Thanks a lot for watching. This video took around 8 months to produce and involved a reasonable amount of production costs. If you would like to help me finance my future videos and get a sneak look at how I put them together, please consider becoming a patron. www.patreon.com/Tantacrul. If you can't do that, I obviously understand. Even sharing this video on social media helps enormously (but only if you think it deserves to be shared!). I also have a really cool Discord server: Discord: t.co/a3oYi1Rbnc?amp=1
Congrats! I used Musescore from my early school days all the way through my college degree in music and beyond. I'm so appreciative of people like you that are devoted to open source software. What a gift to the world!!
From a bowed string player perspective, a cello thumb fingering would be good without switching back and forth between text and special input, if it is possible to make. Like, a thumb position symbol in the default font. I need that 80% of the time and it's lacking. Also, the ability to denote instrument positions (applicable to bowed strings), like they have in the Suzuki books. Dotted line above a bunch of notes with name of the position, useful for newbie players just starting out, and possibly orchestra players who want to synchronize the sound quality. While I like the form you're bringing to M4, a bit of function would be cool too.
I also seem to recall that he was the lead designer, or a designer, for ubuntu touch.. That blew me away when i found out.. Good ol' Tanty's got some seniority under his belt, that's for sure..
As a programmer, seeing the spacing between notes update whilst siding a note vertically to account for the accidentals and arpeggio marking made me audibly gasp, this is some *incredible* work!!
Yes!! It must've been so tricky to account for _all_ of that, especially considering engraving often doesn't have a one-size-fits-all solution and involves _so many_ corner cases!
@@Bentroen_ The toughest part would probably be working out all the precendence/dependency order issues. If you're not careful, you'd end up with dependency loops or repeated reflows, and that path leads to very bad performance problems. The only really easy way to avoid that, is to live with the sorts of compromises MuseScore 3 had, wherein some things just have to have enough padding to accommodate things that might be added to them later (and by later here, I mean later in the program's internal computational flow). In order to have that "tucking" he was talking about in 4, without said perf issues, you've got to absolutely nail the depencency/precedence order, which is very non-trivial. I'm actually mildly curious about whether they used a two-pass system, first calculating the minimum amount of space everything needs, and then going back and figuring out where to actually put it all.
@@jonadabtheunsightly very interesting insight! I, too, am curious to see how they approached that, I was really fascinated by everything responding so quickly and smoothly - and that's usually the result of really well-thought code. Such a good thing that this is all public and open so we can learn from it as well =)
Bro you literally just revolutionized the whole classical music world. Any composition student in school rn have the most powerful composition tool since paper and pencil was invented. This is going to completely change music education, I can't commend you enough. Maybe I'll transcribe the grosse fugue to learn how to use it.
True. I was at a class about Chorals, when the prof announced that in the morning version 4 was released and the whole class went wild and was happy and excited.
I agree, I learned music engraving mainly thru MuseScore. Even in writing by hand, I'm copying its style. Now that it is even more beautiful and conforms to the established rules of prior elegant engravers, I'll learn more from it.
@@d42 Only tangentially related, but it would be interesting to see an AI made to do score playback, with the training data being real performances of a given instrument. That would probably be way more complicated to make than I realize tho EDIT: Ok turns out that's sort of what NotePerformer is
I’m going to cry you all did a fantastic job. I have a score I made back in 2019 and planned on playing it in my senior highschool concert in spring 2020. That concert never happened, and I never got to hear the final score. With the new playback it sounds so beautiful and almost like it was played by my friends in that band. Thank you thank you endless thank youu to everyone involved. ❤️
MuseScore 4 has made me compose more in 2 weeks than in the prior 2 years combined. It's absolutely mind-boggling that this is free and open-source software. Kudos to the entire team!
It's personally got me back into composition, something I've barely touched since 2013 when I moved over to Linux full-time (Sibelius in Wine is just... not happening). I had tried a few times with MuseScore 3 but 4 is just lightyears ahead. I've run into a few bugs, but the beauty of FLOSS is that I know they'll be fixed, and if they aren't, well, I can try my hand at some C++ to fix them myself! @tantacrul I'm so glad that what seemed like a fun rant 4 years ago turned into, not only what seems like an amazing career move for you, but one of the best things to happen both to Music Notation and FLOSS software in a very long time. As someone who runs another very complex FLOSS application project, I understand completely how hard it is to do and what an amazing team you've managed to build. You're the hero we don't deserve!
I just saw this video with no real context (and, to be honest, no real experience with MuseScore since an earlier version--I'm not sure which--where the violin playback literally sounded more like a kazoo). Could someone please explain the reference to the eye icon and Einaudi?
@@philipmcniel4908 Tantacrul made a video a few years back, before having joined the development team for MuseScore, titled “Music Software & Interface Design: MuseScore” and in which he critiqued various aspects of the design of the then-current version of MuseScore. In it he recommends replacing their tour/tutorial system with having a button that could give information about the currently selected function, which he depicts as an “all seeing eye”. He then remarks that the eye would shrivel up upon seeing the user enter “Einaudi” in the composer field, apparently out of a strong distaste for Ludovico Eianaudi’s music.
A few notes here; 1) It's cool to see MuseScore gradually becoming the definitive engraving program. Absolutely love that you put your money where your mouth was and it's really paid off. 2) I did not see you having worked on Paint 3D coming 3) This really feels like 2 or 3 iterations of the software all at once.
Hey, you probably won’t read this but thank you so much. As a longtime musescore user, to see every single pain-in-the-ass “feature” of musescore 3 just being addressed was so validating. After years of having to dig through forums and manually have to figure out how to use the platform, it is a little bittersweet to know all my archaic and niche knowledge will no longer be of much use, but I’m so very glad these changes are made. I audibly have been yelling “that’s what I’ve been saying!” everytime you highlight something (the parts tab was truly one of the most God-forsaken creations known to man). Thank you so much for all the hard work you and your team have done over the years. :)
I just remember opening musescore for an assignment or project every few weeks and immediately googling how to make tuples every single time. This is incredible
I’m looking forward to trying it again. Last time I tried was probably about 2 years ago or something - I persevered for a while but gave up in the end, just found it really unintuitive and infuriating.
Yeah 😭 I was about to sing along with the voices during the miserere mei, deus, they sound so authentic 😭 edit : "gradual tempo changes", I guess I'm still gonna need to put those half-dozen hidden tempo indications if I want a Ral...
I tested one of my pieces from MS3 (containing brass) to MS4, and I fell back in my chair upon listening to the exported file. (I couldn't listen to playback within the program; it seems everyone is having choppy/crackly/inconsistent audio issues. I even noticed some inconsistencies in the tempo within the exported file... hopefully it gets fixed in the next update, whenever that will be.)
I haven't even finished the video, but I want to thank you, from the bottom of my heart. MuseScore has been one of the greatest teaching tools for myself and my children. My kids (little, tiny kids) have written countless songs and we've been able to compile them into a book of family sheet music...an heirloom we shall treasure forever. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
I just want to say, I've always been tremendously impressed with and grateful for Musescore. I began using it in my late teens in 2010 and it was such a gift to me. The people who made it are heroes.
A year ago I started in a choir with not that much knowledge in music theory or reading sheet music. Transfering score from paper to musescore has been a great way to learn both notation and a lot of our songs. I can't really play the piano so I've been creating practice tracks in musescore and they've also helped others. Also, a big reason why I happened to even try the app in the first place was that I had watched so many Tantacrul videos on notation software. Thank you MuseScore & Tantacrul. ♥️
MuseScore 4 was the best software release this whole year, and I love how you not just talk about your personal experiences but introduce the team members and all the challenges faced, as well es skills needed. I looooove such stories, and it makes products much more tangible and more important Thanks a lot for all the effort to the whole team and you! The Quit Sibelius button was 10/10
I have a slight feeling that the luck you had with getting such talented people was more than luck. You are spearheading the biggest innovation in musical notation software ever, all your expertise and ambitions are reassuring, and everything is out there for the world to see - That's gotta attract some talent!
That and the work put into the TH-cam channel attracted a ton of eyes that wouldn't have known about the project. I have never used a notation software but have now watched several 30+ minute rants about them. That's got to be great advertising for the job.
the playback overhaul is absolutely INSANE. well done! so cool to have the developer of a software like this make videos giving insight into their process.
I started my first job as a developer a little over a year ago, and was hired as a UI developer on a complete overhaul of an ancient product. While the specific problems and challenges you've faced are totally different from anything I'll ever face in the life of this project, the KINDS of problems were so familiar. It was really cool to see the parallels.
When I heard the voices at 32:55 I genuinely teared up. The fact that notation playback can sound that good and imbue that much emotion is outstanding work
I'm positive you're right, but while I can hear some sort of difference I can't quantify it at all. Perhaps I have brain damage? Ah well, I can always console myself with the soothing sound of the kitchen waste disposal consuming a string of live christmas lights.
I just finished my first bit of a concerto in MS4, and my whole life has just changed. I've been writing classical music on guitar for around 10 years or more now and I've always had trouble with the technology of DAWs, notation and any other method of putting my ideas into expansive performance apps. MS 4 has done that for me, and in my first three hours I've already produced a piece of music that sounds like it's being played by real cellists and string players. It's emotional, dramatic and the dynamics are huge. I'm so thankful to all the people that made this happen. I'm certain that this is a life changing moment for me. It's really astounding. It can only get better as well which is just ?!*?!&?'!
Hello fellow guitarist!! It's absolutely insane how much better the guitar playback is, and tools in general for being able to quickly write in guitar -- as convoluted as it always is 😂
I've never once needed notation software. Found this video randomly in my feed. But it instantly captured me, and the work the entire team has done on this is absolutely stunning.
@@KatzRool why wouldn't they be able to release a composition program as a paid version? it does not include any copyrighted sheet music. unless of course they use gpl libraries.
@@ElvianEmpire Because Musescore is licensed under GPL v3, which states that any modifications must be also made open source. To make a paid version you'd have to rewrite the whole program from scratch, using no GPL v3 licensed code. EDIT: I'm no longer sure if this is correct
@@KingJellyfishII but they are the programmers of it, they decided to use GPL. Unless any of the libraries they use are GPL, they could have chosen something different.
@@KingJellyfishII not really, if they are the copyright holders (which they are) they can release under a different license if they want to, even a proprietary one, it's other people/companies that can't release a proprietary derivative of the software. Of course the source that is already out there for free would be impossible to remove from the internet and if they ever went proprietary a fork would appear within seconds, and it would be entirely legal so they can't sue.
As a hobbyist composer, you all are doing not only incredibly impressive, but incredibly important work in making good, accessible software for anyone. Truly stellar work.
Hobbyist here. I’m super excited for this new version as well! I feel so seen by this video. Despite not giving any feedback, they fixed basically all the annoyances I didn’t even realize were there
32:53 My GOD, that's so much better!!!!! The music is alive now! Yes, gradual tempo changes (and the updated software as a whole) was indeed worth the time if you ask me! The whole MuseScore team should be proud of what they've accomplished here! Good job guys, merry christmas and happy new year to you all!
That's exactly my thought: The music felt more alive in the new version. Both did sound good, but the new just is far better. And if you had the new, you'd never want to go back to the old, because it then feels dead. Props to the whole team from my side as well!
As someone who isn't very knowledgable about music: the MS3 versions sound like castlevania or undertale songs, the MS4 versions more like high-budget game or movie scores
@@zeppie_ This is actually more right than you might first think. As he explained in the video, VSTs (the thing that make the midi have a sound) can sound fairly good, if you give it good data to work with... Older VSTs (and electronic audio equipment in general) was not capable of producing these more advanced sounds (at least on 8 and 16 bit hardware) making "real sounding" digital sound practically impossible. So the hardware and software limitation of that era is kinda what gave us the 8/16- bit "sound". Now we have better hard- and software that CAN produce "realistic sounding" sounds, giving us the "high budget" sound you were probably thinking of. Hopefully this was not too neardy or hard to understand. Thanks for reading yall. :)
I'm not a musician. I'm not a composer. I've never used a notation app. I can't even read sheet music. But I've become obsessed with your videos on MuseScore and its competitors...
I’ve been using notation software since 1999, and I can’t tell you how much of a dream come true it is to hear you describe the innovations you made in Musescore. The features you’re describing are things that I’ve wanted for over 20 years. Thank you, Martin, and all the talented team members at Musescore for your hard work on this project!
I can't even begin to describe how grateful I am for you and your team's work. Thank you so much for making this wonderful technology available for everyone.
The playback changes have me in awe... The possibilities for composing on the go, creating sketches without a DAW and TEACHING are immense. I'm in my final year of my teaching degree, and will be making MuseScore the standard for my future students to learn with. The sheer amount of improvement with each update is staggering. MuseScore is incredible.
It's legitimately impressive that a free application can do this much, when there are companies out there charging high prices for many of the same functions. Even though I'm not a regular user, I respect and appreciate all the hard work that went into this.
And out of all of them, musescore has been the most promising and has improved the most with time. And now, with musesounds they have even more potential.
I feel like within the next 10 years, Tantacrul is gonna eventually feel like he has to tackle “the vocalist problem” in which voices are constrained to just singing notes, and he’s basically going to invent professional vocaloids. Like he doesn’t have to do that, but omg as someone who has has composed for voice in MuseScore, that would be an amazing thing (yet daunting task) to see
@@Jono997 Yeah, but, like... non-anime vocaloids. Because vocaloids, as cool as they are, are a bit of a hard sell for the Contemporary Classical crowd, I feel.
@@grzegorzbrzeczyszczykiewic563 Those also already exist. Leon, Lola, Miriam, Big Al, Sweet Ann, Cyber Diva, Cyber Songman, Chris, Amy, Ken, Kaori, etc.
This is what turns out when the design team cares As a user of MuseScore and interested in graphic/UX design the appreciation I have for you and your team’s work is immense. This revamp is one of the best version to version software redesigns of all time. The attention to detail and awareness of user needs is what makes this change so masterful. The effort you went through to remake every interaction,prompt, etc. just to get rid of the unpractical qt widgets to improve user experience is an example of this. Bravo!
I'm crying tears of joy and I’m not even joking. I've been using musescore for at least 12/13 years, I'm the guy that gets called by musicians friends when they need to know how to do something in musescore. I love it, as young music student with not a lot of money having a good writing software for free meant the world to me. I spent countless hours on it and I can’t wait to do the same on this new version. You all did something amazing.
I remember, yearss ago, when tantacrul was destroying Finale and Sibelius, thinking "this is funny, but it's easier to criticize than to make...", and then I thought that was "ballzy" when he announced that he was joining the MuseScore team. Today I am very pleased how this has turned into.
@@InXLsisDeo He never destroyed Finale, he covered every other main notation software (Musescore, Sibelius and Dorico), but alas, never Makemusic's Finale. I really wish he did though, because it's the one I use and, as amazing as it is for certain things, I could write a PhD thesis on its jankiness.
Fucking hell, the new sounds are breathtaking. If I heard them in isolation, I'd have absolutely no idea they weren't live performances. Maybe next to a real orchestra I could tell, but that's absolutely astonishing. I love orchestral composition, but I don't have my own symphony orchestra, this is absolutely life changing for me.
This is the kind of industry changing stuff that I think of when I think about “who is the best musician”, not top 10 charts for pop music or celebrity lists, while some of those people can undoubtedly have a nice deal of musical talent and skill, free and open source software that can notate music intuitively AND have the ability to rival even the sound quality of a live performance is a revolutionary feat to achieve, what an awesome community. FOSS devs are the best kinds of devs because the only benefit they have is the betterment of humanity as opposed to money, this will do wonders for lowering the barrier for entry as much as can be achieved so that anyone with creative talent can compose what they want, without too much technical knowledge required.
I’m an ex-Sibelius user and a Dorico fan. I’ve hardly used MuseScore but it previously didn’t give off a great first impression and looked like free software often does. What an amazing job you’ve done with MuseScore 4-it looks brilliant. As a software developer in a small company with a handful of devs, seeing the amount of stuff you’ve done is absolutely mind-blowing!
@@Bixmy Yea, there's been a weird thing happening in open source Windows software recently; they're all starting to look like apps designed for human beings with eyes. Blender, OBS, Musescore, they all look great. It's so weird considering how ugly they all used to look.
I am no musician but holly crap that playback demo was mind blowing. it was the difference between night and day. its teams like yours that make the lives of normal people like myself more enjoyable and easier to get through.
I've been using musescore 3 for years and after watching this video, I can now honestly say all the bugs that I have encountered have been fixed. To all the crazy gifted developers, musicians, contributors, testers, who spend endless nights trying to perfect the musescore4 is without a doubt a huge sacrifice. You guys shared your time, talent, resources so we can now enjoy the fruits of your labor! Huge thanks to all of you! I do have 1 question: will all my save musescore 3 files be seamlessly transported to musescore4? I have yet to download musescore4 but I'm so excited to try it already!
For years I’ve been predicting that Musescore would grab a large young audience and then become a professional standard or at least the basis for one. Incredible work that I’m so happy to see. Absolutely astounding!!
I was 13 when I started notating and obviously couldn't afford any reputable software. Musescore's community and the fact it was free was absolutely incredible and vital for my musical development. I have seen the same from dozens of musicians my age. You're on to something here for sure
@@theohornsby51 Musescore gave me the tools to really flourish as a composer. I started notating in it roughly 3 years ago, when I was in the latter end of my 15th year. I wouldn't consider myself a Composer if it wasn't for my experience with Musescore!
Musescore was what I picked up for composing (hobbyist amateur) because A) I was unwilling to spend money, B) it sucked the least, and C) I can't use a DAW to save my life
@@lankythedanky Same with me! I started using the first one as a teen, mostly when I started getting into playing the ocarina and had a hard time finding music in the right range, so I'd transcribe and transpose my own. Then I got into arranging multiple instrument pieces, and lately I've been doing some acapella arrangements for church choir. I've been using it for probably around 10 years as I'm pretty sure I started with 1.1 or 1.2 or something, and the improvement is amazing! Easier to use, easier to read, and much better sounds. I updated my Mac from 2012 last year, and since it was so old (from Lion to Catalina), the whole thing had to be wiped. I had Musescore 2 installed, and I played around with it, and I had forgotten how bad it was! Nice to see these improvements making it even nicer and easier to use for those who are teens now and wanting to learn more about music. I went into web design, but music is a huge interest of mine, so having free to use programs like this is great.
I use Musescore almost every day. For transcriptions, arrangements, making assignments for students. What an incredible gift this is. I'm eternally grateful
Thank you for having quality subtitles. My immigrant mother is a musician, but has trouble hearing English, especially non American accents. I was able to introduce to her the limitations of playback with your video.
As someone who struggles with hearing audio and concentrating on video at the same time, I applaud anyone who adds subtitles to their videos- thank you 🙏 😊
An absolutely incredible monument of love and dedication to music, creativity, and art. MuseScore 4 is truly impressive software for both newbies and veterans to create music more intuitively than anything we've ever seen. Amazing work from every single person who touched this project, who has now contributed to the history of music notation!
I'm a software engineer and musician, and I have been using MuseScore and Audacity for a really long time. I can't really express how interesting this video was to me, thank you so much for sharing!
Its crazy how nice this guy's videos looks. Visually they flow so smoothly and aesthetically, they really are on a level above basically every other video I watch. The zooms and transitions are so nice while also serving a purpose every time.
Holy shite, the difference between the playback of each version is incredible! I didn't like the dodgy midi in musescore 3 as my scores never sounded correct and always felt wrong, but the new playback system might get me motivated to compose again.
The biggest drawback in MuseScore is still that you can't copy and paste passages including alternating time signature changes. When you copy all time signature changes are lost and you have to manually put them back in, etc. This is a huuge and basic thing which has been missing in MuseScore for years.. Please look at the issue: Request option to copy system elements with copy/paste (ALL ELEMENTS)! Hope there will be a solution soon.
that playback overhaul with musesounds was incredible! i'd always wondered why something like that wasn't possible previously, and the answer just turned out to be "it's a massive pain in the ass"
the playback was absolutely astonishing - its not just that it sounds better. You can actually hear the intention of the music - unbelievable. Audacity’s interface has been a mess for a long time so I’m looking forward to seeing what you do with that too. Love your videos and this pivot into revolutionising musicians tools is just amazing. Congratulations!!
This is absolutely incredible. Everybody involved in this deserves a frickin medal!! The playback differences especially are astounding - Musescore 3 sounds like a MIDI instrument set while Musescore 4 actually sounds like somebody playing a song.
As a musician, MuseScore & Sibelius user, and a software developer (not necessarily in that order), I really appreciate all the details in this video. I'm gonna give this thing a test drive. As a long time Audacity fan, I'm super excited to see the overhaul of that as well. Man, audacity has so many of those little annoyances lol.
Aside from the incredible amount of work put into this project and the flawless production quality of this video, props to you for your admirable display of humility. Never once did I hear you credit yourself - only the team. It was obvious that you recognize the importance of your people and the community as superior. It takes lots of unseen discipline and intentionality to maintain a humble leadership position, and you do it well. Thanks for all the work you have done and will continue to do. This may be the longest comment I’ve ever written on TH-cam, but damn, I felt obligated after seeing this video and internalizing just how much grit went into this release. Personally, you inspire me to keep pursuing music and my interest in music notation. I’m probably going to become a Patreon supporter in the near future, because I really believe in the work you’re doing. Thanks a lot Tantacrul!
So many people wanted so hard to make composition software better. Your team and the motivation behind that just tapped into people pursuing other field's dreams which is why you managed to find so many criminology dogs
As a former software engineer and amateur musician I am absolutely awestruck by the thought and incredible work put into this amazing program. Thank you for such a great gift for musicians throughout the world.
This is so amazing! Especially the guys from Ukraine deserve the highest honor for contributing to this project while being shelled left and right. Bless you all! I'd like to support you in some way.
I'm not trying to reduce their dedication or bravery, but it is worth keeping in mind that until very recently, the majority of Ukraine has not been experiencing shelling, bombing, and assault. For many it has been business as usual, but with less access to food and vital war resources perhaps they may have been doing this during their free time while serving in the conflict. In which case the greatest respect to these men
@@ea6937 not every man will serve , not every man should serve. There are many vital rolew that can be played outside the line of duty. The short answer is, we don't know. And it's not our business to know
thanks for having accurate and well time subs, it means alot more to us who cant hear fully than alot of people think. :] great vids as well, keep up the good work
I just wanted to say thank you guys for making a dedicated Linux version. Understandably, not that many app developers take the time to do that due to us being a small demographic. I greatly appreciate you taking the time to make a Linux application rather than leaving us to try and sort it out with weird compatibility things that may or may not function properly.
As a fellow developer, I super appreciate your efforts to give credit to your workers and contributors. Too often that stuff gets lost or mis-attributed to whoever was the team lead. Nothing but respect to every contributor, this shit is hard.
I am not a user of music score applications but I love what you did here, people like yourself are desperately needed in all Open Source projects from GIMP to VLC to even KDE and GNOME. People that put the needed attention to detail into the product and get things done.
I'm a programmer that also plays (poorly) guitar. I tried a few notation applications before, and while they were far from perfect, I always appreciated the complexity and challenges they involve. Watching this video, what this team achieved is just insane. I now have to try MuseScore 4, it's been a while since I played with any notation software.
About to graduate college with a BM in Music Composition using only Musescore (and now Musescore 4) my entire career! So excited for all the changes and so thankful for all the work the team put in over the years on this project. You guys are changing the game!
I like how you just slipped in that your team is now working on Audacity. That is one foundational piece of audio software, good luck! I hope it goes well, that will be a huge win for the audio world.
They've actually already released some changes to make Audacity a more capable DAW, too! One of their changes that comes to mind is that you can finally resize recording snippets without cutting/trimming them up.
Have been using musescore for little more then a year and it's awesome to get a behind the scenes look. As a side note, besides being an accomplishment of software development it also shouldn't be underestimated the organisatorial accomplishment. Smaller teams often struggle with way less complexity. Looking forward to what's to come!
This is kind of unrelated to the video itself, but holy shit I LOVE your intro! I don't know why *exactly* why that is, but I think a big reason is because it is so short that it doesn't waste any time, and that it feels so impactful and powerful! It also just sounds extremely cathartic and having the text change style for every "beat" in the sound is super cool! Seriously, I am way too obsessed with your intro, it is way too good...
I am so unbelievably PUMPED for this!!!! I think my favorite improvement is the playback. Those examples with MS3 vs MS4 made my jaw drop, the quality increase is absolutely incredible!!! Especially the string sounds; the vibrato on those violins was frankly just ghastly. I cannot even begin to express how excited and appreciative I am of everyone who contributed to and worked on this absolute behemoth of an app, congratulations and thank you to every person who helped!!!
I still don't plan on using any kind of music notation software in my life, but I will still watch this entire videos more than once. Because it is just too good, as usual.
I know this is sad, but I've been looking forward to this video all day since I saw when it was scheduled to be posted on Twitter! I'm a teacher at the end of a long, tough term and I'm looking forward to a couple of weeks where I can indulge in Christmas stuff...and writing some music! Having an early dinner, a glass of wine and looking forward to nerding out over music software. Thanks Martin! Edit: Have watched. What an incredible piece of work. So, my workflow is stupidly convoluted in that I work in Sibelius (an old version), because I can work fast and I am familiar with it, then import my scores into MuseScore to finish things off. I strongly suspect I may just abandon Sibelius entirely now, and I will be spending a lot of time in MuseScore 4 over the coming weeks! I'm extremely glad people exist with the odd combination of skills required to undertake projects like this!
Hearing the comparisons between the old playback and MuseSounds was mind blowing. The poor quality of the default playback in scoring apps, and the hassle needed to make them better, has always been my biggest pet peeve with scoring software in the past. But MuseSounds sounds like it's exactly what I've wanted
@Tantacrul I don't write music, I don't even play an instrument, and I'm most certainly not a software developer or a UI-designer. But I like so many other people (the majority ??) am still a "software user", and as such I "know the pain" of badly designed software and UI in general. And that aspect alone was enough to make this video first captivate me, and then blow me away by the vision of the work, and the absolutely tremendous of work that went into "bringing it into reality". Massive kudos to You all for making the world a little bit better :) Best regards.
I will also say thanks for supporting so many different languages! I may be fluent in English, but I'm not fluent in English music theory so it helps a lot not having to translate everything.
This video has been extremely empowering to me. I am a long-time senior web developer, and it has been my dream to work on music scoring software; this video has motivated me to pick up where I left off in developing my web-based DAW, side-project which eventually will include music scoring (I now appreciate all the details that go into beaming). I love the idea of building upon an existing standard for notation (was it MPE?). A bunch of other companies including ROLI have taken their stab at it, but nothing has stuck until MIDI 2, which should be mainstream in a decade or so. In the meantime, I suppose most end-users will appreciate all the articulation support out of the box without having to touch any sample libraries; as you mentioned, the process is EXTREMELY tedious. That your team managed to package all the articulations and sounds in 90MB speaks measures (pun intended). For those of us like me who want to give back to the community, without C++ knowledge but web development knowledge, how can we give back to the community?
Your last line is what I was thinking the entire time I was watching. I'm in web dev as well and was just thinking the entire time that this is exactly the kind of work I wish I was doing. The team seems incredible. What a dream it would be to be a part of a project like this. I need to start looking through the repo.
This is awesome. I'm a senior dev and know that what you've all done is a herculean effort. I'm also a lifelong musician and It's the poorly designed creative software that often puts me off of putting my ideas "on paper". I know how much ubiquitous, well designed tools can act as an "enabling technology" that spurs creativity. Thanks you much for putting in real design effort!
User friendliness and UI is always ALWAYS an emotional roller coaster for me, because there's just... so so so many programs that are too hard to learn or too stiff to be useful, and to see something like this designed to be as usable as humanly possible with tons of community cooperation & new user feedback makes me just... SO happy!!!
The funny part concerning the playback is that I'm so used to awkward, stilted music from the old games I grew up playing, that there is a real charm in it for me. Like, I wouldn't say I prefer it, but that they are both really engaging in different ways. That being said, it's amazing what your team was able to accomplish. I'm really thankful to have you share it with us.
As a designer and QML developer for 9+ years, I enjoyed your video a lot! So relatable! I love the way you think and I have deep, deep respect for your ability to execute your ideas. One thing is to have a vision, the other is to get it on the street. I can’t even fathom the struggles you went trough. Thanks to everyone who contributed to make MuseScore 4 happen and especially you for sharing your experience with us!
Honestly, I moved over to Musescore 4 from Sibelius, and when a FREE music application outclasses one of the most recognized PAID options.... youve got a special application. Thank you and the whole team for making one of my most recent intense orchestration projects so much smoother to work on!
I've always wondered how Musescore managed to make this AMAZING music software is completely FREE, now I'm even more surprised that it's free, considering how much work has gone into it! I greatly appreciate all that you and your team have done! Please keep up the good work!
Honestly, reworking this should have been an impossible task and I commend everyone working on this project for keeping on pushing Sisyphus' boulder. The things you all have achieved are tremendous for the entire music industry and will hopefully be remembered as one of the great turning points in music.
As a graphic artist with no experience in composition I enjoyed both how clear your videos are explaining all the nuances of good design as well as downloading MS4 right after watching this and fooling around with it. The work you and the team put in shows and I commend you for it.
I am honestly so thrilled about MuseScore 4! I had no idea what to expect at first but I can’t get enough of it! I had been working on an arrangement for orchestra in MuseScore 3, and after the update came out imported it into 4, and oh my, it’s night and day. It’s so incredible to see just how much hard work that has gone into this project and how professional the whole program is now. I just can’t express my utter appreciation and amazement for this program. You’ve made my passion to arrange music even stronger, and have given others access to an amazing notation software! I’m so stoked!!!
ive been waiting for this video for so long aahhh!! ive been following the progress on ms4 as excitedly as gamers follow new pokemon releases and im literally so so glad to see this video uploaded!! it cannot be overstated how valuable your criticisms and analysis are for musicians and software designers alike. this peek into the process is golden!
I am not a musician myself by any means, but what you (and your teams) done here is really impressive and impactful. Also, this is quite unusual to have such a deep video essay about the work done. I applaud virtually!
This is mind boggling, a truly staggering amount of work. Been using RC1 and thinking, well this is great. I had no idea! "So yeah, by the by, we just thought we might sample a whole new orchestra sound font and make that available. . . " WHA??? I'm like, just stop inventing giant new tasks for yourselves, you'll never finish! But then you finished! Thank you to the whole incredible team.
I am a corporate IT minion, and not musically trained (though frequently attend concerts at venues like King’s Place and Cadogan Hall). I was introduced to Tantacrul through David Bruce’s delightful “5 Composers”, then the TH-cam algorithm proved it’s power by showing me that sweet sweet engraving video about a year ago. I cannot express how inspiring the Herculean Musescore 4* effort is. Bravo to you all! * Software which I have no involvement in, interaction with nor benefit from.
This has got to be one of the most illuminating videos on user interface and code development I've seen. Absolutely amazing as a musician seeing the lengths programmers are going to to make music shine!
Thanks a lot for watching. This video took around 8 months to produce and involved a reasonable amount of production costs. If you would like to help me finance my future videos and get a sneak look at how I put them together, please consider becoming a patron. www.patreon.com/Tantacrul. If you can't do that, I obviously understand. Even sharing this video on social media helps enormously (but only if you think it deserves to be shared!).
I also have a really cool Discord server:
Discord: t.co/a3oYi1Rbnc?amp=1
You mentioned a link in the description at 42:16 but I don't see it there. Did you forget?
Edit: Thank you for adding it!
Congrats! I used Musescore from my early school days all the way through my college degree in music and beyond. I'm so appreciative of people like you that are devoted to open source software. What a gift to the world!!
CHANGE YOUR TITLE ITS NOT INTRESTING ENOUGH
Hello, are there future plans to introduce auto-condensing on scores?
From a bowed string player perspective, a cello thumb fingering would be good without switching back and forth between text and special input, if it is possible to make. Like, a thumb position symbol in the default font. I need that 80% of the time and it's lacking.
Also, the ability to denote instrument positions (applicable to bowed strings), like they have in the Suzuki books. Dotted line above a bunch of notes with name of the position, useful for newbie players just starting out, and possibly orchestra players who want to synchronize the sound quality.
While I like the form you're bringing to M4, a bit of function would be cool too.
The fact that Tantacrul was the lead designer for Paint 3D is quite possibly the biggest anime plot twist in my life so far
he had a redemption arc, he is a complex character
@@marcogenovesi8570 lol
Well, thank you Tantacrul for the resize option on the canvas!
I also seem to recall that he was the lead designer, or a designer, for ubuntu touch.. That blew me away when i found out.. Good ol' Tanty's got some seniority under his belt, that's for sure..
@@ghibliq I wasn't lead designer but I did a lot on that product. Learned a lot about UX while working there!
As a programmer, seeing the spacing between notes update whilst siding a note vertically to account for the accidentals and arpeggio marking made me audibly gasp, this is some *incredible* work!!
Yes!! It must've been so tricky to account for _all_ of that, especially considering engraving often doesn't have a one-size-fits-all solution and involves _so many_ corner cases!
40:55 for those who are curious!
@@Bentroen_ The toughest part would probably be working out all the precendence/dependency order issues. If you're not careful, you'd end up with dependency loops or repeated reflows, and that path leads to very bad performance problems. The only really easy way to avoid that, is to live with the sorts of compromises MuseScore 3 had, wherein some things just have to have enough padding to accommodate things that might be added to them later (and by later here, I mean later in the program's internal computational flow). In order to have that "tucking" he was talking about in 4, without said perf issues, you've got to absolutely nail the depencency/precedence order, which is very non-trivial.
I'm actually mildly curious about whether they used a two-pass system, first calculating the minimum amount of space everything needs, and then going back and figuring out where to actually put it all.
I figured it works like literal collision boxes like you'd find in a 2D video game.
@@jonadabtheunsightly very interesting insight! I, too, am curious to see how they approached that, I was really fascinated by everything responding so quickly and smoothly - and that's usually the result of really well-thought code. Such a good thing that this is all public and open so we can learn from it as well =)
Bro you literally just revolutionized the whole classical music world. Any composition student in school rn have the most powerful composition tool since paper and pencil was invented. This is going to completely change music education, I can't commend you enough.
Maybe I'll transcribe the grosse fugue to learn how to use it.
True. I was at a class about Chorals, when the prof announced that in the morning version 4 was released and the whole class went wild and was happy and excited.
I think beethoven would be happy to hear about your choice
I agree, I learned music engraving mainly thru MuseScore. Even in writing by hand, I'm copying its style.
Now that it is even more beautiful and conforms to the established rules of prior elegant engravers, I'll learn more from it.
@@d42 literally how bro
@@d42 Only tangentially related, but it would be interesting to see an AI made to do score playback, with the training data being real performances of a given instrument. That would probably be way more complicated to make than I realize tho
EDIT: Ok turns out that's sort of what NotePerformer is
I’m going to cry you all did a fantastic job. I have a score I made back in 2019 and planned on playing it in my senior highschool concert in spring 2020. That concert never happened, and I never got to hear the final score. With the new playback it sounds so beautiful and almost like it was played by my friends in that band. Thank you thank you endless thank youu to everyone involved. ❤️
I was in a very similar situation! I cannot believe that this app with so much put into it is free
I'm glad I'm not the only one moved to tears about this
This is beautiful
MuseScore 4 has made me compose more in 2 weeks than in the prior 2 years combined. It's absolutely mind-boggling that this is free and open-source software. Kudos to the entire team!
I will tell you this. Musicians and composers are nothing if not passionate, and they put a lot of passion into developing MuseScore 4.
It's personally got me back into composition, something I've barely touched since 2013 when I moved over to Linux full-time (Sibelius in Wine is just... not happening). I had tried a few times with MuseScore 3 but 4 is just lightyears ahead. I've run into a few bugs, but the beauty of FLOSS is that I know they'll be fixed, and if they aren't, well, I can try my hand at some C++ to fix them myself!
@tantacrul I'm so glad that what seemed like a fun rant 4 years ago turned into, not only what seems like an amazing career move for you, but one of the best things to happen both to Music Notation and FLOSS software in a very long time. As someone who runs another very complex FLOSS application project, I understand completely how hard it is to do and what an amazing team you've managed to build. You're the hero we don't deserve!
I love the fact that the eye icon still made its way into MS4 despite having its basis in mocking the design of the previous versions.
I wonder if they included the joke about Einaudi as an easter egg
The eyecon
I just saw this video with no real context (and, to be honest, no real experience with MuseScore since an earlier version--I'm not sure which--where the violin playback literally sounded more like a kazoo). Could someone please explain the reference to the eye icon and Einaudi?
@@philipmcniel4908 th-cam.com/video/4hZxo96x48A/w-d-xo.html I believe
@@philipmcniel4908 Tantacrul made a video a few years back, before having joined the development team for MuseScore, titled “Music Software & Interface Design: MuseScore” and in which he critiqued various aspects of the design of the then-current version of MuseScore. In it he recommends replacing their tour/tutorial system with having a button that could give information about the currently selected function, which he depicts as an “all seeing eye”. He then remarks that the eye would shrivel up upon seeing the user enter “Einaudi” in the composer field, apparently out of a strong distaste for Ludovico Eianaudi’s music.
A few notes here;
1) It's cool to see MuseScore gradually becoming the definitive engraving program. Absolutely love that you put your money where your mouth was and it's really paid off.
2) I did not see you having worked on Paint 3D coming
3) This really feels like 2 or 3 iterations of the software all at once.
Hey, you probably won’t read this but thank you so much. As a longtime musescore user, to see every single pain-in-the-ass “feature” of musescore 3 just being addressed was so validating. After years of having to dig through forums and manually have to figure out how to use the platform, it is a little bittersweet to know all my archaic and niche knowledge will no longer be of much use, but I’m so very glad these changes are made. I audibly have been yelling “that’s what I’ve been saying!” everytime you highlight something (the parts tab was truly one of the most God-forsaken creations known to man). Thank you so much for all the hard work you and your team have done over the years. :)
Thank you very much!
Yes, parts drove me insane when I first encountered them. :D
I just remember opening musescore for an assignment or project every few weeks and immediately googling how to make tuples every single time. This is incredible
I’m looking forward to trying it again. Last time I tried was probably about 2 years ago or something - I persevered for a while but gave up in the end, just found it really unintuitive and infuriating.
@@zgrb tuplets are ctrl + # of tuplets.
Yeah 😭
I was about to sing along with the voices during the miserere mei, deus, they sound so authentic 😭
edit : "gradual tempo changes", I guess I'm still gonna need to put those half-dozen hidden tempo indications if I want a Ral...
The part where you compared the playback of V3 and V4 made me audibly gasp. You and the team are doing fantastic work! Enjoy the holidays!
I tested one of my pieces from MS3 (containing brass) to MS4, and I fell back in my chair upon listening to the exported file. (I couldn't listen to playback within the program; it seems everyone is having choppy/crackly/inconsistent audio issues. I even noticed some inconsistencies in the tempo within the exported file... hopefully it gets fixed in the next update, whenever that will be.)
@@ENCELADUSCompositions Most likely a problem with your machine's processing power and memory
@@cfaibah Yeah, I've been thinking it's coming time for a new CPU. The one I have is over a decade old, from 2011.
@@ENCELADUSCompositions Setting to software to use an audio interface can likely reduce latency greatly too. Worked for me in most daws
Same. That was truly mind-blowing.
I haven't even finished the video, but I want to thank you, from the bottom of my heart. MuseScore has been one of the greatest teaching tools for myself and my children. My kids (little, tiny kids) have written countless songs and we've been able to compile them into a book of family sheet music...an heirloom we shall treasure forever. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
I just want to say, I've always been tremendously impressed with and grateful for Musescore. I began using it in my late teens in 2010 and it was such a gift to me. The people who made it are heroes.
Same. I majored in music and it got me through all 4 years of college. Really cool of them to make free software.
A year ago I started in a choir with not that much knowledge in music theory or reading sheet music. Transfering score from paper to musescore has been a great way to learn both notation and a lot of our songs. I can't really play the piano so I've been creating practice tracks in musescore and they've also helped others.
Also, a big reason why I happened to even try the app in the first place was that I had watched so many Tantacrul videos on notation software.
Thank you MuseScore & Tantacrul. ♥️
MuseScore 4 was the best software release this whole year, and I love how you not just talk about your personal experiences but introduce the team members and all the challenges faced, as well es skills needed. I looooove such stories, and it makes products much more tangible and more important
Thanks a lot for all the effort to the whole team and you!
The Quit Sibelius button was 10/10
I have a slight feeling that the luck you had with getting such talented people was more than luck. You are spearheading the biggest innovation in musical notation software ever, all your expertise and ambitions are reassuring, and everything is out there for the world to see - That's gotta attract some talent!
That and the work put into the TH-cam channel attracted a ton of eyes that wouldn't have known about the project. I have never used a notation software but have now watched several 30+ minute rants about them. That's got to be great advertising for the job.
Tantacrul is the hero the music world needs today thank you so much
are you a leprechaun tho
He's on absolute FIRE
@@MonkeyBars1 might be... Who's askin?
@@rasmus_q7491 I guess I will. So... when are all those four-leaf clovers I picked as a kid kicking in? 🍀🤔
the playback overhaul is absolutely INSANE. well done! so cool to have the developer of a software like this make videos giving insight into their process.
I started my first job as a developer a little over a year ago, and was hired as a UI developer on a complete overhaul of an ancient product. While the specific problems and challenges you've faced are totally different from anything I'll ever face in the life of this project, the KINDS of problems were so familiar. It was really cool to see the parallels.
I love how you introduce all of the Musescore team by having them wave to the camera
Wave... *soul-lessly
@@andyjacobs7010 and then mess up your hair so they see the real you
@@andyjacobs7010 "Just smile and wave, folks. Smile and wave..."
@@PentameronSV ...and Jessica!
@@jc3drums916 Edited!
When I heard the voices at 32:55 I genuinely teared up. The fact that notation playback can sound that good and imbue that much emotion is outstanding work
Also I've not done much work with music or composition and now I'm installing musescore 4 just so I can enjoy it
Its really quite incredible how much of a difference it makes. It flows so smoothly together and really pushes the piece so much further.
I got goosebumps there. This software is going to bring about great works.
you're delusional. You're making yourself feel emotions out of pure belief that you should.
Same for me with the other fragments
Wow, the playback comparison blew me away! Amazing work!
fr the new soundfonts are wayyyyy better
Agree, absolutely incredible!
absolutely incredible!
i can't believe what i'm hearing
I'm positive you're right, but while I can hear some sort of difference I can't quantify it at all. Perhaps I have brain damage? Ah well, I can always console myself with the soothing sound of the kitchen waste disposal consuming a string of live christmas lights.
I just finished my first bit of a concerto in MS4, and my whole life has just changed. I've been writing classical music on guitar for around 10 years or more now and I've always had trouble with the technology of DAWs, notation and any other method of putting my ideas into expansive performance apps.
MS 4 has done that for me, and in my first three hours I've already produced a piece of music that sounds like it's being played by real cellists and string players. It's emotional, dramatic and the dynamics are huge. I'm so thankful to all the people that made this happen.
I'm certain that this is a life changing moment for me. It's really astounding. It can only get better as well which is just ?!*?!&?'!
Hello fellow guitarist!! It's absolutely insane how much better the guitar playback is, and tools in general for being able to quickly write in guitar -- as convoluted as it always is 😂
@@JamesShirey-q9j I know, it keeps getting better!
I've never once needed notation software. Found this video randomly in my feed. But it instantly captured me, and the work the entire team has done on this is absolutely stunning.
HOW ON EARTH is this version free?! This is a fully fledged and absolutely professionally looking software. You and the team are just SO amazing!
It's legally impossible to release a proprietary version of Musescore.
@@KatzRool why wouldn't they be able to release a composition program as a paid version? it does not include any copyrighted sheet music. unless of course they use gpl libraries.
@@ElvianEmpire Because Musescore is licensed under GPL v3, which states that any modifications must be also made open source. To make a paid version you'd have to rewrite the whole program from scratch, using no GPL v3 licensed code.
EDIT: I'm no longer sure if this is correct
@@KingJellyfishII but they are the programmers of it, they decided to use GPL. Unless any of the libraries they use are GPL, they could have chosen something different.
@@KingJellyfishII not really, if they are the copyright holders (which they are) they can release under a different license if they want to, even a proprietary one, it's other people/companies that can't release a proprietary derivative of the software. Of course the source that is already out there for free would be impossible to remove from the internet and if they ever went proprietary a fork would appear within seconds, and it would be entirely legal so they can't sue.
As a hobbyist composer, you all are doing not only incredibly impressive, but incredibly important work in making good, accessible software for anyone. Truly stellar work.
Hobbyist here. I’m super excited for this new version as well! I feel so seen by this video. Despite not giving any feedback, they fixed basically all the annoyances I didn’t even realize were there
Fecking same.
32:53 My GOD, that's so much better!!!!! The music is alive now! Yes, gradual tempo changes (and the updated software as a whole) was indeed worth the time if you ask me! The whole MuseScore team should be proud of what they've accomplished here! Good job guys, merry christmas and happy new year to you all!
32:09 I thought there was some sort of harpsichord playing, but it turned out to be violins
That's exactly my thought: The music felt more alive in the new version. Both did sound good, but the new just is far better. And if you had the new, you'd never want to go back to the old, because it then feels dead.
Props to the whole team from my side as well!
As someone who isn't very knowledgable about music: the MS3 versions sound like castlevania or undertale songs, the MS4 versions more like high-budget game or movie scores
@@zeppie_ This is actually more right than you might first think. As he explained in the video, VSTs (the thing that make the midi have a sound) can sound fairly good, if you give it good data to work with... Older VSTs (and electronic audio equipment in general) was not capable of producing these more advanced sounds (at least on 8 and 16 bit hardware) making "real sounding" digital sound practically impossible. So the hardware and software limitation of that era is kinda what gave us the 8/16- bit "sound". Now we have better hard- and software that CAN produce "realistic sounding" sounds, giving us the "high budget" sound you were probably thinking of.
Hopefully this was not too neardy or hard to understand.
Thanks for reading yall. :)
That new playback gave quite literally chills. The change is MASSIVE. Well done!
I'm not a musician. I'm not a composer. I've never used a notation app. I can't even read sheet music. But I've become obsessed with your videos on MuseScore and its competitors...
I’ve been using notation software since 1999, and I can’t tell you how much of a dream come true it is to hear you describe the innovations you made in Musescore. The features you’re describing are things that I’ve wanted for over 20 years. Thank you, Martin, and all the talented team members at Musescore for your hard work on this project!
I can't even begin to describe how grateful I am for you and your team's work. Thank you so much for making this wonderful technology available for everyone.
The playback changes have me in awe... The possibilities for composing on the go, creating sketches without a DAW and TEACHING are immense. I'm in my final year of my teaching degree, and will be making MuseScore the standard for my future students to learn with. The sheer amount of improvement with each update is staggering. MuseScore is incredible.
A generation of musicians untainted, free from the shackles of Sibelius and Dorico!
It's legitimately impressive that a free application can do this much, when there are companies out there charging high prices for many of the same functions. Even though I'm not a regular user, I respect and appreciate all the hard work that went into this.
And out of all of them, musescore has been the most promising and has improved the most with time. And now, with musesounds they have even more potential.
I feel like within the next 10 years, Tantacrul is gonna eventually feel like he has to tackle “the vocalist problem” in which voices are constrained to just singing notes, and he’s basically going to invent professional vocaloids. Like he doesn’t have to do that, but omg as someone who has has composed for voice in MuseScore, that would be an amazing thing (yet daunting task) to see
I guess it can be possible if we enter the text in IPA format
instrument: velar fricative
"Invent professional vocaloids"
Those already exist. They're called vocaloids.
@@Jono997 Yeah, but, like... non-anime vocaloids. Because vocaloids, as cool as they are, are a bit of a hard sell for the Contemporary Classical crowd, I feel.
@@grzegorzbrzeczyszczykiewic563 Those also already exist. Leon, Lola, Miriam, Big Al, Sweet Ann, Cyber Diva, Cyber Songman, Chris, Amy, Ken, Kaori, etc.
This is what turns out when the design team cares
As a user of MuseScore and interested in graphic/UX design the appreciation I have for you and your team’s work is immense. This revamp is one of the best version to version software redesigns of all time. The attention to detail and awareness of user needs is what makes this change so masterful. The effort you went through to remake every interaction,prompt, etc. just to get rid of the unpractical qt widgets to improve user experience is an example of this. Bravo!
I'm crying tears of joy and I’m not even joking. I've been using musescore for at least 12/13 years, I'm the guy that gets called by musicians friends when they need to know how to do something in musescore. I love it, as young music student with not a lot of money having a good writing software for free meant the world to me. I spent countless hours on it and I can’t wait to do the same on this new version. You all did something amazing.
I was blown away by the work and results of the new playback features. the vocal chanting part was jawdropping
Amazing
Absolutely, like holy shit
MS 3 VS 4 was like comparing chalk and cheese.
Im not a musician but the UX design work you're doing is really inspiring
I remember, yearss ago, when tantacrul was destroying Finale and Sibelius, thinking "this is funny, but it's easier to criticize than to make...", and then I thought that was "ballzy" when he announced that he was joining the MuseScore team. Today I am very pleased how this has turned into.
@@InXLsisDeo He never destroyed Finale, he covered every other main notation software (Musescore, Sibelius and Dorico), but alas, never Makemusic's Finale. I really wish he did though, because it's the one I use and, as amazing as it is for certain things, I could write a PhD thesis on its jankiness.
Fucking hell, the new sounds are breathtaking. If I heard them in isolation, I'd have absolutely no idea they weren't live performances. Maybe next to a real orchestra I could tell, but that's absolutely astonishing. I love orchestral composition, but I don't have my own symphony orchestra, this is absolutely life changing for me.
This is the kind of industry changing stuff that I think of when I think about “who is the best musician”, not top 10 charts for pop music or celebrity lists, while some of those people can undoubtedly have a nice deal of musical talent and skill, free and open source software that can notate music intuitively AND have the ability to rival even the sound quality of a live performance is a revolutionary feat to achieve, what an awesome community.
FOSS devs are the best kinds of devs because the only benefit they have is the betterment of humanity as opposed to money, this will do wonders for lowering the barrier for entry as much as can be achieved so that anyone with creative talent can compose what they want, without too much technical knowledge required.
I’m an ex-Sibelius user and a Dorico fan. I’ve hardly used MuseScore but it previously didn’t give off a great first impression and looked like free software often does. What an amazing job you’ve done with MuseScore 4-it looks brilliant.
As a software developer in a small company with a handful of devs, seeing the amount of stuff you’ve done is absolutely mind-blowing!
"And looked like free software often does."
I know every free software user feels this statement on a deep, spiritual level.
@@HickoryDickory86 fr this doesnt give out the feel of a open-source project or free software.
@@Bixmy Yea, there's been a weird thing happening in open source Windows software recently; they're all starting to look like apps designed for human beings with eyes. Blender, OBS, Musescore, they all look great. It's so weird considering how ugly they all used to look.
@@no-lifenoah7861 Same thing started happening on Linux a few years ago when Gnome 3 took over.
@@aheendwhz1 Yeah. I just recently installed Fedora 37 and..... Man. That desktop environment looks juicy.
As a retired pro musician, I can't begin to describe how incredible all of this is. I can't believe it.
I am no musician but holly crap that playback demo was mind blowing. it was the difference between night and day. its teams like yours that make the lives of normal people like myself more enjoyable and easier to get through.
Dude you're a living legend for doing this work. The fact that projects like this can exist gives me hope in humanity.
I've been using musescore 3 for years and after watching this video, I can now honestly say all the bugs that I have encountered have been fixed. To all the crazy gifted developers, musicians, contributors, testers, who spend endless nights trying to perfect the musescore4 is without a doubt a huge sacrifice. You guys shared your time, talent, resources so we can now enjoy the fruits of your labor! Huge thanks to all of you! I do have 1 question: will all my save musescore 3 files be seamlessly transported to musescore4? I have yet to download musescore4 but I'm so excited to try it already!
For years I’ve been predicting that Musescore would grab a large young audience and then become a professional standard or at least the basis for one. Incredible work that I’m so happy to see. Absolutely astounding!!
I was 13 when I started notating and obviously couldn't afford any reputable software. Musescore's community and the fact it was free was absolutely incredible and vital for my musical development. I have seen the same from dozens of musicians my age. You're on to something here for sure
@@lankythedanky MuseScore has changed a lot of lives.
@@theohornsby51 Musescore gave me the tools to really flourish as a composer. I started notating in it roughly 3 years ago, when I was in the latter end of my 15th year. I wouldn't consider myself a Composer if it wasn't for my experience with Musescore!
Musescore was what I picked up for composing (hobbyist amateur) because A) I was unwilling to spend money, B) it sucked the least, and C) I can't use a DAW to save my life
@@lankythedanky Same with me! I started using the first one as a teen, mostly when I started getting into playing the ocarina and had a hard time finding music in the right range, so I'd transcribe and transpose my own. Then I got into arranging multiple instrument pieces, and lately I've been doing some acapella arrangements for church choir. I've been using it for probably around 10 years as I'm pretty sure I started with 1.1 or 1.2 or something, and the improvement is amazing! Easier to use, easier to read, and much better sounds. I updated my Mac from 2012 last year, and since it was so old (from Lion to Catalina), the whole thing had to be wiped. I had Musescore 2 installed, and I played around with it, and I had forgotten how bad it was! Nice to see these improvements making it even nicer and easier to use for those who are teens now and wanting to learn more about music. I went into web design, but music is a huge interest of mine, so having free to use programs like this is great.
I use Musescore almost every day. For transcriptions, arrangements, making assignments for students. What an incredible gift this is. I'm eternally grateful
wtf you look like a Andrew Dotson on YT
And it's opersouce, no spying or other dark practices.
Thank you for having quality subtitles. My immigrant mother is a musician, but has trouble hearing English, especially non American accents. I was able to introduce to her the limitations of playback with your video.
I'm glad that the captions helped!
As someone who struggles with hearing audio and concentrating on video at the same time, I applaud anyone who adds subtitles to their videos- thank you 🙏 😊
@@PentameronSV Are you the captioner?
@@tortis6342 Yes.
An absolutely incredible monument of love and dedication to music, creativity, and art. MuseScore 4 is truly impressive software for both newbies and veterans to create music more intuitively than anything we've ever seen. Amazing work from every single person who touched this project, who has now contributed to the history of music notation!
I'm a software engineer and musician, and I have been using MuseScore and Audacity for a really long time. I can't really express how interesting this video was to me, thank you so much for sharing!
Its crazy how nice this guy's videos looks. Visually they flow so smoothly and aesthetically, they really are on a level above basically every other video I watch. The zooms and transitions are so nice while also serving a purpose every time.
That and the occasional injections of completely unhinged gags
@@bovinleephannWith closed captions joining with the gags as well.
Holy shite, the difference between the playback of each version is incredible! I didn't like the dodgy midi in musescore 3 as my scores never sounded correct and always felt wrong, but the new playback system might get me motivated to compose again.
The biggest drawback in MuseScore is still that you can't copy and paste passages including alternating time signature changes. When you copy all time signature changes are lost and you have to manually put them back in, etc. This is a huuge and basic thing which has been missing in MuseScore for years.. Please look at the issue: Request option to copy system elements with copy/paste (ALL ELEMENTS)! Hope there will be a solution soon.
do it like Office: copy everything, paste just the bits you want.
That's true!
The difference between version 3 and 4 is insane. Amazing job. Seriously
This sounds like some insane work by you guys. Glad to see a lot of issues I had with Musescore finally addressed! Great job
that playback overhaul with musesounds was incredible! i'd always wondered why something like that wasn't possible previously, and the answer just turned out to be "it's a massive pain in the ass"
the playback was absolutely astonishing - its not just that it sounds better. You can actually hear the intention of the music - unbelievable. Audacity’s interface has been a mess for a long time so I’m looking forward to seeing what you do with that too. Love your videos and this pivot into revolutionising musicians tools is just amazing. Congratulations!!
This is absolutely incredible. Everybody involved in this deserves a frickin medal!! The playback differences especially are astounding - Musescore 3 sounds like a MIDI instrument set while Musescore 4 actually sounds like somebody playing a song.
Really? I can't really tell the difference
The differences sound like night and day! That left a huge impression on me.
Alzter jumpscare
Their website playback still sounds like midi or Im tone deaf...
>song
As a musician, MuseScore & Sibelius user, and a software developer (not necessarily in that order), I really appreciate all the details in this video. I'm gonna give this thing a test drive.
As a long time Audacity fan, I'm super excited to see the overhaul of that as well. Man, audacity has so many of those little annoyances lol.
Aside from the incredible amount of work put into this project and the flawless production quality of this video, props to you for your admirable display of humility. Never once did I hear you credit yourself - only the team. It was obvious that you recognize the importance of your people and the community as superior. It takes lots of unseen discipline and intentionality to maintain a humble leadership position, and you do it well. Thanks for all the work you have done and will continue to do. This may be the longest comment I’ve ever written on TH-cam, but damn, I felt obligated after seeing this video and internalizing just how much grit went into this release. Personally, you inspire me to keep pursuing music and my interest in music notation. I’m probably going to become a Patreon supporter in the near future, because I really believe in the work you’re doing. Thanks a lot Tantacrul!
So many people wanted so hard to make composition software better. Your team and the motivation behind that just tapped into people pursuing other field's dreams which is why you managed to find so many criminology dogs
As a former software engineer and amateur musician I am absolutely awestruck by the thought and incredible work put into this amazing program. Thank you for such a great gift for musicians throughout the world.
This is so amazing!
Especially the guys from Ukraine deserve the highest honor for contributing to this project while being shelled left and right.
Bless you all!
I'd like to support you in some way.
🚀🧨💥🤯😵🪦
I'm not trying to reduce their dedication or bravery, but it is worth keeping in mind that until very recently, the majority of Ukraine has not been experiencing shelling, bombing, and assault. For many it has been business as usual, but with less access to food and vital war resources
perhaps they may have been doing this during their free time while serving in the conflict. In which case the greatest respect to these men
@@ea6937 not every man will serve , not every man should serve. There are many vital rolew that can be played outside the line of duty.
The short answer is, we don't know. And it's not our business to know
@@ea6937 I see
why did everyone have to bash or contradict this?
thanks for having accurate and well time subs, it means alot more to us who cant hear fully than alot of people think. :] great vids as well, keep up the good work
I just wanted to say thank you guys for making a dedicated Linux version. Understandably, not that many app developers take the time to do that due to us being a small demographic. I greatly appreciate you taking the time to make a Linux application rather than leaving us to try and sort it out with weird compatibility things that may or may not function properly.
That playback overhaul is absolutely incredible. And it's free! *FREE!*
As a young music student I jumped into musescore back in the days of version 2, it's been amazing to watch it grow into what it is today
Same
same here, from version 2 to 4 now.
As a fellow developer, I super appreciate your efforts to give credit to your workers and contributors. Too often that stuff gets lost or mis-attributed to whoever was the team lead. Nothing but respect to every contributor, this shit is hard.
I am not a user of music score applications but I love what you did here, people like yourself are desperately needed in all Open Source projects from GIMP to VLC to even KDE and GNOME.
People that put the needed attention to detail into the product and get things done.
I'm a programmer that also plays (poorly) guitar. I tried a few notation applications before, and while they were far from perfect, I always appreciated the complexity and challenges they involve. Watching this video, what this team achieved is just insane. I now have to try MuseScore 4, it's been a while since I played with any notation software.
its so beautiful.
its like when Blender got updated to 2.8
This is a perfect comparison
About to graduate college with a BM in Music Composition using only Musescore (and now Musescore 4) my entire career! So excited for all the changes and so thankful for all the work the team put in over the years on this project. You guys are changing the game!
I like how you just slipped in that your team is now working on Audacity. That is one foundational piece of audio software, good luck! I hope it goes well, that will be a huge win for the audio world.
They've actually already released some changes to make Audacity a more capable DAW, too! One of their changes that comes to mind is that you can finally resize recording snippets without cutting/trimming them up.
Have been using musescore for little more then a year and it's awesome to get a behind the scenes look. As a side note, besides being an accomplishment of software development it also shouldn't be underestimated the organisatorial accomplishment. Smaller teams often struggle with way less complexity. Looking forward to what's to come!
This is kind of unrelated to the video itself, but holy shit I LOVE your intro! I don't know why *exactly* why that is, but I think a big reason is because it is so short that it doesn't waste any time, and that it feels so impactful and powerful! It also just sounds extremely cathartic and having the text change style for every "beat" in the sound is super cool!
Seriously, I am way too obsessed with your intro, it is way too good...
I am so unbelievably PUMPED for this!!!! I think my favorite improvement is the playback. Those examples with MS3 vs MS4 made my jaw drop, the quality increase is absolutely incredible!!! Especially the string sounds; the vibrato on those violins was frankly just ghastly. I cannot even begin to express how excited and appreciative I am of everyone who contributed to and worked on this absolute behemoth of an app, congratulations and thank you to every person who helped!!!
I still don't plan on using any kind of music notation software in my life, but I will still watch this entire videos more than once.
Because it is just too good, as usual.
I know this is sad, but I've been looking forward to this video all day since I saw when it was scheduled to be posted on Twitter! I'm a teacher at the end of a long, tough term and I'm looking forward to a couple of weeks where I can indulge in Christmas stuff...and writing some music! Having an early dinner, a glass of wine and looking forward to nerding out over music software. Thanks Martin!
Edit: Have watched. What an incredible piece of work. So, my workflow is stupidly convoluted in that I work in Sibelius (an old version), because I can work fast and I am familiar with it, then import my scores into MuseScore to finish things off. I strongly suspect I may just abandon Sibelius entirely now, and I will be spending a lot of time in MuseScore 4 over the coming weeks! I'm extremely glad people exist with the odd combination of skills required to undertake projects like this!
After watching this channel I can imagine it must be an amusing experience to click on "quit sibelius"
Hearing the comparisons between the old playback and MuseSounds was mind blowing. The poor quality of the default playback in scoring apps, and the hassle needed to make them better, has always been my biggest pet peeve with scoring software in the past. But MuseSounds sounds like it's exactly what I've wanted
@Tantacrul
I don't write music, I don't even play an instrument, and I'm most certainly not a software developer or a UI-designer. But I like so many other people (the majority ??) am still a "software user", and as such I "know the pain" of badly designed software and UI in general. And that aspect alone was enough to make this video first captivate me, and then blow me away by the vision of the work, and the absolutely tremendous of work that went into "bringing it into reality".
Massive kudos to You all for making the world a little bit better :)
Best regards.
I will also say thanks for supporting so many different languages! I may be fluent in English, but I'm not fluent in English music theory so it helps a lot not having to translate everything.
This video has been extremely empowering to me. I am a long-time senior web developer, and it has been my dream to work on music scoring software; this video has motivated me to pick up where I left off in developing my web-based DAW, side-project which eventually will include music scoring (I now appreciate all the details that go into beaming). I love the idea of building upon an existing standard for notation (was it MPE?). A bunch of other companies including ROLI have taken their stab at it, but nothing has stuck until MIDI 2, which should be mainstream in a decade or so. In the meantime, I suppose most end-users will appreciate all the articulation support out of the box without having to touch any sample libraries; as you mentioned, the process is EXTREMELY tedious. That your team managed to package all the articulations and sounds in 90MB speaks measures (pun intended). For those of us like me who want to give back to the community, without C++ knowledge but web development knowledge, how can we give back to the community?
That sounds like a great idea! Is this an open source side project, I’d love to give it a look, though not really experienced with music app design
QML, as used for the UI, is actually based on Javascript, you should fit right in.
Send a link to your DAW project if you already have it. I'm interested as I teach music. Thank u!
Your last line is what I was thinking the entire time I was watching. I'm in web dev as well and was just thinking the entire time that this is exactly the kind of work I wish I was doing. The team seems incredible. What a dream it would be to be a part of a project like this. I need to start looking through the repo.
This is awesome. I'm a senior dev and know that what you've all done is a herculean effort. I'm also a lifelong musician and It's the poorly designed creative software that often puts me off of putting my ideas "on paper". I know how much ubiquitous, well designed tools can act as an "enabling technology" that spurs creativity. Thanks you much for putting in real design effort!
36:36 was possibly the most satisfying clip I've ever seen. Outstanding design work across the board on this project
User friendliness and UI is always ALWAYS an emotional roller coaster for me, because there's just... so so so many programs that are too hard to learn or too stiff to be useful, and to see something like this designed to be as usable as humanly possible with tons of community cooperation & new user feedback makes me just... SO happy!!!
The funny part concerning the playback is that I'm so used to awkward, stilted music from the old games I grew up playing, that there is a real charm in it for me. Like, I wouldn't say I prefer it, but that they are both really engaging in different ways. That being said, it's amazing what your team was able to accomplish. I'm really thankful to have you share it with us.
I'm sure if you choose to export it as a raw MIDI you can still get that chunky sound lol
Yeah it's definitely kinda nostalgic for me lol
Finally a Tantacrul video after months of waiting... Soon to be consumed by thousands
I was here!
Literally just 2 thousand viewers
@@BusinessZeus in a week or two it's going to be 200 thousand
@@mortingenstrasse. it's a joke dummy!
@@mortingenstrasse. in a year it's going to be 3 thousand, how lucky!
As a designer and QML developer for 9+ years, I enjoyed your video a lot! So relatable! I love the way you think and I have deep, deep respect for your ability to execute your ideas. One thing is to have a vision, the other is to get it on the street. I can’t even fathom the struggles you went trough. Thanks to everyone who contributed to make MuseScore 4 happen and especially you for sharing your experience with us!
Honestly, I moved over to Musescore 4 from Sibelius, and when a FREE music application outclasses one of the most recognized PAID options.... youve got a special application.
Thank you and the whole team for making one of my most recent intense orchestration projects so much smoother to work on!
I've always wondered how Musescore managed to make this AMAZING music software is completely FREE, now I'm even more surprised that it's free, considering how much work has gone into it!
I greatly appreciate all that you and your team have done!
Please keep up the good work!
ABSOLUTELY BREATHTAKING! You managed to excell beyond all the other notation softwares out there! It's a historically significant achievement.
Honestly, reworking this should have been an impossible task and I commend everyone working on this project for keeping on pushing Sisyphus' boulder. The things you all have achieved are tremendous for the entire music industry and will hopefully be remembered as one of the great turning points in music.
As a graphic artist with no experience in composition I enjoyed both how clear your videos are explaining all the nuances of good design as well as downloading MS4 right after watching this and fooling around with it. The work you and the team put in shows and I commend you for it.
Man you and the team have done an awesome job. As a software engineer, what you’ve all achieved is incredible and so interesting to learn about!
I am honestly so thrilled about MuseScore 4! I had no idea what to expect at first but I can’t get enough of it! I had been working on an arrangement for orchestra in MuseScore 3, and after the update came out imported it into 4, and oh my, it’s night and day. It’s so incredible to see just how much hard work that has gone into this project and how professional the whole program is now. I just can’t express my utter appreciation and amazement for this program. You’ve made my passion to arrange music even stronger, and have given others access to an amazing notation software! I’m so stoked!!!
And oh, the sound is amazing!
ive been waiting for this video for so long aahhh!! ive been following the progress on ms4 as excitedly as gamers follow new pokemon releases and im literally so so glad to see this video uploaded!! it cannot be overstated how valuable your criticisms and analysis are for musicians and software designers alike. this peek into the process is golden!
Following pokemom releases is sad... almost as sad as following Fifa releases
I am not a musician myself by any means, but what you (and your teams) done here is really impressive and impactful. Also, this is quite unusual to have such a deep video essay about the work done. I applaud virtually!
This is mind boggling, a truly staggering amount of work. Been using RC1 and thinking, well this is great. I had no idea! "So yeah, by the by, we just thought we might sample a whole new orchestra sound font and make that available. . . " WHA??? I'm like, just stop inventing giant new tasks for yourselves, you'll never finish! But then you finished! Thank you to the whole incredible team.
Musescore Studio is getting amazing. Thank you to the team for all your hard work - fantastic!
I love the shut eyes instead of just greying it out. Looks amazing and is so much more intuitively readable!
As a composer and software professional, I am in awe of your project. You are all heroes!!!!
I am a corporate IT minion, and not musically trained (though frequently attend concerts at venues like King’s Place and Cadogan Hall).
I was introduced to Tantacrul through David Bruce’s delightful “5 Composers”, then the TH-cam algorithm proved it’s power by showing me that sweet sweet engraving video about a year ago.
I cannot express how inspiring the Herculean Musescore 4* effort is.
Bravo to you all!
* Software which I have no involvement in, interaction with nor benefit from.
I'm very impressed by the new choir sounds! The new design also looks a lot less busy and more focused. Awesome!
This has got to be one of the most illuminating videos on user interface and code development I've seen. Absolutely amazing as a musician seeing the lengths programmers are going to to make music shine!