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Hi, don’t know if this is in the right place, if it’s been mentioned before or if anyone is interested. There seems to be a number of forum members interested or trying out Musescore. This morning I came across this course https://school.masteringmusescore.com/p/completeIt reads as if it should be good. At $25 it looks like a good thing. Just a thought Tony
Last edited by Teunis; 06/05/21 12:59 PM.
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Before MuseScore changed ownership, the goal of the web site seemed to be for Marc Sabatella to sell books to explain the free application. Since he wrote the incomprehensible documentation, it always came off as a bait and switch. His answer to so many 'how to' inquiries was 'buy my book'. Inquiries as to why (name function here) didn't exist were always answered by his long-winded explanation as to why no one needed that functionality.
MuseScore is vastly improved now that he is no longer in charge. I can't imagine that money being well spent.
The business model has changed. Instead of the goal being the sale of Marc's books, the revenue stream has now shifted to encouraging users to upload scores for free and charging others to download them. The app itself is still available at no charge, however.
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I spent the $25 USD and am really pleased I did. Marc does explain things really well. He also suggests the MuseScore.com WEBSITE for the scores available there. Albeit I’ve only spent a little time looking at this “course” I must say I’m impressed. I’ve had MuseScore for some time and scratched about but really not really getting anywhere. However in very short time doing the course I learnt a lot.
The area I’m more interested in is Tablature, I did not realise just how well MuseScore handles tablature. I initially downloaded MuseScore some years ago to handle something in Tab format but was disappointed. Marc explains that area very well. I have Guitar Pro but I can see myself using MuseScore more for Tablature. MuseScore seems to do a reasonable job in that area.
The musescore.com WEBSITE does look really good. (I can see myself paying the $49 yearly access fee). I downloaded a score, converted if to Tablature, exported the MIDI, put it into Reaper with an AmpleSound guitar. In no time at all I had a lesson in how to play a song in a method I understood. The Tab to read the guitar to view as a demo. Well worth the time.
So far I’m very pleased
Tony
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Why I detest MuseScore MuseScore explained Since he made this, Robert’s no longer the chief explainer and this guy’s become the chief architect on its redesign. MuseScore may even get good someday but it ain’t there yet. Oh yea, it’s free — and still worth every penny. Ok, it’s not as bad as Sibelius but it’s down there.
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I noticed that the other day. I got it 4 years ago maybe and was able to download scores. Now, I found a score by Coldplay and wanted to download it and they wanted to charge me. But they say it is "free" in advertising. So how is charging you to download free???? Hmmmmm. I guess I will stick with those old Guitar Pro files and the other 50,000 GPX files I downloaded from some guy a few months back for 9.99.  I love Guitar Pro by the way, except that it seems to erase articulations. Finale does not but has some quirks. It defaults to 120 and if you want to increase or decrease the tempo and line it up you have to create a tempo marker. Give me a break. The other commands and widgets will make you smash yourself in the head with a hammer. Maybe it has changed since my last version, I dunno. I often wonder if any of these people realize there are only like 10 things we really want to do, and we want to do them easily??? Ok, that was MY rant for the day.
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MuseScore has recently been through a corporate shakeup with a new name, The Muse Group, and has purchased Audacity. Martin Keary is now heading up a re-design of both apps.
This should be very good news. Mr. Keary has been an outspoken critic of stupid things that Audacity and MuseScore do so poorly. He is, in fact, the same Tantacrul who made that video a year ago. Perhaps with him at the helm, both apps might finally become good.
The current plan is for both to remain free — or free-ish as MuseScore is currently.
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It defaults to 120 and if you want to increase or decrease the tempo and line it up you have to create a tempo marker. No. If you import a MIDI file, Finale will default to 120 but you can easily clear that and set it to playback at any tempo you like without setting a new tempo marker. If you like, I can post a couple of screen shots to show you how.
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Mike,
That would be awesome. I would love to know how to do that.
Also, since it seems like you have a good grip on this stuff, I have a question--and don't laugh.
I have been playing around a lot with Midi Guitar to trigger synths and the articulation capabilities are very winsome.
In coding (or in practice for that matter) what is the difference between expression/articulation and volume, per se, and how is it programmed?
For example, when I am playing classical guitar, the sound (or one aspect of the volume) is caused by many factors, such the the pressure of fingers on BOTH hands, attack, plucking speed and many others. Not like a volume knob that just goes up and down.
This might not make any sense--but what is articulation, in a digital sense, and how do programmers tackle that? I am very impressed when I see it happening and would like to know more about it and how it is done.
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Hi David, You're asking about two different things but I'll answer one at a time. In coding (or in practice for that matter) what is the difference between expression/articulation and volume, per se, and how is it programmed?
For example, when I am playing classical guitar, the sound (or one aspect of the volume) is caused by many factors, such the the pressure of fingers on BOTH hands, attack, plucking speed and many others. Not like a volume knob that just goes up and down. They can't really but there are two ways that they can fake it. One way is by velocity layers which has been mentioned by others. Simply, a sample can really be a number of layers where each is sampled by playing the note harder or louder. The term for this is depth with many of the expensive VIs having up to 30 layers or so. As we know, that's not the same as playing louder. When you play through your interface, the harder you play actually triggers a different sample than the one you triggered by playing softly. Though there are theoretically 127 layers, same as MIDI notes, the deep sample libraries might sample 20-30 layers on a piano. The other way is Round Robin. With this, if you play a note, say, 4 times in a row, the library will alternate among 4 samples played at that depth (volume). Some do this sequentially while others do RR at random. The inexpensive libraries can't do this at all, of course. In The Mercury (34.36 GB)/Mercury Lite (3.59 GB) example I gave earlier, some of the difference in size is explained by additional mic positions and effects but the full version uses 37,172 samples and has 4x Round Robin while Lite has 4,784 samples and has 2x Round Robin. Both have 8 Velocity Layers. I want to grab some screen shots of Finale 27 before answering the other. I upgraded last week and want to make sure there are no changes in clearing MIDI Tempo data. I don't think there are but…
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Wow, Mike, thanks! That is incredibly helpful and useful to know. Very cool stuff!
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Why I detest MuseScore MuseScore explained Since he made this, Robert’s no longer the chief explainer and this guy’s become the chief architect on its redesign. MuseScore may even get good someday but it ain’t there yet. Oh yea, it’s free — and still worth every penny. Ok, it’s not as bad as Sibelius but it’s down there. Whether or not MuseScore is "good" or "bad" or even "detestable" depends, I think, on what a person wants to use it for. I've been using MuseScore for at least six years now to create basic lead sheets (scores) of my songs. When I purchased BiaB in Dec. 2018, I was thrilled to discover that I could use MuseScore to export XML files of my lead sheets that I could then import into BiaB with the lyrics, melody, and chords intact. Though I don't use the lyrics, I will occasionally use the melody as the starting point reference for an arrangement that I'll create in BiaB. But most importantly, I will definitely use the chords in BiaB, which has saved me countless hours that I would have had to spend manually entering the chords into BiaB. So, for me, MuseScore isn't just "good." It's "indispensable." Btw, I mostly taught myself how to use it in conjunction with a few video tutorials I watched on Youtube without buying any of Marc's books. I should also mention that I use MuseScore to play the melodies of my songs as I capture them in a video that I will later upload to my Youtube account so that I can share my songs with friends, relatives, and others. Before I purchased BiaB, I kept the audio track of the piano that MuseScore created when I made the video. But since I learned how to create arrangements of my songs in BiaB, I have been replacing the piano only audio files with WAV files of my BiaB arrangements. Included with these BiaB arrangements is a vocal track (imported as an audio file) that I create in Synthesizer V. But instead of having to spend hours entering each note of my melody into Synth V in order to create a vocal track that will be sung by Synth V's Eleanor Forte voice database (which I was doing initially), I'm able to use a script (courtesy of another Synth V/MuseScore user) to convert an uncompressed MuseScore 3 file into a Synth V file, which I will have to modify slightly, of course, so that Eleanor pronounces properly all of the lyrics in my songs. So, MuseScore truly has been and continues to be an indispensable tool in my songwriting toolbox.
Last edited by muzikluver; 06/27/21 11:31 AM. Reason: Forgot to mention Synth V
Tom Levan (pronounced La-VAN)
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Thanks for these comments, Tom.
Please give us a link to your YouTube channel. I would like to see and hear what you mentioned in your post.
Steve Kobb
PS: I searched YouTube for Tom Levan and muzikluver, but couldn't find your work.
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https://www.musicxml.com/music-in-musicxml/Speaking of MuseScore, it's listed on this site along with a whole lot of others. Some potentially good stuff to be looked into, here! (I had been hoping to import wonderfully simple flat text ABC format files into BIAB, but that doesn't work with the Mac version, though ABC can be converted to MusicXML and then imported.)
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Back to the original post. MuseScore has changed a lot since that $25 course was offered. It's a waste of money now.
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