(Disclaimer: this article was written before the announcement of MakeMusic’s decision to discontinue Finale on August 26th, 2024.)
On the first day of class in my freshman year of undergrad, I was met with an unexpected hurdle. It was a humid Miami morning, and after trekking across campus and finding a seat for my first theory lecture, I was jarred—though unsurprised—to learn that all students were required to purchase a copy of Finale, Sibelius, or a similar notation software. Which one didn’t matter, but it couldn’t be a free one. This sentiment was later echoed by my composition professor, who asserted to my class that any assignments notated with Musescore, or other free software, would be turned down.
As a composition student whose auditioning portfolio was notated entirely with Musescore, a free program, I became immediately skeptical. I’ve worked with Finale and Sibelius in the past, and knew from experience that Musescore was capable of the same output. I was coming from an arts high school where not everybody could afford to spend $500 on a piece of software. Musescore bridged that gap. Without it, we wouldn’t have had a class for composition.
I confronted my professors about their rule, and they didn’t have a clear answer for me right away, but after some um’s and uh’s, two main arguments came through: firstly, that free programs produced low-quality scores, and secondly that the software couldn’t handle advanced compositional needs, like graphic notation—whereas Finale and Sibelius, with ‘lots of effort and tweaking’, could handle one’s wildest notational desires. Coming from my composition professor, these points made sense: paid software made polished scores ‘out-of-the-box’, while Musescore still needed frequent tweaking, especially in larger scores (This was Musescore 3, far before the engraving overhaul that added auto-spacing and loads of polishing that eradicated these issues.) But this same rule coming from my theory professor was surprising, and I didn’t buy it. I knew that my peers, representing the entire classical music student body, wouldn’t have to use ‘advanced notational elements’ for their theory assignments (sure enough, the most complex notational element we needed was lyrics.) Was it really fair to make that call, knowing it would cost everybody hundreds of dollars?
Naturally, I didn’t subscribe to this forced-purchase decision—and I made sure my peers, many of whom had never touched composition software, knew they didn’t have to either. Call me stubborn, but I submitted every composition assignment for both classes using Musescore, and my professors were none the wiser. This even included scores with graphic notation (anything the software couldn’t do was easily added in using Adobe Acrobat.) Over four years, I continued to use it for every composition and arrangement, with no feedback about poor legibility—usually the opposite. And yet, despite me (and lots of other students) using Musescore, and several arguments with faculty, the rule still stood after four years: no free software allowed.
Why does this stigma around Musescore persist? Perhaps the program’s newness: version 1.0 released in 2010, while Finale was released in 1988, and Sibelius in 1993. The other programs are rather antiquated, and can be inaccessible to new users: but, for those who have been using them since the start of their compositional career, it’s a tool they cannot live without. Professors can provide better advice and troubleshooting to students using software they’re familiar with themselves. This may explain why Dorico, another popular paid notational software, was treated as an afterthought in discussions regarding notation: while it checked all the boxes for paid software, few professors were familiar with it.
Another reason for this stigma may be Musescore’s popularity. The app has been growing rapidly since its release, with thousands of downloads every day. As of December 2022, it’s estimated that 12 million people have downloaded Musescore, making it the most widely used software for music notation. Musescore made composition more accessible to me and my high school classmates, but that rings true across the world. Many institutions have embraced Musescore for their students, and in a world where arts funding is on the decline, accessibility is more important than ever. Accessibility does have a downside in that it increases the amount of low-quality works created, which may be why the professors at my institution were so against it. Someone with a passing curiosity about composition, for example, isn’t going to spend hundreds of dollars on software just to tinker with it; but a dedicated musician, who knows how a score should look, will. Banning free software, then, would eliminate low-quality works from the table—right?
A couple years ago, maybe. Musescore was a very different app, with legitimate issues that didn’t meet the standard for professional use. The Musescore I was using in high school, and early college, was notorious for its clunky MIDI soundfont library, and dense scores with a layout algorithm that resulted in lots of overlap.
But this argument is completely outdated when looking at Musescore 4. Musescore is an open-source project with a vigorously monitored forum: users who report issues often see replies from the development team, and if suggested features/bug fixes gain enough traction, they tend to be incorporated into a future update. This community-driven progress has lead to extraordinary changes over the past few years, with massive overhauls to UI and UX, a new engraving engine, and professionally recorded sound libraries that radically improve the quality of its output, bringing Musescore up-to-par with NotePerformer, a playback engine that costs hundreds of dollars.
So, one can see how an opinion as strong as my professors’ could have developed: students submit sub-par scores using free software, it explodes in popularity, and poor notational quality becomes a serious issue. Professors, who are used to their own software, decide to enforce their ‘no free software’ rule, and students must splurge on a program most only need for one class. It doesn’t help that Finale and Sibelius both operate on subscription-based models, costing composers hundreds of dollars a year to keep their software up-to-date (Finale users on Mac, for example, have to purchase the latest version of the software if they want to use it on the latest Mac firmware—Finale will not be porting earlier versions to the new OS.)
At the end of the day, it’s a matter of choice. Paid software does offer some things that Musescore doesn’t, and some may find Finale, Sibelius, or other software like Dorico, to be the right fit for their needs. However, as a choral composer, Musescore has rarely given me trouble. If you haven’t tried using it before, or it’s been some time since, definitely give it a fresh look. And if you’re in a similar situation, with people telling you who Musescore is for, take it from me: it’s not hard to prove them wrong when the scores look so damn good.
*Opinions expressed on The CCCC Blog are reflections of the individual author, and may not represent all members of The CCCC Community.
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