Albums in Musescore 3 ?

• Jan 19, 2019 - 11:47

Hi everybody !

I just updated from Musescore 2 to Musescore 3 and I can't find the "album" button !!
It seems it's now impossible to create albums despite the fact that it is described in the handbook !
I follow the instructions "files/new/etc." but I don't see any "album" button ?

Bug or missing feature ?

Thanks in advance

Lionel

Comments

• Jan 19, 2019 - 14:27

I'm experiencing this too. Just updated today and have found that the Album option is missing from the file menu.

Note: I'm using version 3.0.1.5087
I'm on Windows 8.1 64bit

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• Jun 9, 2019 - 11:17

Really looking forward to the "new" album button for multimovement works. It was convenient on MuseScore 2, so I hope that it comes back for the sake of contests and professional uses.

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• Jun 10, 2019 - 14:37

Marc as you yourself say that the PDF programs can only do MOST things. Not all.

Personally I'm still using version 2 for this very reason. I've recently hit a milestone with a personal project (currently being proof read by others) which was to copy out a book of 70+ handwritten songs. In some instances I've been able to get up to 3 songs per page with the album feature due to the brevity of some of the songs. Not something PDFsam can do that I'm aware of.

Don't get me wrong PDF programs have their place also, I just don't think we should leave this feature out completely being the PDF programs can do most things.

I actually made good use of PDFSAM. As a follow up to the aforementioned book I wanted to create a transposed version, but I didn't want it to be transposed only, I wanted concert pitch left page and transposed right page. PDFSAM was instrumental in making this easy to do.

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• Jun 10, 2019 - 15:06

For short songs where you expect to fit multiple songs per page, I wouldn't use PDF merging indeed, I'd use snapshots of the scores inserted into a word processing document.

As for how this adds to the conversation, I like to help people solve problems. Suggesting alternative ways of combining songs is quite helpful for people unaware of these options.

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• Jun 10, 2019 - 16:47

Hey Marc, seems you caught my reply before I reviewed it (oh it probably showed in an email notification?).

When you say adding snap shots I'm assuming you mean doing a screen grab? That comes with own issues such as making sure your sizing is correct if you want everything to look the same and that would take a lot of work to get right. I certainly wouldn't want to be doing that for a 78 song project. I'd simply be looking for software other than MuseScore to do my job.

I did try copying and pasting into both Word 2013 and Publisher 2013 but got all I got was gobble-de-goop, does it work better with later versions?

Also I had one song that had multiple versus where we didn't want all the versus in with the music, we wanted all versus past the first verse to just be separate and below the music. Initially I didn't know I could add a text box to the end of my composition which would allow me to add in the extra versus not as part of the music. So I gave the song to a friend who has the full adobe suite. If he opened the PDF I gave him in Adobe reader it looked fine, if he opened in Adobe Acrobat to edit it he got errors about not having the right font files installed and it presented him with gobble-de-goop.

For what it's worth I'll note this here if any of the developers read this thread. I found MuseScore when I wanted some software to write out 3 songs and then transpose them. I had an alto saxophone student I was teaching how to transpose and he all of a sudden had a task to learn 3 songs that were written in concert pitch. He had only a week to learn them and he had only really just started learning to transpose. In an effort to make it easier for him to learn the songs, (and because his ability to transpose wasn't what was going to be judged in this instance) I decided that I'd write them out transposed for him. Being I felt it would be neater (and maybe quicker) if I did it on computer than if I hand wrote it I searched for some software and came across this one. I found it very easy to use and only needed to go through a few quick tutorials in order to do a simple melody line. After having done this task and had a little muck around with the software I felt it was full featured enough for me to take on the aforementioned project and so I donated my time to do so. This project is now complete in as much as it is now being proof read. As such I've found the software to be more than ample to my needs with the exception of the Album feature which has kept me using version 2.

Actually the ability to copy in pictures I must say surprised me, not something I expected from music writing software. But I certainly think it's great that it's there particularly considering my current project is targeted towards children.

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• Jun 10, 2019 - 17:58

MuseScore has a built-in image capture tool, see the camera icon on the right of the toolbar. Right-click the lasso that appears and you can automatically size it to the page. Then it's just a matter of copy & paste into Word or whatever. Not sure what you mean about sizing, the sizes would automatically be consistent if the songs themselves are, and why wouldn't they be? It's really the easiest / best way to create certain types of collections, but every project is different.

Or you could also create one long score - you don't need the album feature for that. The main advantage of the album feature over just creating the long score yourself are that is easier to re-order the songs later and then re-generate the album. Also, since MuseScore 2 was so slow with large scores, this was kind of hacky way around that. But MuseScore 3 is lightning quick regardless of score size, so that hack is no longer needed just to get reasonable performance.

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• Jun 10, 2019 - 18:01

Over in the thread linked by mike320, Marc Sabatella has informed me of some functions I wasn't aware of and perhaps other commenters here also may not know them.

What I didn't know was how to take one file and write two songs into it. I didn't know that I could add a frame that would then have a title etc in it and then add more bars after that. I learnt about the Album feature first and didn't know that the below was possible. Maybe this may help some still looking for the feature.

There's probably multiple ways this can be done, however this was how I did it.

Once you've completed your first song, clean it up so there's no extra bars.

1) Right click on a blank area of the page and you'll get a menu with Bars/Frames/Text/Lines

2) Go to Frames -> Append Veritcal Frame

3) Right click on the new frame and you should get a menu headed with "Vertical Frame" and from it go down to Add> and you'll get a further menu which will allow you to add a Title,Subtitle,Composer, etc into the frame. Now you may edit the Title etc as you normally would.

4) Right click again on a blank area of the page and this time from the menu go to Bars -> Append Bars and this will allow you to add the needed bars for your second song/movement

5) Now to clean up, In the tools menu on the left expand out bar lines and select the required bar line (likely double bar line) and click on it and hold the mouse button down and drag it to the last bar of your first song.

6) Now go to Breaks & Spacers on the left and find the Section Break and click and drag it also onto the last bar of your first song

Steps 5 & 6 allow you to change the time and key signature without them appearing at the end of your first song.

Step 7) If needed on the tools on the left expand the Key Signatures and click and drag the required key signature into the first bar of your second song

Step 8) If needed right click on the time signature (you'll get a time signature menu if you've got it right) and select Time Signature Properties and you'll be able to change your time signature.

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