MuseScore 3.5 Beta

• Jun 13, 2020 - 10:54

Today we are announcing a beta release of what will soon become MuseScore 3.5. Although MuseScore 3.5 is considered a "minor" release, it contains an unusually long list of new features, bug fixes, and other improvements, and we expect that it will set a new standard for stability and usability.

We hope many of you will download and help us test this beta version. This is especially true of the more significant new features such as chord symbol playback. We anticipate having a release candidate within a couple of weeks, and then the actual release after that. You can install the 3.5 beta version alongside the stable 3.4.2 version.

Download MuseScore 3.5 Beta Release

Windows 64-bit Windows 32-bit macOS 10.10 or higher Linux AppImage
(64-bit only)

MuseScore 3.5 Beta announcement

Chord Symbol Playback

One of the most requested features for many years has been playback of chord symbols. Peter Hieu Vu implemented this as part of the Google Summer of Code last year, and with the help of Dmitri Ovodok and new team member Igor Korsukov, this facility is now available in MuseScore 3.5. For now, it is disabled by default. To hear playback of chord symbols, go to Edit > Preferences > Note Input and enable the Play Chord Symbols option. There is also an option there to control whether chord symbols are played while editing them, and additional style settings and properties you can set in the Inspector to control how the chord symbols are played.

Instruments

Another Google Summer of Code project that has been incorporated into MuseScore 3.5 is a series of improvements to how you work with instruments. Much of this work was originally done by Josh Wood and was then adapted by the core MuseScore team. Upon adding an instrument change text from the palette, MuseScore will automatically display the dialog to allow you to select the new instrument, and it will automatically update the instrument name accordingly. MuseScore will also add a clef and key signature change if appropriate; these will be deleted automatically if you remove the instrument change.

In addition to these improvements, we've made it easier to control the display of instrument names, with double-click automatically opening the Staff/Part Properties dialog, and provide better control over the display of instrument names and brackets when hiding empty staves. Similar instruments are also numbered automatically when creating a new score, and there are improvements to the Instruments dialog to make it easier to control the position of newly added instruments.

Voices to Parts

One of the new features in MuseScore 3 was the ability to generate parts from individual voices on a staff, allowing you to combine multiple flutes or clarinets (for example) on a single staff. Unfortunately, a number of serious bugs in this feature prevented it from actually being usable. New contributor Niek van den Berg has made it a priority to get this working, and we're happy to report that MuseScore 3.5 has much improved support for this feature. To generate parts from a single voice of a staff, go to File > Parts, press the Single Part button, select the instrument, press the "+" button, and select the voice you wish to use. Repeat this process for the other voice(s) you wish to use.

Simplified Editing of Lines

When you want to change the duration of a crescendo or diminuendo, most users instinctively try to drag the handles. But this never actually did what you would expect—it just altered the length of the line without changing which note it was logically attached to. You needed to use Shift plus the cursor keys to actually change the duration. Martin Keary/Tantacrul, MuseScore’s Head of Design, pushed for us to improve this, and now we have. In MuseScore 3.5, dragging the end handles of hairpins and other lines will change their actual durations. There are other improvements to the behavior of editing lines as well, but since one of the goals was to make the process more discoverable, we'd like you to try things out and see for yourself!

Tremolo Layout

New contributor Howard Chang has made some really nice improvements to the layout of tremolos, meaning you will need to do a lot less manual adjustments. However, this also means if you’ve made careful adjustments for tremolos in previous versions, they now need a reset. MuseScore 3.5 will also support the "beamed half note" style of minim-based two-note tremolo commonly used in older piano and orchestral music. You can select this style in the Inspector.

Enharmonic Transposition

Howard also implemented a long-requested feature allowing you to specify—in Staff/Part Properties for an instrument—whether transposition should prefer flats or sharps in the key signature. So saxophonists who prefer seeing Db major over C# major when transposing from B major concert will be happy!

Piano Roll Editor

Mark McKay, who implemented a bunch of piano roll improvements a few releases ago, has implemented many more for 3.5, including tools to make it easier to edit notes (adding and erasing, cut and paste, dragging groups of notes, adjusting ties), keyboard shortcuts for zooming, a way to highlight individual rows in the note area, and enhancements to the levels window to make it possible to set levels for multiple notes at a time.

Measure and Multimeasure Rest Numbers

Measure numbers now support a number of new features, including the ability to display centered under the measures. Multimeasure rests can also be customized further. The relevant settings can be found in the Inspector and in Format > Style.

Accessibility

We continue to make advances in the accessibility of MuseScore, both with respect to keyboard navigation and screenreader feedback. In MuseScore 3.5, the navigation of the palettes is improved dramatically, and screenreader feedback is improved for a number of elements. We also can now support the Orca screenreader on Linux, and improvements to MusicXML export will facilitate conversion to Braille music.

Other

  • New smooth scrolling option for playback in continuous view
  • Double-click a header or footer to access the dialog for editing it
  • Ability to set notehead scheme (e.g., named noteheads) for individual notes
  • JACK audio/MIDI support working on all platforms
  • Store backup files in a separate folder
  • Improvements to the wording and appearance of various UI elements
  • New splash screen with progress messages
  • Fixes for a variety of crashes, score corruptions, and other bugs
  • There are many, many more improvements for you to explore in the MuseScore 3.5 Alpha Release Notes
  • And many more for you to explore in the MuseScore 3.5 Beta Release Notes

Comments

I love the new chord symbol playback functionality. So far it's working flawlessly. Thanks for all the voicing and playback options. I didn't expect so much!

In reply to by ermite

Hi, maybe this will help (albeit the long route to getting the result you want) and maybe your just want templates. I, too, am missing templates. there are no templates at the start of score creation and none in my templates folder. MuseScore3, I had MuseScore2, from a while back. Not sure how to get templates but I did finally discover that to add instruments as you wish you must go to General>Choose Instruments (double click) and then individual instruments show up that you can add at will.

I was originally wanting a template for a solo instrument with piano but found none. I overcame that by creating my own. Now I have to find out how to save my own template.

All the best. Screen Shot 2020-10-14 at 3.42.16 PM.png Screen Shot 2020-10-14 at 3.42.22 PM.png

In reply to by travelingcell

Please start a new thread about this if need be. MuseScore 3.5 is out of Beta since quite a while now.

As far as I can tell templates are where they always were and do show in the New Score wizard and your 1st screenshot even shows them. And "Grand stave" is a Solo Piano template, but there is one in the Solo section too (scroll down your wizard screen)

In reply to by John Gessner

This thread is about MuseScore 3.5 beta, from back in 2020 - are you still trying to use that version? If so, you will find the templates by going to File / New, entering information into the first screen of the wizard (title, etc) then moving on to the next screen. You'll see a list of categories (General, Choral, Chamber Music, etc), then just click a category to show the templates with the category.

In the current version - 4.0.1 - the process is similar, except the templates are on the first screen of the wizard instead of the second, and if you did not previously use a template, you'd need to click "Create from Template" at the top of the wizard to switch from choosing individual instruments to selecting a template.

The instrument change still messes up key signatures when you change to a new instrument in a different transposition and click the concert pitch button.

I cannot seem to get the 3.5 beta working on Ubuntu 20.04, 64-bit. I am running the latest up-to-date Ubuntu 20.04, and then if I download the latest MuseScore 3.5 Beta build that I can find (from this specific forum post), and then try to run it, I get the small blue window that opens, and a window that says "Help up improve MuseScore", but that's all I get. It never progresses further than that.

I have attached a screenshot.

Can someone help me with what I'm perhaps doing wrong?

Attachment Size
Screenshot from 2020-07-02 14-04-16.png 453.75 KB

Hello.
Thank you very much for your development and new ideas!
Please tell me can you add some new score information fields on the first screen of master of creating new score?
For example:
Title, subtitle, composer, years of the composer's life, author of the text, date of creating composition and tc...
In general, expand the form of information about the score in the same way as for example in sibelius.
And also add the ability to edit these fields.
Many thanks!
Regards, Vladislav.
p.s. Sorry for my poor English :)

In reply to by vlad-mus

Title, subtitle, composer and lyricist are the things the new score wizard asks for already (and ever since). You can add the dates to composer and lyricist if you need or want to. And of course these settings are all editable after the score has been created, in the title frame and in File > Score Properties

In reply to by vlad-mus

Yes, this is something we've noticed as well, and is on our list of things to fix. The good news (I guess) is that the rest of the fields aren't really used for anything in particular, unless you choose to access that information when creating a header or footer. Like, there is a "movement number" field where you can put that information, but it won't display anywhere unless you edit your score's header or footer to reference that property using the corresponding metadata tag.

There is a formatting bug - if you have three lines of lyrics in a piano grand staff, the second and third lines overlap with the base staff.

In reply to by pianoavabiz

I assume you are referring to continuous view? If so, that's not so much a bug as a deliberate limitation to keep continuous view from being as slow as it was in MuseScore 2. But it's also not a new issue with the beta - it's been that way ever since MuseScore 3 came out. Luckily, we've found a way around this and as of a couple of days ago, it's improved. So you can test this in the nightly builds, or wait for the next update to the 3.5 prerelease - I would expect a "release candidate" fairly soon.

Do you still have an unanswered question? Please log in first to post your question.