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.

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!

Code Formatting

Run ./hooks/install.sh to install a pre-commit hook that will format your staged files. Requires that you install uncrustify.

If you have problems, please report them. To uninstall, run ./hooks/uninstall.sh.