answered ‘not applicable’ for the support, helpdesk, forums and community. Perhaps this means that they didn’t find their way yet to the MuseScore forums, or perhaps they simply don’t need support. In any case, we plan to improve the musescore.org website for the next MuseScore release and lower the barrier to ask for help.
How likely are you to recommend the MuseScore software to a friend or a colleague?
Based on yours answers, we were able to calculate the word-of-mouth level of MuseScore, or in marketing terms the Net Promoter Score: it is a stunning 68!
It means that the net percentage of people claiming they would recommend MuseScore as music notation software is 68%. It was calculated as the difference between 74% (lovers answering 9 or 10) and 6% (detractors answering 6 or lower) following to the methodology used with this NPS approach.
Next year we'll do a survey again and share the results. Hopefully with even more submissions and more insight!
Almost three years ago, I shared my thoughts with you on The State of MuseScore. With that post lasconic, werner and myself introduced the creation of musescore.com, a sister website to musescore.org. While musescore.org was meant to facilitate collaboration between MuseScore users and developers, musescore.com served the purpose to easily share your sheet music on the web.
Even though musescore.com is a much younger site, it quickly surpassed musescore.org in terms of user accounts and traffic. For most of our new users today, MuseScore is a sheet music sharing community but many don't know about the notation software. It also happens the other way around of course, where users only knew about the software. From a communication point of view, MuseScore clearly missed the opportunity to explain that it is both: notation software and a sheet music sharing site.
On top of this, both websites had their own separate user registration and login flow. This created a confusing barrier for MuseScore users to really get engaged and become a contributing member.
To tackle both the communication and the log in issue at once, we are introducing changes to both sites. Both will share the same site header form now on, so they nicely cross link to each other. Also the login system will be unified, by phasing out the standalone log in system on musescore.org. Instead, you will be logging in now with one username and one password. As an extra, it's now also possible to login with your Facebook account. Becoming a MuseScore member takes literally just a couple of clicks.
1. In case you have an account already on musescore.com and you use it to log in on musescore.org, nothing will change for you.
2. In case you have a separate account on both musescore.com and musescore.org, then those will automatically be linked with each other when you use the same email addresses on both sites. So no worries for you. In case you use different email addresses for both sites, please change the email address on musescore.com. Once done, your two accounts will be linked on the next login.
3. In case you don't have an account yet on musescore.com, while you did already have one on musescore.org, then create a new account using the email address you used before to register on musescore.org.
If you find yourself stuck with the log in process or the site is reporting some error, please contact me and explain with which username you don't manage log in with on musescore.org.
Thanks for sticking with us during this period of transition. We understand this may cause some confusion but on the long term this will help the MuseScore community to grow even faster.
This past week marked the end of Google Summer of Code 2013. Google announced over a thousand successful projects. It was the first year that MuseScore was selected and it turned out to be successful.
Andrey Tokarev, mentored by David Bolton did a very nice job. The import of MIDI files in the future MuseScore 2.0 will be hugely improved over version 1.3. To read all about it, visit Andrey's page in the developer handbook. Andrey also documented the new MIDI import interface in the user handbook.
Kyle Messner had the ambitious goal to port the core of MuseScore to Javascript using Emscripten. We knew it was a tough job, and Kyle did incredibly well. He doesn't have yet a way to display a score in the browser but he managed to parse a MuseScore file and extract some metadata. All in a browser! Read Kyle's wrap up report about his project.
MuseScore was awarded with only two slots from Google, so we had to disappoint many of the students who requested to code on MuseScore during the summer. However one student didn't take a no for an answer, and decide to still spend his summertime on MuseScore. Manan Dang, a student from India implement continiuous translation for MuseScore. Read about the outcome of his project
All projects were very different, one very practical, the other very experimental and the last one lowering the adoption barrier. However it was a runaway success. All students passed big time. Good job guys and thank you! Thanks to David Bolton and Thomas Bonte for helping out mentoring and dealing with the administration.
My personal hope is that Kyle, Andrey and Manan will stick around. From our discussion on IRC, Kyle is really eager to have some notes displayed in the browser and Andrey wants to make the MIDI import event better by detecting voices and keep the MIDI timing in the score. Manan had a larger vision to create a full fledged resource manager in MuseScore. But whatever they decide to do in the future, I wish them all the best with their professional careers.
Thomas Bonte and I will represent MuseScore at the Google Summer of Code Mentor Summit on October 19th and 20th and we are eager to share our experience with other open source organisations. We will be in the San Francisco Bay Area during a week between Oct. 16th and Oct. 24th, let us know if you want to meet.
Google Summer of Code is a great program and I hope MuseScore will be able to be a part of it next year. Thanks Google!
MuseScore is part again of Google Summer of Code 2014 (GSoC)! If you are a student and you have aspirations to help improve the open source MuseScore notation software during the summertime, this is an unique opportunity to work together with the MuseScore developers and getting paid for it. Learn all about GSoC and how to apply for it.
If you are considering applying, we have a list of ideas you can choose from. You can also apply with your own idea. Don’t hesitate to contact the potential mentors from the ideas list or contact us via IRC (#musescore on freenode.net), via the developer mailing list or by leaving a comment on this post.
Don’t let you scare off by the knowledge prerequisites; you don’t need to be an expert, and there is some time for learning within the GSoC period. However, familiarity with Qt/C++ and interest in music and music notation will be helpful. If you are still doubting, read Am I good Enough?