Some useful MuseScore hacking

A few tips I have worked out for hacking the config files of MuseScore 2.0 until there are suitable GUI facilities to do the same job.

1. Manually edit your music

I did this to get all my dynamic velocities to the right value instead of having to hunt through and edit them all in the inspector (which is sadly broken for me).

First find your score's .mscz file. This is just a .zip file in disguise. Rename it to .zip. Extract the files - there should be 2, one is the score file, and the other a meta file. (Can any one say "Jar file" here?). The uncompressed sketch file is just XML. You can edit it in any text editor. Tweak values, etc. Then zip the file along with its meta file back up again and bob's your uncle. Alternatively, save the sketch as a .mscx file instead of a .mscz file, and edit that one directly, which is easier.

2. Tweak your workspace files

Again, the workspace definition file is a zip file with an xml file inside it. Find the file "default.workspace". On Linux it's in ~/.local/share/data/MuseScore/MuseScoreDevelopment/workspaces. Again, rename it to a .zip file and extract the contents. Again it's a meta file and a workspace.xml file. Edit the .xml file. The settings I changed in mine was to change the default velocity for the dynamics (just search for, eg ">pp<" and you'll find it plain as day). When you're done, zip them back up again and call it default.workspace.

There's probably a ton of other useful tweaks you can do to customize your settings to get MuseScore to work just as you want it. What would be nice would be a full settings editor - kind of like the "about:config" page in Firefox - where you can edit all these XML file settings in a nice big tree / list.