MuseScore - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

MuseScore is free and open source music notation software

Scorewriter

A scorewriter, or music notation program, is software used for creating sheet music.A scorewriter is to music notation what a word processor is to text.-Comparison with multitrack sequencer software:...

for Microsoft Windows

Microsoft Windows

Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...

, Mac

Mac OS

Mac OS is a series of graphical user interface-based operating systems developed by Apple Inc. for their Macintosh line of computer systems. The Macintosh user experience is credited with popularizing the graphical user interface...

and Linux

Linux

Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...

. MuseScore is a WYSIWYG

WYSIWYG

WYSIWYG is an acronym for What You See Is What You Get. The term is used in computing to describe a system in which content displayed onscreen during editing appears in a form closely corresponding to its appearance when printed or displayed as a finished product...

editor, complete with support for score playback and import–export of MusicXML

MusicXML

MusicXML is an open, XML-based music notation file format.It was developed by Recordare LLC, deriving several key concepts from existing academic formats . It is designed for the interchange of scores, particularly between different scorewriters.Version 1.0 was released in January 2004...

and standard MIDI files. Percussion notation is supported, as is direct printing from the program.

The program has a clean user interface, with fast note editing input similar to the step-time note entry found in the popular commercial score writing software packages, Finale and Sibelius.

MuseScore is free software

Free software

Free software, software libre or libre software is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with restrictions that only ensure that further recipients can also do...

, published under the GNU General Public License

GNU General Public License

The GNU General Public License is the most widely used free software license, originally written by Richard Stallman for the GNU Project....

Capabilities

MuseScore is able to import and export from many different music formats, including MIDI and MusicXML

MusicXML

, as well as the importing of files from the commercial music software Band-in-a-Box

Band-in-a-Box

Band-in-a-Box is a MIDI music arranger software package for Windows and Mac OS produced by PG Music Incorporated. It was first introduced in 1990 for the Atari ST. Since then, PG MUSIC has been a recipient of numerous awards....

, Capella

Capella notation program

-Versions:The current version is Capella Professional 7.1, which includes guitar chord notation ability, and guitar tab writing functions, in addition to the standard music notation tools. The program's major selling point is its user friendly interface....

and Overture

Overture (software)

Overture is a music scorewriter program for Windows and Macintosh platforms, written by Don Williams, the author of the popular Encore scorewriter program. Visually, the Overture interface bears much resemblance to the Encore interface....

. It is able to produce engraved

Music engraving

Music engraving is the art of drawing music notation at high quality for the purpose of mechanical reproduction. The term music copying is almost equivalent, though music engraving implies a higher degree of skill and quality, usually for publication. Plate engraving, the process the term...

output as a PDF, SVG or PNG document, or alternatively, music can be exported to LilyPond

GNU LilyPond

GNU LilyPond is a computer program for music engraving. One of LilyPond's major goals is to produce scores that are engraved with traditional layout rules, reflecting the era when scores were engraved by hand....

for subsequent tweaking of the output. Audio output is also supported as a WAV

WAV

Waveform Audio File Format , is a Microsoft and IBM audio file format standard for storing an audio bitstream on PCs...

, Ogg

Ogg

Ogg is a free, open container format maintained by the Xiph.Org Foundation. The creators of the Ogg format state that it is unrestricted by software patents and is designed to provide for efficient streaming and manipulation of high quality digital multimedia.The Ogg container format can multiplex...

or FLAC

FLAC

FLAC is a codec which allows digital audio to be losslessly compressed such that file size is reduced without any information being lost...

file.

Development

MuseScore is an outgrowth of MusE

MusE

MusE is a free software MIDI/Audio sequencer with recording and editing capabilities. It was originally written by Werner Schweer and now is developed by the Muse development team....

, a MIDI sequencer

Music sequencer

The music sequencer is a device or computer software to record, edit, play back the music, by handling note and performance information in several forms, typically :...

for Linux. In 2002, Werner Schweer decided to "cut MusE's notation capabilities out of the sequencer and rewrite it as a standalone notation editor." The rewrite is based on the cross-platform Qt toolkit

Qt (toolkit)

Qt is a cross-platform application framework that is widely used for developing application software with a graphical user interface , and also used for developing non-GUI programs such as command-line tools and consoles for servers...

Adoption

In September 2008, MuseScore started to see a large growth in the number of downloads following the launch of the musescore.org website. By December 2008, the monthly download rate was 15,000. In the summer of 2009, the release of version 0.9.5 added support for Mac OS and was stable enough for normal use. Download traffic for MuseScore tripled in the four months following the 0.9.5 release. Since October 2009, MuseScore has been downloaded more than 1000 times per day.

On 8 June 2010, version 0.9.6 was released . By the fall of 2010 and with the start of the new academic year, MuseScore tripled its numbers of downloads. Version 1.0 was released on February 7, 2011.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.