MuseScore: Music notation and composition software

MuseScore is an open source and free music notation software. For support, contribution, 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

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 http://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, ported to C++ and customized
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
mstyle Clone of KDE4 style Oxygen
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
- thirdparty/diff Not used currently. Diff, Match and Patch Library
- thirdparty/ofqf OSC server interface. Based on OSC for Qt4
- 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. (http://code.soundsoftware.ac.uk/projects/beatroot-vamp/repository)

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

Else can just download the latest source release tarball from https://github.com/musescore/MuseScore/releases, 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 https://musescore.org/en/developers-handbook/testing for instructions on how to run the test suite.

stevel05/MuseScore