Today we are pleased to announce a significant update, MuseScore 3.1. In addition to hundreds of bug fixes, it introduces some new features (including single-note dynamics) and significant improvements related to playback, automatic placement and layout, fretboard diagrams, and performance.

Download MuseScore 3.1 Release

Single-note Dynamics

MuseScore will now play crescendos and diminuendos on single notes; fortepianos and other dynamics that change volume after the beginning of a note; and dynamic articulations. Before, a note could only play at a single dynamic for its entire duration. This new feature is possible thanks to an update to the MuseScore General soundfont and a significant amount of programming that allows dynamics playback to be controlled while a note is still being played. It isn’t just volume that is affected—timbre and other subtle effects can also change based on the dynamics. Both new and existing scores will take advantage of this automatically, and customization options are available as well.

For even more realism in playback, a high-quality soundfont is available as an extension in the Resource Manager. It provides better quality of Strings and Synth instruments. Note, you don’t have to install HQ soundfont to make single-note dynamics work.

Special thanks to @jthistle (James Thistlewood) and S. Christian Collins

Here is a creative example of what can be done with this feature provided by mdi1972 (Alvaro José Fernández Lago).



Smart Layout

Automatic placement (autoplace) was one of the most significant advances in MuseScore 3 over MuseScore 2. It provides context-aware positioning for elements, avoiding most collisions and thus reducing the need for manual adjustment. However, in the cases where manual adjustment is also necessary, users sometimes felt autoplace got in the way. We have listened to these concerns and come up with some major improvements in the flexibility of automatic placement.

As of MuseScore 3.1, automatic placement will no longer prevent you from moving elements wherever you like—including moving them closer to the staff, overlapping other elements, or even onto the staff. Moreover, by default, autoplace will stay enabled for elements you move, meaning it will continue to update the position of moved elements to avoid further collisions as you edit your score, and other elements will continue to avoid the moved element. This provides the best of both worlds—great default positioning and automatic collision avoidance as you edit, with complete freedom to move elements around. You can also easily disable autoplace completely for an individual element or for the score as a whole.

In addition, MuseScore 3.1 will detect when you have moved an element to the opposite side of the staff and will automatically convert between Above and Below placement, just as if you had used the “X” command or Inspector to flip it.

Special thanks to @MarcSabatella (Marc Sabatella)

Fretboard Diagram Improvements

Fretboard diagrams are vastly more customizable, now featuring:

Multiple dots per string

Partial and multiple barres

Different dot shapes (especially useful for Ted Greene diagrams)

Ability to not show nut

Customizable distance between strings and frets

Chord symbols for diagrams

Improved ability to save chord symbols to the palette

Improved fretboard editing interface

Many bugfixes

Special thanks to @jthistle (James Thistlewood), and to Trevor Hanson for his advice.

Half/Double Duration

MuseScore 3.1 includes new commands Edit > Paste Half Duration and Edit > Paste Double Duration to halve or double rhythms when pasting a selection. These allow you to quickly turn a passage notated in eighth notes into one notated in sixteenths or vice versa. Unlike earlier plugins, these commands work on tuplets and multiple voices.

Special thanks to @MarcSabatella (Marc Sabatella)

Linearization Feature

Users often take advantage of jumps and repeats during "prototyping" of a song and, after a while, decide to linearize the score before continuing with the arrangement. This is especially common in larger arrangements, where structural parts (Verses, Choruses, etc) are seldom repeated exactly. MuseScore 3.1 now provides the Tools > Unroll Repeats command to automate this process.

Special thanks to @velochy (Margus Niitsoo)

UX improvements

We listen carefully to user feedback, including recently a public video analyzing MuseScore’s interface by professional musician and designer Tantacrul.

For 3.1, we have implemented a few things that make the user experience smoother:

Notes remain selected after deleting various elements attached to them

Hairpins and dynamics can be copied now (separately or together)

Target measures are fully cleared on copy-pasting elements

Duration of multiple notes can be changed at once

Horizontal note spacing can be adjusted by dragging

Inspector is more compact and visually streamlined

Special thanks to @tantacrul (Martin Keary), @dmitrio95 (Dmitri Ovodok), and @IsaacWeiss (Isaac Weiss)

Continuous View Performance

MuseScore 3 introduced significant performance improvements for page view by only laying out the portion of a score affected by any given edit operation, rather than always laying out the entire score as in previous versions. This makes it easier to work on large scores in MuseScore 3. However, continuous view did not benefit from this improvement and got slower compared to MuseScore 2. Now MuseScore 3.1 brings these same improvements to continuous view, thus making it a more viable option as well regardless of the size of your score.

Important notes