Music notation and composition software

MuseScore is an open source and free music notation software. For support, contribution, and bug reports visit MuseScore.org. Fork and make pull requests!

Features

• WYSIWYG design, notes are entered on a "virtual notepaper"
• TrueType font(s) for printing & display allows for high quality scaling to all sizes
• Easy & fast note entry
• Many editing functions
• MusicXML import/export
• MIDI (SMF) import/export
• MEI import/export
• MuseData import
• MIDI input for note entry
• Integrated sequencer and software synthesizer to play the score
• Print or create PDF files

More info

• MuseScore Homepage
• MuseScore Git workflow instructions
• How to compile MuseScore?

License

MuseScore is licensed under GPL version 3.0. See license file in the same directory.

Packages

See Code Structure on Wiki

Building

Read the Compilation section of the MuseScore Wiki for a complete build walkthrough and a list of dependencies.

Getting sources

If using git to download repo of entire code history, type:

git clone https://github.com/musescore/MuseScore.git
cd MuseScore

Otherwise, you can just download the latest source release tarball from the Releases page, and then from your download directory type:

tar xzf MuseScore-x.x.x.tar.gz
cd MuseScore-x.x.x

Release Build

To compile MuseScore for release, type:

cmake -P build.cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release

If something goes wrong, append the word "clean" to the above command to delete the build subdirectory:

cmake -P build.cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release clean

Then try running the first command again.

Running

To start MuseScore, type:

cmake -P build.cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release run

Or run the compiled executable directly.

Debug Build

A debug version can be built and run by replacing -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release with -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug in the above commands.

If you omit the -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE option entirely then RelWithDebInfo is used by default, as it provides a useful compromise between Release and Debug.

Testing

See the Unit tests section of the MuseScore Wiki for instructions on how to run the test suite.

Code Formatting

Run ./hooks/install.sh to install a pre-commit hook that will format your staged files. Requires that you install uncrustify.

If you have problems, please report them. To uninstall, run ./hooks/uninstall.sh.