Alternatives to MuseScore.com regarding easy rehearsal, incl looping, for choir members?

• Nov 17, 2024 - 16:49

Ok, so I got the difference between MuseScore Studio and MuseScore.com, let me nickname the latter "The Platform" in this post. And I get that this forum is about Studio, not about The Platform. But I have an urgent need to rant right now, and in the end I'm going to ask for an alternative to The Platform, which seems better placed among Studio users than Platform users.

I find The Platform immensly aggressive in terms of getting you to subscribe, forcing you to answer questions about your instrument, goal, rehearsal methods, age and more. A lot of bullshit texting, like "There are 1.3M like you, including those that trust MuseScore", what, does it mean you have 1.3M accounts or not? It was hard to find information on what benefit I'd have from a subscription, I was seriously startled to see that my own score seemingly could be downloaded for money, and and and.... responsibly ending mentally not finished rant here.

I found a feature I've really been looking for on The Platform: letting members of my choir view and playback my score, even looping over customly selected bars, and via the mixer button possibly being able to single out their own voice. I understand the idea that a platform has to make money out of something, so that the mixer function is not free, I can totally understand; it can be sorted out by uploading one score for each voice. I'd even advocate for the choir to pay a sort of choir subscription if it in turn let's the individual users use the mixerfunction. But the aggressiveness of the platform, especially when trying to use their android app, really put me off, so I don't want to make it necessary for my fellow choir members to even visit that site.

So: is there an alternative? I saw another app on Google Play, called Musicnotes, but it didn't say, what kind of sheets I can load, and I guessed, they have their own standard.

I have no need for the whole "connecting millions of users and discover trillions of new compositions thingy". I need an easy way for non-note reading choir members to rehearse their voice, especially bars around section transitions. MuseScore Studio is actually really really good and has this feature already inbuilt, but expecting each choir member to download and learn basic navigation in a far too complex for the task desktop app is just not an alternative.

Can the MuseScore Studio player be isolated and run on a VPS? (which is probably what The Platform did to begin with; and if they used MuseScore, that code should also be open source, right?)

Comments

• Nov 17, 2024 - 20:23

Verify that all your players have MuseScore. Assist them in installing it, if necessary. Then simply transfer the .MSCZ files to them, by email or DropBox or similar.

I would never use musescore.com for anything *blecch*

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• Nov 19, 2024 - 09:29

I know what your are talking about. I have 8 years experience with practise tools in serveral choirs. It not primaryly a matter of technology. Technology and tools can only lowers the barriers and remove some of the excuses. The key to succcess is to get a committment from the community to work for the best performance - also at home, to repeat difficult passages and important - to try to catch up when you missed a rehearsal. If a choir has the habit to keep the scores in the practise room since 20 years this will be a big culture change.

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• Nov 17, 2024 - 20:50

"Can the MuseScore Studio player be isolated and run on a VPS?"

Running scores on the web
I had to look up what a VPS is, but I handle choir rehearsal materials on my own website using embedded iframes from the option My Scores > [select score] > Share > Embed on musescore.com. That's exactly what the Embed option is intended for. I publish all those rehearsal scores as Unlisted, which means that any choir member with a link to my HTML pages can view and play the score without having a MuseScore account and without having to subscribe to the MuseScore mobile app ... and without having to install MuseScore. Most of our choir members are not really computer-literate!

Looping
I haven't used this feature until now, but it does work on embedded scores where you can set the start and end measure of the loop:
MuseScore.com_loop.png

Uploading one score for each voice
I haven't found any way around this problem, so I just bite the bullet and create a separate file for each SATB voice. I use a different instrument for Soprano (flute), Alto (oboe) and Tenor/Bass (bassoon).

Sample HTML practice page
Below is the HTML showing the iframes for each SATB voice of Edward Elgar's anthem Ave verum corpus (Op.2 No.1). See the working HTML page at:
https://rootham.org/playlist/smb/anthems/cpdl_39268_Ave_verum_corpus_El…

       <table id="sacred-table">
            <tr>
                <th>&nbsp; Voice</th>
                <th>&nbsp; Score Player</th>
                <th>&nbsp; YouTube Recordings</th>
            </tr>
            <tr>
                <td><b>&nbsp; Soprano</b></td>
                <td><iframe width="700" height="54" src="https://musescore.com/user/150465/scores/11718805/s/EgPFAG/embed" allow="autoplay; fullscreen"></iframe></td>
                <td rowspan="5">&nbsp; <i>either:</i> <br>
                <br>&nbsp; <a href="https://youtu.be/dcAedAH_ynY"><img src="../../../images/listen_youtube_perf.png" height="50" alt="YouTube logo"></a>
                <br>&nbsp; <a href="https://youtu.be/dcAedAH_ynY">Choir of St John's College, Cambridge</a> 
                </td>
            </tr>
            <tr>
                <td><b>&nbsp; Alto</b></td>
                <td><iframe width="700" height="54" src="https://musescore.com/user/150465/scores/11718745/s/jnMdC3/embed" allow="autoplay; fullscreen"></iframe></td>
            </tr>
            <tr>
                <td><b>&nbsp; Tenor</b></td>
                <td><iframe width="700" height="54" src="https://musescore.com/user/150465/scores/11718718/s/GE8LCW/embed" allow="autoplay; fullscreen"></iframe></td>
            </tr>
            <tr>
                <td><b>&nbsp; Bass</b></td>
                <td><iframe width="700" height="54" src="https://musescore.com/user/150465/scores/11717371/s/Na-1WN/embed" allow="autoplay; fullscreen"></iframe></td>
            </tr>
        </table>

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• Nov 17, 2024 - 20:55

Take a look at "Music Writer-Music Composer" on the Play Store.

I think you have to have a PRO account to use those rehearsal things.

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• Nov 19, 2024 - 10:18

If you have a Gmail account then you can use the embedded link method with free Google webspace and their free webpage builder.

Here's an example:
https://sites.google.com/view/yonah/MuseTabs

If you check one of the score links then you'll see that you have a lot of control over the score formatting. You don't need to know HTML for this and you can use any scores that are available to you on musescore.com.

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