Don Taylor Posted March 30, 2015 Share Posted March 30, 2015 See: https://musescore.org/ Musescore is a free, open source music notation system that is available for Windows, Linux and Mac. I have only played with it a little bit, but two things stand out for me compared to an ABC editor like EasyABC 1) It sounds so much better because you can load your own choice of sound fonts, maybe a concertina sound font - see below, instead of the lame sound fonts supplied with Windows (and Mac too, I understand). 2) You can select a section of a score and loop it, changing the tempo. It also has a built-in metronome that you can turn on/off and a moving pointer to the score as it plays a piece. EasyABC sort of does this, but Musescore does a much better job of it. But, what about playing ABC files? There is an ABC import plug-in that you can enable which will allow you to paste a block of ABC notation into Musescore which will then render it ready to play in Musescore. I edit and save my stuff in ABC but I usually play it back in Musescore. Just copy the ABC text right out of your ABC editor and paste it into the Musescore ABC import plug-in window. I do not know if there is a way to export a Musescore score into ABC. Maybe by exporting MusicXML from Musescore and importing that into EasyABC. I have not tried doing this. I have posted this link before, but here is a concertina sound font that works well in Musescore: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/kx6ude5uwzoan15/AAAy6ZJJMRRuwHVxgx16tfDZa?dl=0 Don. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CrP Posted March 31, 2015 Share Posted March 31, 2015 Thank you, Don. For those of us who take tunes from other instruments (tunes not always written or played in concertina-friendly keys for C/G anglo, for instance), this looks to be very useful. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spindizzy Posted March 31, 2015 Share Posted March 31, 2015 Thanks for the soundfont, I must try it out! I did some notation with Musescore2 beta a while ago, and found that it still had a few bugs. I had to revert to Musescore1 which was a pain, since I had to start from scratch again (you can't read version 2 files into version1). I'll maybe try 2 again now. Chris (The main advantages of Musescore we're the soundfont and a good looking score. The difficulty was how hard I found it to enter notation, the learning curve is steep) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Don Taylor Posted March 31, 2015 Author Share Posted March 31, 2015 Chris The 2.0 betas were pretty rough, but, so far, the released version is behaving well. On Windows it is also available as a portable app from portableapps.com. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
adrian brown Posted March 31, 2015 Share Posted March 31, 2015 I had a little try with it this afternoon, and it works really nicely - I especially like the increase and decrease stretch commands. The abc import feature has no problem with multi-voice pieces and even the %%staves function in abc works seamlessly on import. However clicking on the enticingly sounding "import pdf" command only took me to a login page on the Muse web site - anyone got this feature up and running? I couldn't find any online help (or offline for that matter) but perhaps I need to do a bit more looking. Adrian Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Don Taylor Posted April 1, 2015 Author Share Posted April 1, 2015 Musescore 2.0 ships with a good sound font (FluidR3Mono_GM.sf3) chosen as a compromise between size (about 13 mb compressed) and quality. However, there is a better version of this font. If you have the room (disk and memory) then download the FluidR3_GM.sf2 version, this is 124 mb compressed, 145mb uncompressed! https://musescore.org/en/handbook/soundfont. Note that this download is compressed to a .tar.gz file. On Windows, the program 7zip can be used to unpack the download. 7zip is worth having anyway and it is also available as a portable app from http://portableapps.com/ Be aware that when using Musescore all of this file will be loaded into memory. This should not be a problem on a modern desktop or laptop, but older computers might choke on this. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
adrian brown Posted April 1, 2015 Share Posted April 1, 2015 I had a little try with it this afternoon, and it works really nicely - I especially like the increase and decrease stretch commands. The abc import feature has no problem with multi-voice pieces and even the %%staves function in abc works seamlessly on import. However clicking on the enticingly sounding "import pdf" command only took me to a login page on the Muse web site - anyone got this feature up and running? I couldn't find any online help (or offline for that matter) but perhaps I need to do a bit more looking. Adrian Just to answer my own question, I had a better look today at the excellent help files on the Musescore site (duh!) and found this: http://musescore.org/en/node/51136 Looks like a dream function for me, if it actually works and can import musical notation from pdf scores scanned in dusty libraries! I'll report back when I've had a little more time to try it out. Adrian Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spindizzy Posted April 1, 2015 Share Posted April 1, 2015 Now a PDF import would indeed be a dream! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hjcjones Posted April 1, 2015 Share Posted April 1, 2015 There have been programs around for a while which claim to convert pdfs to music in one format or another. I've only tried the free versions, but the ones I've looked at needed so much manual editing that you might as well just copy it into a scorewriter in the first place. If Musescore can do this efficiently that would be something. I've just been sent pdfs of more than 50 tunes to learn for Sidmouth, and I don't read music. An effective converter so I could play these back would be wonderful! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
adrian brown Posted April 1, 2015 Share Posted April 1, 2015 Well, I've had a go this evening at converting a few pdfs with Musescore and as Howard says, the result is all rather disappointing gibberish. The only file I managed to get some sort of coherent output from was a pdf, which was itself generated from abc notation, which somewhat defeats the object! I guess we'll have to wait a few more years before it gets anywhere near as good as OCR software has become. Pity :-( Adrian Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SteveS Posted April 1, 2015 Share Posted April 1, 2015 Nice UI. I couldn't get ABC import to work. PDF import is also poor. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
adrian brown Posted April 1, 2015 Share Posted April 1, 2015 Nice UI. I couldn't get ABC import to work. PDF import is also poor. Steve, did you activate the plugin for abc import?(see plugins - plugin manager) It only works if you have an active internet connection, but I found it worked rather well. Adrian Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SteveS Posted April 1, 2015 Share Posted April 1, 2015 (edited) Adrian, yes I activated the plug-in and have internet connection. I downloaded an ABC file of an English tune - that imported fine. An ABC of a Swedish tune I have didn't import all all. I'll work out what the problem is. Ed. the problem is that the app doesn't like %%abc-charset utf-8 in the ABC file. Edited April 1, 2015 by SteveS Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Don Taylor Posted April 6, 2015 Author Share Posted April 6, 2015 I have had a request to explain how to add a new sound font to Musescore 2.0. Maybe other folks want to know this too, so here goes. These instructions should work for PCs, Macs and for Linux - just adjust the folder paths accordingly. First, you need a new sound font file: Say the concertina.sound font that I posted earlier: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/kx6ude5uwzoan15/AAAy6ZJJMRRuwHVxgx16tfDZa?dl=0 You need to put the sound font file (the .sf2 or sf3 file) somewhere useful. It does not really matter where. I put mine in the soundfonts folder inside my Musescore 2.0 install folder: ...\MuseScorePortable\Data\soundfonts Now you need to tell Musescore where to find your new sound font file: Start Musescore 2.0 and goto Edit->Preferences. A multi-tab panel should open. You need the 'General' tab. There is a list of folder preferences, one of which is labelled 'SoundFonts:' with a little microphone button next to it. Click on the microphone button and a new panel should open with a list of places where Musescore will look to find sound font files. If the folder you used earlier is already in this list then you can just cancel out of all of these dialog boxes. If not, then you will need to "Add" your folder to the list. If you did add a new folder then I think it would be a good idea to close and restart Musescore just to be sure that the new folder preference is used. I don't know if this is really necessary, but it was needed in an earlier beta version of Musescore 2.0. Finally, you need to tell Musescore which sound font to use by default to play your scores: View->Synthesizer (check the box) will bring up another multi-tab dialog box. You need the 'Fluid' tab. This tab lists the sound font files that Musescore will actually use and they are listed in priority order. Sound font files may contain fonts for many instruments, each numbered from 1 -128. When a score calls for instrument 1, for example, Musescore will look first at the highest priority sound font file in this list. If this file contains a font for instrument 1 then that is what it will use. If not then it looks at the next sound font file in the list and so on. So you need to get your new sound font file in this list and then make sure that it is high priority so that it is chosen before any other sound font. Use the "Add" button and then the "Up" or "Down". When you are done you can just close the Synthesizer dialog box. If you installed the concertina.sf2 sound font file as the highest priority sound font then when you play a score that uses instrument 1 (which should really be a grand piano, but never mind) then you should hear the concertina. If you want to switch back to hearing a grand piano for instrument 1 then lower the priority of the Concertina.sf2 file in the Fluid list. There are other ways to change instruments, but this is the brute force way that works for me. If you do get into changing instruments through staff properties then just remember that as far as Musescore is concerned the concertina in concertina.sf2 is a grand piano. The midi standard did not define an instrument number for the concertina so whoever created this font decided that this would be the simplest thing to do. The only down side to this choice is that if you have a multi-part score and you want one voice to be a concertina and another to be a grand piano then you would have to settle for one of the other piano sounds defined in the midi GM instrument list: http://www.ccarh.org/courses/253/handout/gminstruments/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Roger Hare Posted April 6, 2015 Share Posted April 6, 2015 I have had a request to explain how to add a new sound font to Musescore 2.0. Maybe other folks want to know this too, so here goes. etc... Guilty as charged m'lud. T'was I who made this request. Now successfully installed the 'tina font. Sounds great! Thank you very much indeed for posting this! My midi file of 'The Entertainer' sounds brilliant played using this concertina font. Roger Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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