A whole new MIDI-Only Entry program.... ?

This idea isn't a feature to add to MuseScore, it should probably be a stand-alone program.

We often get the question "Why can't I just play on my MIDI board and get a perfect score right out of the computer? The rub, of course, is getting the durations right. Perhaps something could be done using a two step process, and two kinds of data.

Step one, you'd play on the MIDI board, and the computer would record the pitches and their actual real time durations.

Step two, the computer displays the staff with key signature and time signature, but no bar lines, and instead of notes, the horizontal axis is a scalable time line, and on the lines and spaces, there are horizontal blue lines corresponding to the duration that each key was held down. Rests (all keys up) would appear on the time line scale itself. For multiple voices, maybe click select the raw timeline bars, and change their color?

With the mouse, you can move a full height vertical cursor to any point on the time line, or with the arrow keys, you can move it to the start of the next or previous duration. Then, with the number keys, you can assign a duration to all the notes that are active at that point on the time line, making a chord.

You'd start at the start of the first duration, and if it's a chord, arrow to the right until you have the cursor selecting all its notes. Give it a duration, and the cursor snaps to the start of the next available duration. When you've done a bar's worth, it puts in a bar line.

In order to interrupt what you're doing and continue later, this would need its own special working file format, containing both the raw timeline data and the finished notation, so you could save a work in progress file. When it's done, you'd be able to save it as a regular MuseScore file, and take it to MuseScore for all the polishing it' going to need.

-- J.S.