Hello! Those of you who saw my post on the Mastering MuseScore Community or who follow the Announcements forum on musescore.org or on Discord already got the news, but for the rest of you - yes, the Beta release of MuseScore 4 is finally here! I will be demonstrating the new sounds - which I think I are pretty amazing - in the MuseScore Café this week. So check in live if you can, or the replay otherwise!

Remember, this is still "beta" - meaning, for testing purposes, not ready for production use. But it is getting there!

MuseScore Café

This week in the MuseScore Café with Marc Sabatella, we finally get our first look at Muse Sounds, just released as part of the MuseScore 4 "Beta". I'll show you how to install it and set it up, and we'll listen to samples of it in action. I think you will be impressed!

Tip of the Week

For anyone wanting to try the Beta, let me give you a quick rundown on what you need to do to get started:

1. Go to the official announcement to get the download link for the new Muse Hub (the installer tool you will then use)
2. Download, install, and run Muse Hub
3. One Windows and macOS, use Muse Hub to download MuseScore 4 Beta itself; on Linux, use the link in the announcement
4. In Muse Hub, select the libraries you wish to try. I recommend Choir, Keys, or Harp to start, as they are relatively small
5. Once your libraries finished downloading, close Muse Hub (and on Linux at least, I recommend rebooting due to a bug that hopefully will be fixed before release)
6. Start MuseScore 4 Beta

Then, to actually Muse Sounds with a score you have created or loaded:

1. Go to "View / Playback setup"
2. Click "Muse Sounds", then "Activate", then OK

At this point, the score should play using Muse Sounds. You can open the Mixer (View / Mixer, or shortcut F10) to verify - you should see the instrument names listed at the top of each mixer channel. There are known glitches here, like if your score contains Oboe, it will actually show as English Horn,. You then then click the dropdown menu where it says English Horn to select Muse Sounds / Muse Woodwins / Oboe. And similarly select specific sounds for any other instruments that didn't get set up correctly.

The full set of Muse Sounds libraries are 15 GB or so. They cover msot common orchestral instruments, including things like bass clarinet that have not been part of the standard soundfonts before. They don't yet include much in the way of jazz/pop sounds, but that will probably change over coming months.

IMPORTANT NOTE: if you encounter problems, please don't email me - please ask for help on the Development and Technology Preview forum on musescore.org. And if it turns out there is a bug to report, follow the instructions in the main announcement. But, also feel free to ask questions during the MuseScore Café on Wednesday!

Music Master Class

This week in the Music Master Class with Marc Sabatella, we will followup on the "World Singing Day" piece I previewed last week, using it as a source for working on sight-singing and music theory.

In Theory

I'm in the process of putting together some new tutorials for MuseScore 4, and I will be using some short original pieces as demonstrations. Here is a simple four-part chorale I created for this project. I didn't deliberately commit any voice leading "errors", but I could have missed something. What do you think - is there anything I should be reconsidering here?

​https://musescore.com/user/2975/scores/8859813/s/g60wFG?share=copy_link​

One thing I do see but can live with - the tenor note on beat 4 of bar 7 is below the bass note on the previous beat, which is the sort of overlap you are normally advised to avoid. But, I think I can get away with it here.

Feel free to leave a post with your thoughts in the Share & Discuss space in the community!