Music Monday: MuseScore
This Monday’s “Music Monday” is a double promotion. A dual ad of sorts.
MuseScore
First, I want to talk about MuseScore. Over the years, I’ve used a few music transcription programs, the last being Encore, which I bought a long time ago and upgraded a few times. In recent years, Encore has come under new ownership and, as far as I can tell, the owners are supposed to be reworking it, but there has been no further news on this for a while.
Since I’ve been using Encore for Music Monday transcriptions, I decided to investigate Encore alternatives, hoping to come across something newer and, perhaps, affordable. I’ve known about Sibelius for years, and while it certainly seems an excellent product that receives frequent updates, it is very expensive for a music hobbyist like me. Then I stumbled upon MuseScore.
MuseScore is free, open-source music writing software. This means it doesn’t cost money to use, and the code is available for anyone who wants to contribute to keeping the software up-to-date, fixing bugs, adding new features, and so on. It’s free, so that must mean it’s pretty basic, right?
Wrong.
When I started messing with MuseScore, I was immediately blown away by how easy it is to use, and how powerful it is. It’s at least as good as Encore. In fact, I’d say it’s better. I could describe the features, but I haven’t yet explored everything it can do so I would hardly do it justice. Check out the website and, if you’re interested in music transcription, try it out for yourself.
But MuseScore is more than just software. There’s a whole community of musicians sharing their sheet music and offering tips and advice. Membership to the MuseScore community is free, but if you want more features (e.g., advanced stats on your uploaded scores, access to professional scores, audio mixing tools, etc.), you can pay for an upgrade to “Pro” status.
To find out more about MuseScore, go to MuseScore.org.
YouTube
Second, I want to talk about YouTube, or more particularly my YouTube channel. I’ve had this channel for a few years and I’ve used it mainly to post music videos (a number of which have featured on Music Mondays). Since I’ve been working with MuseScore, I’ve started posting some of my MuseScore creations.
For example, this is a fun re-working of Debussy’s “Passepied” I made using MuseScore:
If you want to see what else I have there, go visit my channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/ColinSmithMusicVideos. And if you want to be sure you don’t miss anything I post, subscribe!
That’s all for the ads.
Have a Merry Musical Monday!
