![]() In other words, when you enter the duration, nothing appears on screen it just gets held in memory until you then enter a note. If you're not a Linux user, that might not make much sense, but you can also think of it as one of those self-tripping Caps Lock keys on a mobile touchscreen you press it once to enter CAPS mode, and then hit a key to get a capital letter, after which CAPS mode gets turned off. The duration entry of a note gets treated as a "dead" key, like the Compose key when entering Unicode characters, or c-x and m-x in Emacs. Durations values start with the 1 key (a 64th note) and continue up to 7 (a whole note), with 8 being the less common double whole note, and 9 being the rare longa. The first value you enter is the duration. You can enter or leave note entry mode by pressing the n key on your keyboard at any time. This is the default mode, so you're probably already there to verify, look to see if the N button in the upper left corner of the MuseScore window is highlighted. To get started, you need to be in notation entry mode (not just mentally, but in the software). Entry mostly centers around the number pad, arrow keys, and the letters A through G. I make it sound a lot scarier than it really is the good news is that the most commonly used entries are intuitive and easy to remember. As with Emacs or Blender, much of the entry consists of a sequence of key presses rather than single keys. ![]() Like playing the other kind of keyboard (the musical one), it takes practice to get all of the keyboard shortcuts down. It's work enough to compose a coherent piece of music, and more work still to arrange it for different instruments, so if you have to add the overhead of data entry into that mix, it changes from being a labor of love to just being, well, labor.įor that reason, the most common method of editing musical scores is keyboard entry it's the most flexible and efficient way to get data into the computer. Keyboard entryĪs any composer knows, the barrier to actually setting music down to paper is efficiency. There are toolbars and palettes and menus to give you access to every minor detail you could ever possibly want to enter into sheet music.īut that's not usually how it's done in the real world. It works exactly as you'd expect select a note, point to the place on the staff that you want it to go, and click. If you're just starting out, you can use the mouse to input notes. On the left are palettes providing access to special musical elements such as glissando notation, fermatas, dynamics, repeats and codas, and so on. The main work area is the sheet music itself, where you draw the notes (which are listed as clickable icons across the top toolbar). MuseScore's workspace is pretty intuitive, regardless of your musical knowledge. That must mean it's time to start inputting music. Once you've stepped through the setup screens, you're left facing blank staves. All settings you choose here can be changed later, so no pressure to commit to anything. The new project wizard steps you through creation of a new project you can start from scratch or you can use a template. To begin an empty project, select File | New. The demo piece is a good example of what's possible with MuseScore, but the best way to learn it is to use it, so let's start a fresh project. If you want to open to an empty project, change that behavior in Edit | Preferences. When you launch MuseScore, it loads an example piece by default. If you can't find one, look for the other. On Linux, it's available from your repository (or for us Slackware users).Īfter installation, MuseScore may be listed as mscore, depending on how you have your desktop configured ( mscore is the name of the executable, but many desktops list it by its description text, MuseScore, in application menus). MuseScore is a cross-platform application, so you can download and install it on any computer. As with everything else, this boils down to practice, but even to the uninitiated, MuseScore is intuitive, while also maintaining the complexity required for a professional, readable, musical score. MuseScore is a tool you hope will become so familiar to you that it fades into the background, stays well out of your way, and possibly, on occasion, makes your life easier. MuseScore is to music notation what a word processor is to, say, articles about open source it's the tool that you want to take for granted. Therefore, in an a continuation of an unofficial musical notation series, I present to you MuseScore, the open source WYSIWYG sheet music creation suite. Last month, D Ruth Bavousett wrote about creating sheet music with the Lilypond "music engraving program," and it got me thinking about MuseScore-which she also mentioned in the article, but in passing-and what a powerful tool it is for musical notation.
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