MuseScore 4: What Has Changed Since MuseScore 3?

In MuseScore 4,
many of the features and interfaces

have been revamped
to make the overall experience

easier to use and more powerful, too.

So in this video,
I’m going to give a very quick overview

of some of the major changes we’ve made
to help you get up and running right away.

First, if you want to alter
the appearance of MuseScore,

you can do this in the app preferences.

Here, you can change the overall theme
as well as the accent colour.

In addition, we’ve also introduced
a customisable high-contrast mode

to cater to various different kinds
of visual impairment.

One of the most important changes
to call out

is how you can manage instruments
and part scores.

So, after you’ve created a new score,
the list of instruments

will be represented
in a new Instruments panel.

This panel allows you to rearrange,

hide or customise your instruments
at any point.

Second, part scores can be accessed
at any time

by clicking on this Parts button
in the top bar,

and you’ll now be able to open
and close them whenever you like.

If you wish to make changes
to a part score,

for example, if you’d like the piano
to be displayed in this violin part,

you can do this
using the Instruments panel.

You can choose
whatever instrument ordering you like

in a part score

without needing to worry about it
affecting your main score.

For those coming from MuseScore 3,

the options to add or subtract staves
or create linked staves,

which used to be found in the pop-up
for adding or removing instruments,

have been moved
to the new Instruments panel instead,

so you can see the effects
of the changes you make.

Playback improvements
are the single largest change

we’ve made to MuseScore 4.

Apart from our new Orchestra library,

we now have support
for VST instrument plug-ins,

which can be applied to instruments
using our new Mixer panel.

This panel also lets you
easily switch between VSTi,

Soundfont or our new Orchestra library.

And you can apply VST effects here, too.

It’s worth mentioning

that we’re only just getting started with
our support for VST instruments

and will be greatly expanding
MuseScore’s capabilities

over the next few releases.

Due to issues with our old SFZ playback,

we took the decision
to remove the Zerberus synthesiser.

For anyone who previously used SFZ files
for playback in MuseScore 3,

we now recommend
that you use a free VST sampler,

like Sfizz or Sforzando instead.

And please note
that we’ll be including the ability

to create custom playback profiles
in an upcoming release.

Some score interactions have also changed.

In particular,

you can now double-click on a measure
to enter Note Input mode.

You can also now quickly
isolate instruments

you’d like to hear during playback

by selecting one of its measures
and pressing Play.

And you can hear a range of instruments

by selecting multiple relevant measures
and pressing Play.

This will save you from needing to
constantly keep turning on and off

the Solo and Mute buttons in the mixer.

If you want to hear full playback
from any position,

simply select an element on the score,
rather than a measure, and press Play.

We’ve also completely redesigned
the Inspector panel,

which is now called Properties.

One of the first things
you’ll notice about it

is that it’s docked on the left
by default.

If you want to change this position,
you can drag on the tab to move it —

next to the other panels
or over to the other side of the screen.

The options in this panel
have been somewhat re-organised.

When nothing is selected,
it displays multiple useful options,

like the ability to show
or hide empty staves

or various other types of score markings.

And if you select a measure,
you’ll also see useful options

to add more measures
or delete them quickly.

Where, in MuseScore 3,

you needed to select a single element type
before you could make changes to it,

MuseScore 4 will always display
relevant settings,

regardless of how many things
are selected.

The Properties panel
has two general options:

playback and appearance.

The Appearance option can be opened
when you want to make precise changes

to things like leading space,
minimum distance or offset.

The Playback option
will display relevant playback settings

for any selected element.

Note that if an element
doesn’t contain playback settings,

this option will be disabled.

So if you now add
one of our new tempo lines to the score,

you can change how it speeds up
or slows down here.

The popups which contain both playback
and appearance settings

will remain open
when you move from element to element

to minimise the number of times
you need to reopen them.

It’s worth mentioning
that we’re planning on

creating a new panel in future releases.

that will contain more sophisticated tools
for editing playback,

so, to some extent this area
of the Properties panel

is in a transitionary state
and will be further improved over time.

For those entering and editing text,

we now keep all text options in one place
in the Properties panel.

This is also where you’ll find
the Insert special characters button, too.

Apart from that,

we’ve taken the two playback panels
from MuseScore 3

and combined them into one,

which is now placed
in the top-right corner.

If you undock this panel,
it expands to include a scrubbing feature.

There are a few other key options
that have switched to different positions.

Workspaces and the all-important
Concert Pitch toggle

are now in the bottom bar,

alongside the viewing options
for Page View and Continuous View.

It’s also important to point out
that there are one or two features

which were technically incompatible
with MuseScore 4,

which we’ll be rebuilding
and re-introducing in upcoming releases.

In particular,
the Documents side-by-side feature

and the Image Capture tool.

Lastly,
due to the increased sophistication

of our audio engine,

it was necessary for us to alter MuseScore
so that each project has its own window

to allow us to efficiently switch
between the playback of different scores.

This has been a very quick overview
of the changes we’ve made.

There’s lots more to go through,

including how to download
and setup our new Orchestra library

as well as a description
of our massive new engraving improvements,

both of which are covered
in different videos.

One of the reasons we built MuseScore 4

was so that it had
the right technical underpinning

to be able to make improvements
much more quickly in future.

So you can expect to be seeing
a lot more updates coming very soon.

And if you’re curious to learn about these
when they happen,

please subscribe to this channel.

Thanks a lot and take care.