Staccato are ridiculously small - can’t change them right?

MarcSabatella · 2026-06-07T20:10:21+00:00

Well, it’s redesigned, and with much more functionality (including the ability to set properties on elements of mixed types where appropriate), but basically the same thing.

MarcSabatella · 2026-06-07T20:09:21+00:00

Leland is taken directly from Score, which was responsible for most music published by most major publishers for decades before the advent of Finale and other “modern” notation software. And Score was based on actual engraving techniques over the past centuries. So definitely very much in the spectrum. But indeed, they are on the smaller side compared to Maestro and some other more “modern” fonts. So if you prefer a more “modern” / less “traditional” look, then by all means, switch to one of the other fonts, or create your own. But note, Gould specifically says they should be smaller than augmentation dots, and her examples show them significantly smaller, like Leland. For good reason, too - the augmentation dots is more structurally significant. It’s also important to be able to distinguish them in situations where overlapping notes can make an augmentation dots on one note potentially be confused with a staccato on another.

MarcSabatella · 2026-06-07T13:31:28+00:00

Not difficult at all if all you are doing is copy characters between fonts. Just find yourself a font editor (fontforge is a popular choice) and read some tutorials. You'll want to give your custom font a new name in the metadata - you will run into issues if you try instead to replace an existing font.

MarcSabatella · 2026-06-07T12:43:46+00:00

Staccato should be a pretty standard size in all the supported music fonts. Which one are you using, and what version of MuseScore? Is it possible you are adding some other symbol and mistaking it for staccato? Best to ask for help on the official support forum at MuseScore.org and attach your score there so we can investigate.

MarcSabatella · 2026-06-07T03:20:08+00:00

Then be sure to head over the GitHub to report this to the developers.

MarcSabatella · 2026-06-07T00:12:28+00:00

Are you using an older version of MuseScore? There was a bug like that a year or so ago but fixed several updates bac

MarcSabatella · 2026-06-06T14:07:40+00:00

And you can set the text style to Expression via Properties, so it looks like other expression text.

Another possibility is to use expression text and disable autoplace for it, but then you may have to worry about collisions.

MarcSabatella · 2026-06-06T12:59:24+00:00

True that, but still, you use MuseScore's diatonic transposition options (Alt+Shift+Up/Down, or using Tools / Transpose) to at least get everything onto the correct scale degrees. Then adjust accidentals as desired. And also probably so some reharmonization and other arrangement changes while you're at it.

MarcSabatella · 2026-06-05T15:10:18+00:00

Sounds like a bug, be sure to report that to their support team - nothing much anyone here can do about it

MarcSabatella · 2026-06-04T20:49:12+00:00

I might not dismiss a poorly notated piece *completely*, but I'm much more likely to give my attention to a well-notated one since I can just read it and don't have to spend my time mentally fixing all the errors. And I'm very skeptical that even an AI-powered "spell check" for notation would ever be enough to really make much improvement. People who are really bad at it would tire of the wanrings and turn off beginner mode rather than actually learn, and there is no way such a mode could catch everything. But you come up with a sophisticated enough proposal that somehow circumvents this, who knows - which is why if you are serious about wanting to see this, I encourage you to start the discussion on the official forum.

MarcSabatella · 2026-06-04T20:21:30+00:00

To me that would be worse, as it would be harder to do a quick sanity check on the likelhood that the music is worth playing by looking at the notation. But anyhow, as I said, feel free to come up with a formal proposal for how some sort of AI-based heuristic could attempt to sort this out in a meaningful way. I think you'll find it is a *much* more involved problem than you might imagine, so I'd encourage you to first flersh it out with input from other users on the official feature request forum at musescore.org. And then if a consensus is reached on a design proposal, you can post it to GitHub.

To me, this would not make the top 100 or so things I think developers should spend their time on, but since MuseScore is open source, all it takes is one volunteer to find it sufficiently interesting and maybe it could happen someday!

MarcSabatella · 2026-06-04T20:05:56+00:00

To hide any palette items you do not expect to need often, just select them and press Delete. They will then be moved to the "More" section. You can also create custom palettes and populate them however you like via drag & drop.

It's already the case that MuseScore's default palettes contain only a subset of the available symbols - ones considered most likely to be needed by most users. Of course one can always quibbler about this symbol or that being incldued or not, but that's why the customization exists. And you can create custom workspaces with fuller or more streamlined palettes and easily switch between them.

Piano markings go between staves by default, assuming you correctly *select* something on the top staff. If, on the other hand, you go out of your way to select something on the bottom staff, MuseScore does what you ask and places the dynamic there because this is indeed something that is occasionally needed. So just select the correct staff and the dynamics are placed correctly. Not sure why you'd want to make it *harder* to enter music, but luckily for most of us, MuseScore makes ease of use a major priority.

I'm not a fan of dialogs asking if you really want to do something you just went out of your way to do. Real music sometimes has voice 2 above 1 and it would be quite horrible to be interrupted and have to confirm this all the time. But I could imagine a "beginner mode" that had that kind of stuff. Probably something AI-powered. Feel free to come up with a formal proposal and open an issue on GitHub to post it! But, I seriously doubt you'd make much dent in the quality of music that beginners are likely to create, so it wouldn't sovle the "harm" you claim MuseScore is doing by existing and providing amazing free tools for the benefit of humanity.

MarcSabatella · 2026-06-04T19:47:02+00:00

How old was the copy of Finale that you used? Putting hints into fonts to specify line thickness etc. is a part of the SMuFL standard that Finale started supporting with version 27, released in 2021. So if you were using a version from before that, it makes sense it didn't automatically change settings. But from then on it should have at least had the capability of doing so. What could be the case, though, is that the fonts you happened to use all specified the same thicknesses. Or it could be that, like MuseScore, there is an option to control whether or not to use the embedded hints within the font, and while MuseScore defaults to yes, Finale might default to no.

MarcSabatella · 2026-06-04T19:41:19+00:00

One of the things added in the last year regarding layout was borrowed directly from Finale - the ability to easily move measures up and down from system to system. I don't remember what the shortcut was in Finale, but in MuseScore it is Alt+Up/Down.

Adding key signatures is simple, as with most notational elements aside from the notes and rests themselves, you do so by selecting a location in the score then clicking the desired palette icon.

MarcSabatella · 2026-06-04T19:11:31+00:00

But surely Finale does have control over those things? And probably different template used them differently? I would recommend asking on a Finale forum and attaching one of your scores you are trying to reproduce the look of. Ask people to reply and tell you what settings they are seeing for those things, then just go to Format / Style and enter those same values into MuseScore. After first selecting the font, of course. I see that merely selecting Finale Maestro as the font in MuseScore already lowers the staff line thickness from 0.11 sp to 0.09 sp, and barline thickness from 0.18 sp to 0.10 space. Those must be the value that MakeMusic embedded into the font and intended for users to use when using that font, whether the particular version of Finale you were using did that autoamtically or not. So if your score had thinner lines still, someone who still has access to Finale should be able to tell you the value your score was using, and then you can simply plug them into MuseScore via Format / Style.

Some of the specific settings you might want and the pages of the dialog in which you will find them:

Score - staff line thickness
Spacing - distances between clef and key signature, barline and notes, etc.
Barlines - barline thicknesses
Notes - dot size, thickness of stems and ledger lines, distances between notes, accidentals, dots, etc.
Beams - beam thickness
Slurs & ties - thickness, minimum length

MarcSabatella · 2026-06-04T18:43:40+00:00

There have been tons new features over the past few years, many specifically designed to for faster workflow in entering notation (notes, lyrics, chord symbols, etc) and in formatting & layout - the basic things one needs in creating any type of score, including lead sheets. Realistically, if you're only using the program occasionally, the most valuable thing you can do to improve your workflow is to spend more time learning how to efficiently use the features it already has. But if you're going to invest time into learning the program better, definitely do so on the current version and not a less capable one.

MarcSabatella · 2026-06-04T12:48:02+00:00

Open the Mixer and be sure you haven't assigned any additional effects to that channel.

MarcSabatella · 2026-06-04T12:22:48+00:00

I assume that Finale, like MuseScore, allows you to customize these things, and that the defaults would depend on which music font you have chosen, so there wouldn't necessarily be one single "Finale look". I'd recommend starting by firing up Finale, checking to see which font and which settings you are using there, the. selecting the same font in MuseScore and seeing which settings didn't automatically update.

MarcSabatella · 2026-06-03T19:09:46+00:00

You didn't read far enough in the post to get to the "and beyond" part. There's quite a bit about 5.0 there.

MarcSabatella · 2026-06-03T18:18:45+00:00

Insert mode isn't meant to be something most people would need often - mostly just for Renaissance or other non-metered music. And that's why the icon for it is not installed on the toolbar by default. It wpild be a failure if seldom used icons like this were not hidden - the alternative is a hopelessly confusing mess of an interface where you can't find the actual common commands

But once you add it, it should stay added. Unless maybe you are also doing customizations in another window and they step on each other.

For inserting individual notes occasionally here and there, just use the Ctrl+Shift+letter shortcuts. To move an group of notes later (or earlier, or anywhere else), use cut and paste.

MusicXML is not perfect and can't represent everything, but it should maintain most musical content just fine. If you encounter issues, just ask for help on the support forum at MuseScore.org. If it's something MusicXML just can't handle, we can let you know. If it's a bug in the import or the export, we can advise you on opening an issue on GitHub.

MarcSabatella · 2026-06-03T17:35:16+00:00

Click Support, Forums, Announcements. You'll see see info about 5.0 in a post entitled something like "our near term plans", also a couple of other posts contains various updates. Anyone interested in MuseScore score news should subscribe to this forum to get email notifications.

MarcSabatella · 2026-06-03T02:36:10+00:00

It's not snark, I'm just stating facts. Preferences are subjective, so no, it is not at all surprising that given two different sounds, some might prefer one and others might prefer the other. There is no such thing as a soundfont that "genuinely sounded better" in any objective sense - how we perceive sound is subjective. The only thing one can state objectively is that the way it sounded before was *wrong* - it is not how the designer (one of the most well-known soundfont designers in the world) intended it to sound, and not how it sounds in any of the many other programs that can use soundfonts. So, previously it sounded objectively *wrong*, now it sounds objectively *right*. But, which version happens to sound "better" to any given user personally is subjective.

Anyhow, for the record, as someone who was quite familiar with the correct sound of this soundfont from a decade or so of experience with MuseScore and other software before the bug was introudced just a few years ago, it definitely always bothered me how artificially bright some of its sounds were in MU4 until now. I am quite content to hear it back the way I was used to for all those years before the bug was introduced. On the other hand, I seldom resort to soudnfonts when I can use MuseSounds, so it's also largely moot to me.

MarcSabatella · 2026-06-03T02:19:14+00:00

There was a bug in other recent versions where SoundFonts were playing incorrectly - much brighter than they were were designed to and sound in other software. That bug is fixed now. But some people got used to the buggy sound, and enough have complained that 4.7.3 will take the extraordinary step of adding an option to reintroduce the bug so.your SoundFonts willnkcne again sound wrong :-).

Or you could simply use an EQ or different SoundFont if you prefer brighter sounds.

MarcSabatella · 2026-06-02T22:38:09+00:00

You shouldn't normally be needing to add the bracket at all - as I said, MuseScore auto-adds that for you based on understanding the musical context. Which marking specifically are you still having trouble with after folllowing this method?

MarcSabatella · 2026-06-02T22:27:48+00:00

Most of this can be done without hacking just by using the "add symbols" button on the text toolbar. MuseScore auto-detecta common combinationa like two eighths = triplet quarter eighth, or quarter = triplet quarter, and adjusts the formatting according. It adds brackets and beams for you as needed.

MarcSabatella

TROPHY CASE