[HN Gopher] MuseScore 4.1 is now available
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       MuseScore 4.1 is now available
        
       Author : em3rgent0rdr
       Score  : 85 points
       Date   : 2023-07-12 18:43 UTC (4 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (musescore.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (musescore.org)
        
       | jchw wrote:
       | Out of curiosity, what ever happened to all of the drama with
       | MuseScore, locking downloads behind a subscription, the Audacity
       | acquisition + telemetry debacle? It looks like Tenacity still
       | exists in some form, though it does not appear like there is a
       | ton of significant activity on it in the last month or so.
       | 
       | Have things cooled down now?
        
         | Reubend wrote:
         | While I don't know about the OSS community's stance, I can say
         | that most casual users have embraced the new version of
         | MuseScore. They added a lot of important features with the
         | latest version, and I think most people don't really care about
         | the telemetry.
        
           | Tantacrul wrote:
           | There is no telemetry in MuseScore 4
        
         | aiddun wrote:
         | I use https://flat.io/community/popular/weekly for sheet music
         | sharing now - no paywall and all browser-based.
        
         | thih9 wrote:
         | Note, this would not be the first open source music app to lock
         | downloads behind paywall, e.g. Ardour is known for it:
         | https://community.ardour.org/download
        
           | Tantacrul wrote:
           | MuseScore desktop (the composition / notation app) has never
           | been behind a paywall. This is a mixup with the mobile
           | application which is a sheet music viewer that features
           | copyrighted scores.
           | 
           | The products are completely separate
        
           | jchw wrote:
           | I believe it was the sheet music that was paywalled, not the
           | software. That was a bit concerning since as far as I know a
           | large portion of it was UGC and some of it even public
           | domain, so it was weird to ask for a subscription payment for
           | it. At this point though, it does look like they have made
           | some amends, though I'm not sure if everyone's satisfied.
           | Doesn't seem to matter too much in the grand scheme of
           | things, overall, though it was an unfortunate situation to
           | watch unfold even as an outsider.
        
           | FireInsight wrote:
           | Didn't even know that, always installed Ardour through repos,
           | so got the full version as an unofficial build.
        
         | skybrian wrote:
         | I think some of this might be avoidable by downloading
         | Musescore separately from the larger package they've promoting
         | now and not using some features? That's what I do, anyhow.
        
       | _nivlac_ wrote:
       | As a fairly casual user, I absolutely love Musescore. Still takes
       | a bit of getting used to entering notes if I haven't used it for
       | a while, but I am amazed that there is a free app for sheet music
       | notation, where I would normally be locked into a paid option.
       | The choice to upload to the cloud and play in browser is awesome
       | for sharing. Can't wait to see more updates :)
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | deepspace wrote:
       | Musescore the software is pretty good.
       | 
       | Musescore the company is a disaster. They took my money for a Pro
       | subscription, without delivering the actual benefits. Their
       | support organization is, as far as I can tell, nonexistent. After
       | six months of trying, I have yet to find a way to get them to
       | respond to my request for support.
        
         | TheRealPomax wrote:
         | Sounds like it's time to call them out (politely) on twitter
         | with a tentacrul at-mentioned. That at least seems to get their
         | attention. Unless you already did that in a non-polite fashion
         | and got muted, of course.
        
       | l__l wrote:
       | If anyone is yet to see it, Tantacrul (on youtube) is now deeply
       | involved with MuseScore (UX lead or similar?); he put out an
       | awesome vid on the design of MS4 at the beginning of the year:
       | https://youtu.be/Qct6LKbneKQ
       | 
       | His video on how Sibelius' UX is a pile of shit remains one of my
       | favourite vids on yt: https://youtu.be/dKx1wnXClcI
        
         | Galacta7 wrote:
         | I was just thinking of Tantacrul and his amazing videos. I
         | can't wait to see his update on Musescore 4.1.
        
         | crote wrote:
         | Tantacrul is the former Product Owner - recently promoted to
         | Vice President of Product at Muse Group.
        
       | dottjt wrote:
       | Hopefully it fixes the MIDI input lag. Still using version 3 as a
       | result.
        
       | noahGorski wrote:
       | Still using MuseScore 3. Even without the new sounds packs
       | enabled, the latency typing notes on a (computer) keyboard is
       | still too high. I would rather be stuck with the old version then
       | deal with the unsettling 100-200ms lag for every input. It's
       | quite an unfortunate trend that so many modern applications are
       | neglecting basic UI responsiveness.
        
         | babalulu wrote:
         | I've been heavily using MuseScore 4 lately and haven't noticed
         | that type of latency on the Linux AppImage. My only gripe with
         | 4 is the inability to open multiple scores in tabs. It opens
         | them in separate windows instead. It makes closing scores in
         | that situation difficult. If you have two open windows and quit
         | one of them, both quit. If you instead just close one of the
         | scores the window remains open with nothing in it. It seems to
         | be a can't/won't fix problem as it has to do with their new
         | soundpack system. It's probably the number one gripe users have
         | with 4.
        
         | chabad360 wrote:
         | It seems that one of the listed improvements is major
         | performance gains.
        
         | nh2 wrote:
         | Is it known why this is / is there an upstream issue for it?
        
           | TheRealPomax wrote:
           | Yeah, and the PR for it is called Musescore 4.1
        
       | Waterluvian wrote:
       | I found the app to be incredibly well-featured but ridiculously
       | unintuitive. Nothing worked the way I wanted to and I spent half
       | my time fighting it when trying to insert notes and such.
       | 
       | I have no background in authoring sheet music so my sense is that
       | this is just me and my whole mental model is probably wrong.
       | 
       | Did anyone else experience this? Or did anyone else find it to be
       | the opposite: super intuitive and smooth?
        
         | TheRealPomax wrote:
         | I hear if you create a 40 minute youtube video on how bad the
         | UI is, with a bit of humour mixed in, but mostly valid
         | criticism, they hire you as a product manager.
        
       | robin_reala wrote:
       | MuseScore is one of those rare open source projects where it's
       | obvious that a serious amount of thought has been put into the
       | user experience. I only dabble in engraving, but every time I've
       | tried to do something more complex the UI has been ready and
       | waiting to help me accomplish it.
        
         | wizofaus wrote:
         | Arguably WYSIWYG engraving software only exists to provide a
         | workable user experience (vs editing lilypond or god forbid
         | musicxml notation in a text editor). Having worked a fair bit
         | on it and as a regular user of it I'm only too aware of areas
         | still in desperate need of a better UI/UX though. Still hope to
         | go back to contributing more regularly at some point, though I
         | didn't especially enjoy having to regularly deal with the
         | foibles of a large complex C++ code base and digging into the
         | internals of Qt to figure out weird UI bugs.
        
       | crawsome wrote:
       | Their SEO ruined Google searches for music. These non-functional
       | demo pages polluting searches for sheet music.
        
         | koromak wrote:
         | So Google working as intended
        
         | TheRealPomax wrote:
         | The only party to blame for SEO is Google. Everyone else is
         | just playing catchup to however they decided to rank pages this
         | week. There _are_ other search engines, of course. And no, don
         | 't stop using Google, but _also_ start using the alternatives.
         | Just using one search engine is doing yourself a disservice.
        
       | bijection wrote:
       | For the intrepid, especially those annoyed with the purported
       | input-sluggishness of musescore et al, an interesting text-based
       | alternative is LilyPond https://lilypond.org/
       | 
       | My dad wrote an opera using LilyPond in vim, though I believe
       | these days he's actually doing more with supercollider, which
       | skips sheetmusic and goes right to sounds:
       | https://supercollider.github.io/
        
         | cardamomo wrote:
         | And for the intrepid folks who prefer algorithmic or computer-
         | assisted composition, there's Abjad, a Python-based wrapper
         | around LilyPond.
         | 
         | https://abjad.github.io/
        
         | sambapa wrote:
         | I wanna meet that dad!
        
         | gexaha wrote:
         | wow! who's your dad?
        
         | tunesmith wrote:
         | I love lilypond as a programmer because I can use git. I have a
         | private git repo that has lead sheets for all my favorite jazz
         | standards (with my own reharms), notation at various levels for
         | my originals, arrangements of songs for my a cappella friends,
         | and a cue for a full film score project I did. The output
         | quality is amazing, but the best part is I don't have to worry
         | about forward/backward compatibility. None of my old Sibelius
         | scores are openable anymore without spending hundreds on an
         | upgrade, but all my lilypond scores will always be available to
         | me.
        
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       (page generated 2023-07-12 23:00 UTC)