Music notation and composition software

MuseScore is an open source and free music notation software. For support, contribution, and bug reports visit MuseScore.org. Fork and make pull requests!

Features

• WYSIWYG design, notes are entered on a "virtual notepaper"
• TrueType font(s) for printing & display allows for high quality scaling to all sizes
• Easy & fast note entry
• Many editing functions
• MusicXML import/export
• MIDI (SMF) import/export
• MuseData import
• MIDI input for note entry
• Integrated sequencer and software synthesizer to play the score
• Print or create pdf files

More info

• MuseScore Homepage
• MuseScore Git workflow instructions
• How to compile MuseScore?

License

MuseScore is licensed under GPL version 2.0. See LICENSE.GPL in the same directory.

Packages

• aeolus: Clone of Aeolus. Disabled by default in the stable releases. See http://dev-list.musescore.org/Aeolus-Organ-Synth-td7578364.html. Kept as an example of how to integrate with a complex synthesizer.

• assets: Graphical assets, use them if you need a MuseScore icon. For logo, color, etc., see https://musescore.org/en/about/logos-and-graphics.

• awl: Audio Widget Library, from the MusE project.

• build: Utility files for build.

• bww2mxml: Command line tool to convert BWW files to MusicXML. BWW parser is used by MuseScore to import BWW files.

• demos: A few MuseScore files to demonstrate what can be done.

• fluid: Clone of FluidSynth@sourceforge, ported to C++ and customized. Code now at fluidsynth@github.

• fonts: Contains fontforge source (sfd) + ttf/otf fonts. MuseScore includes the "Emmentaler" font from the Lilypond project.

• libmscore: Data model of MuseScore.

• mscore: Main code for the MuseScore UI.

• msynth: Abstract interface to Fluid + Aeolus.

• mtest: Unit testing using QTest.

• omr: Optical music recognition.

• share: Files moved to /usr/share/... on install.

• test: Old tests. Should move to mtest.

• vtest: Visual tests. Compare reference images with current implementation.

• thirdparty: Contains projects which are included for convenience, usually to integrate them into the build system to make them available for all supported platforms.

  • thirdparty/rtf2html: Used for capella import. Clone from rtf2html@sourceforge, code now at rtf2html@github.

  • thirdparty/dtl: Used for the score comparison tool. Diff Template Library.

  • thirdparty/ofqf: OSC server interface. Based on OSC for Qt4, code now at ofq@github.

  • thirdparty/singleapp: Clone from Qt Single Application.

  • thirdparty/portmidi: Clone from PortMidi.

  • thirdparty/beatroot: It's a core part of BeatRoot Vamp Plugin by Simon Dixon and Chris Cannam, used in MIDI import for beat detection.

  • thirdparty/qt-google-analytics: Clone from qt-google-analytics.

Building

Read the developer handbook for a complete build walkthrough and a list of dependencies.

Getting sources

If using git to download repo of entire code history, type:

git clone https://github.com/musescore/MuseScore.git
cd MuseScore

Otherwise, you can just download the latest source release tarball from the Releases page, and then from your download directory type:

tar xzf MuseScore-x.x.x.tar.gz
cd MuseScore-x.x.x

Release Build

To compile MuseScore, type:

make release

If something goes wrong, then remove the whole build subdirectory with make clean and start new with make release.

Running

To start MuseScore, type:

./build.release/mscore/mscore

The Start Center window will appear on every invocation until you disable that setting via the "Preferences" dialog.

Installing

To install to default prefix using root user, type:

sudo make install

Debug Build

A debug version can be built by doing make debug instead of make release.

To run the debug version, type:

./build.debug/mscore/mscore

Testing

See mtest/README.md or the developer handbook for instructions on how to run the test suite.

The new script testing facility is also available to create your own automated tests. Please try it out!