Music Notation Software Part I, MuseScore Connects Sheet Music with Musicians— Music Notation Program| Music Tech Alliance
Writing sheet music is a daily work for musicians and music teachers. A sheet music presents the memory, rhythm, chord progression and many details in a song.
Along with the advent of computer science and internet, more and more professional notation software appearing in the market. Some of them combine into a digital audio workstation or recording software. This post introduces a renowned and free notation software “MuseScore 2”.
Free Music Notation Software— MuseScore 2
MuseScore is an open-source project starting from 2012 by Germany software engineer and pianist, Werner Schweer. In 2009, it reached the milestone of 100,000 downloads per month and supported 45 languages.
The first step to edit your sheet music with MuseScore is downloading the Mac or Windows version. When you finish your score, you can print it out, save as a PDF file or save into your MuseScore account.
Tips of Editing Your First Sheet Music
After I complete the installment of MuseScore, I take my sheet music of “Autumn Leaves” and start to edit my first score. I think the necessary skill you have to learn are“Note Input” and “Set up Instruments”. The other questions about manipulation, you can search on the Handbook and help center.
- Note Input
The shortcut key of “Note Input” is “N”. It is necessary to press “N” in your keyboard to start editing your score. It has nothing to do with the virtual piano keyboard below the screen.
2. Set up your instruments
In the Mac version of MuseScore, please click the “Edit” item in menu bar and select the “Instruments” where you can set up the instruments including your score.
MuseScore— Android and iOS Apps
After you complete the score, you can save into your account. It’s like a Google document which you can save as public in network or private only for yourself.
You can log in the MuseScore apps of iOS, iPad and Android and browse your scores in the “My Scores” tab.
The Value of MuseScore — Connecting Sheet Music with Musicians
Musicians create and share their scores in MusicScore. MuseScore gradually becomes a platform with a lot of free sheet music attracting instrument players.
Players may find some great songs, fantastic composers and interesting communities in the progress of searching for scores.
Take the group of Jazz Standards Lead Sheets for example. If you like Jazz, this is place with many scores and discussions related to Jazz.
When you find the editors you like, you can follow them and contact with them by messages.
All of the functionalities I introduce are free. I will introduce the MuseScore Pro which is a premium membership of MuseScore.
Next post is the Noteflight, which is an online music score service.
