[HN Gopher] MuseScore 3.6
___________________________________________________________________
MuseScore 3.6
Author : app4soft
Score : 209 points
Date : 2021-01-17 12:13 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (musescore.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (musescore.org)
| Tokkemon wrote:
| I'm a professional music engraver so I always view these programs
| in a different light than your average musician. MuseScore has
| always been the inferior option based on features and quality of
| output. I'm glad they are actually focusing on engraving
| improvements though, as it is really the core point of a program
| like this, to make the notation accurate and beautiful. Whether
| this new font lives up to the hype we'll see. Dorico's new font
| (Bravura) has certainly seen a lot of usage in the professional
| space, even if Dorico itself is struggling to capture that
| market.
| meibo wrote:
| They've been doing some stellar work, good job.
|
| I hope that they are considering to build a sheet music hosting
| platform as an open alternative to the now "rogue" MuseScore.
| Sorely missed.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| Can you explain what you mean by "the now "rogue" MuseScore" ?
| meibo wrote:
| MuseScore.com, the sheet hosting site tied to the app, has
| been acquired by a bigger, paid sheet hosting site in 2018[1]
| and has recently changed its subscription model, monetizing
| the massive amount of community created content by not
| allowing free downloads anymore.
|
| I'm not in any position to judge them for wanting to make
| more money but it sure feels like a way to kill off your
| userbase.
|
| [1] https://www.scoringnotes.com/news/ultimate-guitar-
| acquires-m...
| mkr-hn wrote:
| This post suggests the company owns the software too:
| https://blog.musescore.com/post/171048786232/ultimate-
| guitar...
|
| >> _" We are also building up the MuseScore development
| team to help the developer community improve MuseScore's
| desktop and mobile products quicker. The improvements we
| work on will continue to be based on the community's
| feedback. For example, among other things, there have been
| numerous requests to improve the functionality of the
| mobile apps and the quality of the soundfont's audio. As a
| result, we have already established a dedicated mobile
| development team and hired a soundfont specialist to focus
| on improving these areas. And in case you're wondering,
| yes, of course the notation editor will continue to be open
| source and free."_
|
| And this appears to grant the company rights to any code
| people contribute in case they decide to close the source
| going forward: https://musescore.org/en/cla
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| AFAIK, that purchase is also what is paying for the core
| developer group of musescore.org to work on the software.
|
| So I'm not sure there's much of a distinction at this
| point.
| enriquto wrote:
| Being a deeply entrenched user of lilypond, I would love if MS
| could read/write lilypond scores natively.
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| I thought lilypond was a somewhat lower level abstraction, like
| the score tool they talk about?
|
| It would definitely be cool to export, but import sounds
| inherently lossy if what I said above is true.
| jcelerier wrote:
| is that problem even solvable ? lilypond's language is turing-
| complete, no ?
| enriquto wrote:
| Hey, dreaming is free! At the very least it could output
| lilypond files that you could tweak by hand.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| lilypond does have MusicXML import/export converters, and
| MusicXML is also supported by MuseScore.
| JasonFruit wrote:
| I don't understand why, as an entrenched user of LilyPond,
| you'd want to use MuseScore either direction. LilyPond has been
| such a perfect tool for me that I can create better-looking
| scores with it faster than anything else; a GUI would just get
| in the way.
| filmor wrote:
| Collaboration would be one reason. I have quite some friends
| that use MuseScore and are orders of magnitude better
| musicians than I am, but I could help them create better
| looking scores and nicer rehearsal tracks if they could just
| export to Lilypond to give me something to start from.
| zaroth wrote:
| They have a very interesting monetization strategy, musescore.org
| vs musescore.com where you pay to access the sheet music library.
|
| Another program I am greatly enjoying is Synthesia particularly
| because I can drop in any MIDI file exported from MuseScore and
| learn to play it there.
|
| Sythesia's keyboard and note tracking is much better than the
| MuseScore app, and it's $8 once to fully unlock which is pricing
| I love.
|
| The other app I've used is Noteflight, which I've used to
| simplify some songs that my daughter really wanted to play, to
| make them easier but still sound mostly right.
| skybrian wrote:
| Musescore.com seems to be a different organization than the
| free software project at musescore.org.
|
| There is a relationship between them, but it's a bit mysterious
| exactly what it is. The boundaries are somewhat blurred. For
| example, there is a search box on musescore.org that goes to
| musescore.com.
|
| It's also not clear whether paying for musescore.com funds the
| open source project.
| michaelpb wrote:
| I'm actually a little foggy on this -- is this completely
| unrelated to the free software MusE DAW (https://github.com/muse-
| sequencer/muse), that also includes a sheet music editor as well?
|
| I'm happy to see that the MusE DAW seems also to have resumed
| development after a very long hiatus / dry-spell. While not as
| feature-filled in most respects as bigger free software DAWs like
| Ardour, it has a more conventional piano roll interface with a
| few QoL features, which is why I preferred it for some time
| before switching to Ardour and getting over Ardour's sub-standard
| piano-roll.
| app4soft wrote:
| > _I 'm actually a little foggy on this -- is this completely
| unrelated to the free software MusE DAW, that also includes a
| sheet music editor as well?_
|
| Until 2002 MuseScore was just a part of MusE.[0]
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MuseScore#History
| fsflover wrote:
| By the way MuseScore works fine on a Pinephone:
|
| https://twitter.com/roiredim/status/1349083339085541376
| comex wrote:
| Is it actually usable on a touchscreen? Can you pinch to zoom?
| tomcam wrote:
| Tantacrul is a treasure. He's the Fabrice Bellard of music
| composition software.
| app4soft wrote:
| > He's the Fabrice Bellard of music composition software.
|
| Also, he's like George W. Williams of font editing software ;)
| lagolinguini wrote:
| I really enjoy Tantacrul's videos on UX. I hope that he finds
| time to do some videos on Gnome or KDE someday.
| app4soft wrote:
| Yeah, yesterday I played with _MuseScore 3.6_ a little bit -- a
| lot of fun![0]
|
| As for me, MuseScore now took 2nd place (just after Blender,
| which keep 1st place) on my Top FLOSS software projects lists.
|
| P.S. The only issue, as for me, that _MuseScore 4_ [1] (WIP) UI
| would be switched to QML (JavaScript). I tried its latest
| nightly builds -- it looks like common Electron apps & for me
| its UI/UX looks horrible.
|
| Guess, I would stuck to MuseScore 3.x forever.
|
| [0] https://twitter.com/app4soft/status/1350904572450123778
| [video]
|
| [1] https://musescore.org/en/MuseScore4
| ArchieMaclean wrote:
| [1] should be https://musescore.org/en/MuseScore4
| app4soft wrote:
| Fixed already, thanks.
| Kelteseth wrote:
| The new version looks spotless and clean to me. Disclaimer:
| I'm a QML programmer and would do the same :)
| app4soft wrote:
| Ups, thanks for correction.
|
| Just fixed it in my comment as well.
|
| P.S. JFTR, Why You changed the order of links in your
| comment?
| Kelteseth wrote:
| My bad. Removed the links from my comment :)
| ArchieMaclean wrote:
| I'm a bit worried about performance with QML since already
| the UI is a bit slow (not much, but noticeable) and switching
| to JavaScript might negatively impact that. We'll see.
| floatboth wrote:
| QML is generally faster, especially on high resolution
| screens, as it's rendered with the GPU.
| app4soft wrote:
| Of course, for latest PC with powerful GPU, 16+ cores CPU
| & 16GB+ of RAM performance may be increased...
|
| But, as I has an 10 y/o laptop with integrated, any heavy
| JavaScript GUI apps (based on QML/Electron) just slowed
| down performance instead of increasing, in comparison to
| Qt-based or native GUI apps.
| viraptor wrote:
| Your 10yo GPU can blit and scroll pixels faster than your
| CPU, which can deal with layouts and other things in the
| meantime. Using GPU by itself is not slowing down your
| apps.
|
| If the app is badly optimised it's going to be slow
| regardless of the rendering method.
| detaro wrote:
| QML is commonly used on <1 GHz embedded devices. Equating
| QML to bad Electron examples doesn't make sense.
| (Although Electron/Chromium also have a large range
| depending on how they are used, in my experience they
| have a way harder time scaling down to smaller devices)
| jcelerier wrote:
| > QML is commonly used on <1 GHz embedded devices.
|
| 1ghz embedded devices with semi-good GPUs*
|
| e.g. the GPU in a Pi 3 blows some older intel GMA chips
| out of the water, and those are still quite present "out
| there". Even a 4ghz pentium 4 with such a GPU will feel
| slower to the user than a 800mhz Pi (which in itself, is
| not what I'd call enjoyable to use).
| detaro wrote:
| Was thinking more the various Vivante things like you get
| with the imx6 variants - but they also do support the
| needed OpenGL ES versions. Pis are weird outliers in
| various ways (and Pi 3 is >1Ghz).
| app4soft wrote:
| > _QML is commonly used on <1 GHz embedded devices._
|
| Yes, I know as an owner of Symbian 9.x device ;)
|
| But, here I literally means that _actual QML coding
| style_ stuck to requirement of modern GPU with OpenGL 2.x
| (GL ES 2.x) even OpenGL 3 /4 support.
|
| My laptop has integrated GPU mostly limited to OpenGL
| 1.x, so all those CSS/QSS animations, which depends on
| higher OpenGL features, just blows my CPU/GPU into flame.
| app4soft wrote:
| That is what I'm worried about too.
| detaro wrote:
| Describing QML as "Javascript" is not necessarily all that
| useful. Yes, you can use JS in QML, but that doesn't mean
| it's actually done by the app in meaningful amounts, or has a
| meaningful performance impact. And the Musescore devs, from
| what I've seen, know what they are doing.
| pwgentleman wrote:
| I was quite skeptical when you said "2nd place, after
| Blender". That was 20 minutes before. I just finished writing
| down a full score, including lyrics, without ever using this
| before. This is amazing software, both in looks and
| usability. I'm just sad I didn't discover this earlier.
| app4soft wrote:
| > _That was 20 minutes before._
|
| :)
|
| JFTR, My actual Top5 list of FLOSS apps is:
|
| 1. MuseScore
|
| 2. Blender
|
| 3. SolveSpace
|
| 4. AzPainter
|
| 5. OpenOrienteering Mapper
| haberman wrote:
| Wow, what makes you prefer SolveSpace to FreeCAD or
| programmatic cad like CadQuery? What do you use it for?
| ognarb wrote:
| I think you forgot to add Krita.
| app4soft wrote:
| > I think you forgot to add Krita.
|
| No, I'm NOT forgot to add it ;P
|
| I just use _AzPainter_ [0,1] for painting, due to it is
| much faster & much more compact in comparison to Krita,
| even to GIMP.
|
| And that is why AzPainter is on my Top list ;)
|
| [0] https://git.io/azpainter
|
| [1] https://github.com/Symbian9/azpainter
| adamnemecek wrote:
| I've been working on an IDE for music composition. I'll be
| launching soon http://ngrid.io
|
| I setup a discord channel for the project
| https://discord.gg/a5ttYuG
| app4soft wrote:
| > _I 'll be launching soon_
|
| It would be better if You would just create separate "Show HN"
| thread to highlight you project, see[0]
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| adamnemecek wrote:
| Where does it say that?
| jameshart wrote:
| Tantacrul's video about the creation of the new engraving font
| (https://youtu.be/XGo4PJd1lng) is also an important story about
| the MS-DOS Score program, software obsolescence and stewardship,
| and the loss of value that can happen when an industry relies on
| proprietary software.
|
| Without polemics or politics, this ends up presenting one of the
| strongest moral arguments for open source licensing.
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| It also shows how the oldest proprietary software helped
| experts, vs today's race to the bottom / ease of learning vs
| actual use mindset.
|
| I guess only free software can buck the commercial mandate
| enough to do that now.
| bschne wrote:
| There's definitely a point about commercial software
| overfitting on first-use experience as opposed to reaching a
| higher productivity / usefulness plateau with some initial
| investment.
|
| That being said, I would not overly romanticize FOSS'
| achievements in that arena. The lack of investment beyond
| merely writing functional code and the lack of opinionated
| design shows in many FOSS products, beyond the point of it
| being "geared towards repeat users / experts".
|
| A lot of it just has extremely inconsistent interfaces that
| not only leave visual styling trends but also basic design
| principles founded upon human perception by the wayside, and
| that costs everyone, novices and experts.
|
| Additionally, there seems to be a bit of resurgence in
| productivity apps that favor more keyboard-oriented
| workflows, or at least also think about how people can become
| faster and more efficient after the initial onboarding.
| klodolph wrote:
| > There's definitely a point about commercial software
| overfitting on first-use experience as opposed to reaching
| a higher productivity / usefulness plateau with some
| initial investment.
|
| I would say... sure, that may be true for many apps. There
| are plenty of counterexamples, and I'd say MuseScore's
| competitors (Finale, Sibelius, Dorico) are good examples of
| apps that are not tailored towards first-use experience as
| much as they are tailored for heavy users. They _heavily_
| rely on keyboard shortcuts and are modal (often to the
| point of being arcane, but UX is hard).
| app4soft wrote:
| > _I guess only free software can buck the commercial mandate
| enough to do that now._
|
| [spoiler] Here is fresh story to learn: _OCAD_ (commercial
| app) VS _OpenOrienteering Mapper_ (FLOSS alternative to
| OCAD).[0,1]
|
| TL;DR: _If you are trying to create fully free alternative to
| proprietary software, be ready to the situation where
| original proprietary software devs would decide to clone_ [2]
| _unique /original features_[3] _from your FLOSS app._
|
| [0] https://twitter.com/app4soft/status/1347209330089717760
|
| [1] https://twitter.com/zerbembasqwibo/status/134946732900922
| 573...
|
| [2] https://www.ocad.com/wiki/ocad/en/index.php?title=Sketch&
| act...
|
| [3] https://www.openorienteering.org/news/2012/colors-and-
| sketch...
| danShumway wrote:
| Is this a problem?
|
| First, it is _good_ that software feature ideas aren 't
| copyrightable. Arguably many of them shouldn't even be
| patentable.
|
| That means that yes, proprietary apps can look at your
| software and say, "that's cool, we should do that too." But
| it also means that people can write Open Source software
| that takes lessons from proprietary apps. We want software
| devs working on productivity tools and practical software
| to copy each other, we don't want everyone to reinvent the
| wheel all the time.
|
| I mean, heck, can you imagine if Finale came out with a new
| feature and that was just it, no other competitors or Open
| Source apps like MuseScore were allowed to offer that
| feature? Can you imagine trying to build a piece of
| software like Blender in that world, where Autodesk had a
| monopoly on "things that a 3D editor can do?"
|
| Second, 9 years to clone a feature in the world of software
| is a really long time. If you can launch a piece of
| software and you have 9 years before other people start
| building similar things... I mean, what else do you even
| want at that point? If it takes 9 years for a dev to
| capitalize on a unique feature in their app, I don't think
| it's the eventual imitators that are the problem.
| app4soft wrote:
| > _First, it is good that software_ [GUI /UI/UX ,- edit.]
| _feature ideas aren 't copyrightable._
|
| I may agree from FLOSS dev side (as I'm itself!), BUT
| there already was a lot of cases where UI/UX features
| "was copyrighted".[0]
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Computer%2C_Inc%2
| E_v%2E_...
| danShumway wrote:
| Okay, but read the first section of that link:
|
| > The court ruled that, "Apple cannot get patent-like
| protection for the idea of a graphical user interface, or
| the idea of a desktop metaphor [under copyright law]...".
| In the midst of the Apple v. Microsoft lawsuit, Xerox
| also sued Apple alleging that Mac's GUI was heavily based
| on Xerox's. The district court dismissed Xerox's claims
| without addressing whether Apple's GUI infringed Xerox's.
| Apple lost all claims in the Microsoft suit except for
| the ruling that the trash can icon and folder icons from
| Hewlett-Packard's NewWave windows application were
| infringing. The lawsuit was filed in 1988 and lasted four
| years; the decision was affirmed on appeal in 1994, and
| Apple's appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court was denied.
|
| And then later on:
|
| > After the district court ruled in favor of Microsoft,
| Apple appealed the decision arguing that the district
| court only considered infringements on the individual
| elements of Apple's GUI, rather than the interface as a
| whole. The appeals court almost entirely affirmed the
| ruling of the district court, establishing that, "almost
| all the similarities spring either from the license or
| from basic ideas and their obvious expression... illicit
| copying could occur only if the works as a whole are
| virtually identical."
|
| I'm not going to say that copyright expansion isn't a
| problem, and in general I think that software patents are
| a _giant_ problem. But surely the answer to that isn 't
| to encourage more expansion or to treat competitors
| cloning good features like it's something to be avoided.
|
| We should be holding up cases like this as an example of
| why proprietary developers can't get monopolies on ideas,
| and we should be normalizing that way of thinking about
| software. It's not a problem if a proprietary app copies
| an interface idea from an Open Source app because
| interface and feature ideas are not copyrightable. We
| should reinforce in culture that already recognized legal
| standard whenever possible.
| app4soft wrote:
| > _but read the first section of that link:_
|
| I'm just saying that proprietary/commercial devs already
| tried to fight for its UI/UX: some wins (due to curios
| resons), some loose.
|
| As for me, I fully agree on UX/UI should not be
| copyrighted at all.
| syastrov wrote:
| I'm glad to have contributed to MuseScore 13 (time flies!) years
| ago. Haven't tried it in awhile, but glad to see it still going
| and from what it seems, thriving. The authors are very dedicated.
| reffaelwallen wrote:
| They need to fix their iOS app also
| app4soft wrote:
| Please, report any issues to MuseScore devs via GitHub.[0]
|
| [0] https://github.com/musescore/MuseScore/issues
| quadrangle wrote:
| That's not the iOS or Android app. Confusingly, they (who's
| they, not 100% clear) publish _proprietary_ _read-only_ apps
| for mobile which are not the same as the main Musescore.
| Also, the playback at Musescore.com uses some proprietary web
| tools (built on FLO ones in part I think) which are
| themselves separate from Musescore the main software.
| baldfat wrote:
| MuseScore 4.0 I hope will help my workflow.
|
| I usually am working with just a keyboard, bass and I handle the
| rythmn seperately.
|
| To do my melody I find Muse Score to be way slower at producing
| MIDI. I actually use ABC Notation in VIM. I can do a whole song
| in under 5 minutes after using this for years. Its all texted
| based and as a old programmer I prefer the text to the GUI. I
| don't have an symphony and so that is why it is over kill for me.
|
| ABCNotion is just a text based notation program. Once I have that
| I can just move it to whatever format I want.
|
| http://abcnotation.com/
| skybrian wrote:
| It looks like MuseScore has a plugin for importing ABC
| notation:
|
| https://musescore.org/en/project/abc-import
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(page generated 2021-01-18 23:01 UTC)