This popped up on my feed after I arranged a piece in Finale v26. My main plan is to continue using Finale until my computers are no longer capable of running it (Finale has said they will allow activations "forever"). I only compose occasionally and mainly have it to "create" sheet music of what I play (via a MIDI keyboard). When I finally stop using Finale, I may look at Dorrico or Sibelius, however, for my skillset and use case (assuming it allows for MIDI devices) I may use Musescore. Thanks so much for the video--it's great to get an honest opinion of Musescore from someone more qualified than most of my peers.

Nah, Dorico is the future. It's just that Musescore (apart from being free) has an excellent player and integrated libraries

I have been using Musescore for a few years now. It’s very solid even 4.0 was a bit of a downgrade at first with less features available (like smooth scrolling) , but it’s getting better since the last few months. I don’t recommend using their online platform though, it’s going downhill since 2019

Sounds good but I'll stick with notion

Bello trovare youtuber italiani che fanno vera musica! Grazie!

Encore ver 6 is expected to be available soon 🙏

Honestly pretty impressive for musescore, you got pretty far without even having to read any kind of tutorial

Musescore 4 is pretty amazing. Lots of improvements over the previous version. The new version pushes it beyond being a nice tool for education and amateur composers to a viable alternative for professional composers.

Encore. I tried it and it was a disaster.

Musescore is open source software which means that it will not disappear ever. So you won't have to learn a totally new user interface ever, of course they may change something in the future. I work in a different area, including electronics design. For that, I used Eagle over 20 years. Last year, Autodesk, the current owner of the softeare, announced that they end the current product in summer 2026, moving to a totally different paradigm, and abandoning Linux as a OS platform, and forcing to cloud storage of your designs. This forces me to move to another program, and I am moving to KiCad, an open source system. The situation is quite similar with Finale and Musescore.

I also used encore by passport. It was simple to use but had issues with midi devices as the further development stopped.

The problem of Musecore doesn't have the capability to write notes directly from a keyboard. You have to do manualy! I dont like it. I prefer Sibelius!

Tried finale could never get used to that interface though so I switched back to musescore

encore

Encode! I used in in the late 90s / early 2000s. I have been using MuseScore for a couple years now, and I like it.

I wonder if Finale can be open-sourced.

I used Finale for years but I feel it never really embraced the 21st century in its UI and software development. Then I switched to Sibelius, but the application lacks of intuitive design and the Avid business scheme ruined it IMO. So about three years ago I moved to Musescore and it's my favorite notation software of all times. Sure, everything wasn't clear at the beginning, but more I work with it, more I find it easy. The learning curve is way more simple than with Finale (which was the worst of all) and Sibelius. I didn't used it for complex contemporary or experimental music, where staves must have particular designs yet, thing that was great with Finale even if tedious. For the past decade, I write mostly for a big band of 21 musicians in ~16 sections and Musescore does the job perfectly.

I also used Encore but can hardly remember what it was like. This must have been in my Soundblaster 16 + Waveblaster module time. I've dabbled in Sibelius and finally bought a license for Harmony Assistant. That last one has a horrible interface but it was very powerful and had a singing synthesizer module which was the reason I bought it. But now it's MuseScore all the way.

I really like the quintet. I noticed a rather striking similarity to a part of Ravel's Pavane pour une infante défunte. Starting with the D in measure 6 (Violin 1) to the G in bar 10 it sounds similar to bar 3 and 4 in Pavane. Here you can listen to Pavane with the sheet music: kzbin.info/www/bejne/bXK2iqBpgMSDra8

My late composition teacher, Jack Jarrett, created Notion. Many friends liked it, but it didn't survive. I couldn't use it because it wasn't supported on Linux. I'm impressed by MuseScore, though.

encore and lilypond

I switched to Dorico Pro as MuseScore does not fit in every way to my workflow. Makemusic has a deal for Finlae users!

Encore! was my first software

Is MUSESCORE for PC or only MAC?

I used Encore a lot. I was a US Navy Bandleader, and almost 80% of my arrangements were done with Encore. I still have Encore 5!

Encore was in those days really very intuitive and a lot easier than Finale. It required some tricks to work around some 'buggy' aspectes of the app (eg the slurs...) Now I still keep on using Sibelius because Musescore however it's qualities doesn 't let my Arturia minilab input notes without freezing every time.

not knowing music notation and then seeing adding slurs is funny to me :D

I tried convincing my school to use this as a chance to switch to Musescore, but they insisted on the expensive Dorico. I'm almost graduated, but feel it's a missed opportunity.

I have been a Finale user for almost as long as it existed, early 90s. And yes I do remember Encore. I never owned it, but I had a friend who did. At the time period it was not bad, but I still preferred Finale for my scores. When Sibelius was first released I didn't bother with it, but when I was teaching at a college that used Pro Tools, they got Sibelius for me of my film scoring course that I was teaching. So in order to for me to learn it, I bought the current edition. I didn't like the platform, it really was not intuitive plus there was very little support as by this time Avid owned it. I don't like Avid support, it's the worst I've ever encountered. So I continued with Finale as usual. When I first heard about Dorico, I was curious, but never had the time to buy a copy (busy composers as we all are). Fast forward, I had an assistant who was using Musescore. by this time I had been working with the online account as to this day I look for music for my students. Between my assistant and a piano student, I learned of MuseScore notation software that I can download. So I did. I really was not fond of it. It seem clunky. I ended up migrating to Dorico last month and I am learning it slowly. It's not bad at all, as a matter of fact there are some features on Dorico that I like better than Finale. Now moving forward with MuseScore, I don't think at where it is right now will be the end all notation software BUT as it develops and improves for the future I know it will probably become a more efficient software. Right now, I just don't see use for it for me. I do have it and It's an alternative one, which of course I can use if an assistant helps me with working on notation and then I can convert it to my software, etc.

I'm using Musescore since 6 years and always was happy with it, at least up to version 4. But I'm only composing for myself. My music teacher always is using Sibelius, he think you can make more beautiful sheets with it but I never got really the point what he exactly thinks is not doable with MS. MS4 I don't use up to now because it has too many bugs and is (was?) missing some features, especially under Linux, I also had too many crashes and I don't like the "MuseHub" concept. MS3 is much more straight forward, 4 is kind of bloatware. I hope they come back on track at some point or maybe they already are at least regarding to bugs, haven't tried it again since a year or so. But I already can see the playback still has issues. You can swap to the MuseScore soundfont, it sounds not as polished but it has no weird playback issues, which is more important for notation. I don't know why they tried so hard making kind of an AWS with MS4.

Encore and MusicMatch

Sibelius ?

Thank you so much for this. Like you and so many others I was shocked by Finale's anouncement to the extent of isolating the programme on a separate computer and removing any connection with the internet so that it won't be thrown by software updates. I've tried Dorico and given up - it's not the way I work, or want to work, but this demonstration gives me hope and I have now downloaded Musescore.

Encore! Wow that is a blast from the past. Encore was the first notation program I had ever used. Unfortunately the company called it quits? After Encore I tried every notation program under the sun. Now I have been using Musescore 4. I own Dorico and Notion but I like working with new Musescore along with Staffpad.

After years and years of Finale not getting any better but in a way getting worse because they never fix anything but they keep adding new features. That’s not really what I was looking for especially since I had to pay $100 or so every year for an upgrade. Then I was taking a class in music theory with 20 other students, most of whom were using PCs and MuseScore. So even before Finale made its announcement, I was already learning MuseScore, which I have found easier to use. Plus it has the features that I need for my projects which for work are mostly “Leadsheets”. Leadsheets are more or less simple but require both chords and lyrics. Thank you for the video.

Not with this update...

I never liked working with MuseScore 3, the sound was really bad. Now that I too have discovered Musescore Studio, I really like it. I no longer use anything else for score notation. Projects that I find really worthwhile I do further edit in Presonus Studio One with quality samples.

Finale is NOT over. Finale can be used forever in it's current v27 version.

I used musescore when I started composing

Lilypond, eventually with Frescobaldi as frontend… That has a «steep learning curve» :) … In my attempts at "editing" music, I never had the chance to use "serious" software like Finale or Sibelius. I have tried some free software, musescore included, and always found something odd in the way they handle the insertions/editing of notes. I was accustomed to an Amiga software called DMCS (Deluxe Music Construction Set), in my memory it made it really easy. Anyway, so far, not too bad.

It’s weird that they won’t open source finale

I didn't use encore, but I used the starter program by that company called musictime

Intuitive is nice but when you’re planning on using it as a professional you need power and options. Musescore might get there but not quite yet. My bigger gripe is with MuseGroup in the whole and how they seemingly don’t care about their users using their platform to violate copyrights (not through Musescore itself but when posting publicly for free - many copyright violations and their response is basically “too bad, just report it” instead of trying to be more rigorous to protect composers). Hard to support a company doing that.

As a choir singer we use musescore. But I use to export as xml and then open the score in Melody (Myriad). Then I hear syntetic voices singing the piece. Voices are quite robotic, but you can tweak the voice parameters for a little better results. Being not proffesionals a good and free music app is perfect for us. Thank you for your video.

Hi Damiano, your major problems when changing things lie in the "enter mode" (a highlighted arrow in the top left. You escape it by hitting the "Esc" key. Other tricks worth mentioning: a rest is entered by hitting "0". So many other keyboard shortcuts are worth mentioning if you want to get fast. Let's begin with "c" for note c, etc. "." for dotted notes ("6" "." "0" = dotted half rest). "s" for slur", "t" for tie. Apple option key + number for intervall, Appl command key + number for division of selected note value (e.g. "5" for quarters CMD+"7" for eights septoles), etc. And maybe you get yourself a cheap MIDI keyboard, especially for chords and barocque lines it saves you hours...

I think the biggest problem with musescore is that it never tells you what the editing mode is. it has it highlighted in the corner but I never noticed that until I accidentally pressed "n" one day and it got turned off

yeah it's 100% worth it to take 20-30 minutes to learn the hotkeys. it won't take you long til you're sooo much faster and more efficient with your workflow.

Loved Encore.

Encore. I probably still have my old music in that file format saved in the cloud for historic fun. I've been using Musescore for a while and it was interesting when you struggled with the tempo. I've been there, and I wanted to whisper hints.

I couldn't stand the violin sounds with that portamento and vibrato in MS4. It could have been a success with the new sounds, but why do they think we want that buttery and sleezy sound of the strings all the time? Hate it. Otherwise MS3 and 4 are excellent programs to write in. I used MS3 for many years. I went Finale 27 with Vienna libraries instead and I will stay there for as long as possible.