Our last news update is already from a couple of months ago with the maintenance release of MuseScore 1.1. It has been a successful release with more than half a million downloads and counting. Something we are very proud of. Since then some of our attention has shifted to the next major release, MuseScore 2.0, to make it the best release ever. To join this effort, check out the MuseScore nightly builds and report bugs in the issue tracker. Another part of our attention went to something else, something mobile.
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A while back, Werner kicked off the development of MuseScore for mobile devices with a post on the developer mailing list:
"The initial goal would be to display and playback MuseScore scores on mobile devices, so we are not talking about creating sheet music. With iOS devices dominating the mobile market, we will first be looking at iOS and afterwards moving up to Android, Windows Phone 7 and other platforms."
All I want for Christmas
Today, we are proud to show you the first glimpse of a MuseScore Player for iOS. For the occasion, Werner created Christmas app for iPad holding 50 scores he typeset. The app comes with several features: display of the scores, playback, tempo change, font resize with reflow and transpose. There is still some work to do on transpose, but this app proves to be pretty stable and we are very happy with the result. The app is now available in the app store.
We called the app the Ultimate Christmas Songbook, because we would like to see it become the largest collection of public domain Christmas sheet music. So we welcome everyone to contribute songs to the group on MuseScore.com. If you are new to MuseScore.com, here are the instructions to join this cause. Every contributor will get a coupon to download the app for free. One note: only public domain scores will be accepted, so mark your uploaded songs as public domain.
Demo time
Developers
This app is made with open source software which you can find in the MuseScore code repository under the directory libmscore. So developers, if you want to make your own app with this library, feel free to contact us on the developer mailing list, on IRC, or just leave a message via the contact form.
What's next?
This app is made for iPad but Werner and Lasconic are working hard to make it available for iPhone, iPod Touch and Android as well. Here is a screenshot from the MuseScore Player for Android in development.
As soon as the MuseScore Player successfully runs on iOS and Android, we can start the development of a player app, which is connected to your MuseScore.com account. Thus, your sheet music experience will become completely digital: create your scores with MuseScore, upload & share them on MuseScore.com and finally have them with you all the time on your mobile device.
All of this is previewed for the spring of 2012. Also scheduled for next year is the release of MuseScore 2.0 so there is a lot to look forward to. It will be a splendid year. Happy holidays!