MuseScore 3 features not (yet) implemented in MuseScore 4
Introduction
- This list is a work in progress. Some of these features may be implemented before 4.0 is actually released. Others are already planned for a post MuseScore 4.0 release, although there may be a new design.
- Some might even exist but in a different form that those of us accustomed to MuseScore 3 have not discovered yet.
- The MuseScore 4.X Github project page tracks features that will be implemented post MuseScore 4.0.
- This list is organized by general topic area, and within each topic area, are sorted more or less by priority.
Playback
Playback of invisible instruments
- Currently, setting an instrument invisible forces it to also be muted, with no way to override.
- There is a simple solution, though - set the staff to be invisible instead of the instrument. Which is often preferable anyhow, since many use cases for invisible staves for playback have them paired with a visible staff for notation. So mostly, it will just be a matter of re-education.
- The biggest issue will be import of existing scores that rely on this.
- There is a closed/fixed issue on this - https://github.com/musescore/MuseScore/issues/10951
- There is a closed/rejected PR to convert invisible instruments into invisible staves on import - https://github.com/musescore/MuseScore/pull/18229
Using custom instruments.xml
Synthesizer (not planned)
Sound configuration is now done via the Mixer and via Preferences. Certain advanced features have yet to be replicated in MuseScore 4, such as the ability to change the tuning standard used for the entire score away from the default A4 = 440Hz.
Selecting sounds within SoundFonts (back in 4.2)
It's always been possible to choose individual sounds from VSTs and Muse Sounds in MuseScore 4, but as of MuseScore 4.2 this will be possible with SF2 and SF3 SoundFonts as well, so users of MS Basic and other SoundFonts won't be stuck using the default sound for each instrument.
Independent control of subchannels
- To simulate articulation techniques in score playback, Musescore create multiple (sub)channels internally for some instruments. For example, the build-in Violin use 3 separate channels: arco, tremolo, and pizzicato. The 'instruments' Men and Women had separate channels for Tenor/Bass and Soprano/Alto respectively.
- Manual adjustments on individual channels inside MuseScore is absent, previously Mixer offers such adjustment, esp annoying for rehearsing with Closed Score SATB.
- The relative volume of channels (relative loudness of arco notes against pizzicato notes of same instrument) depends on the soundfont (for instrument using soundfont sf2/sf3 file) and the new Musescore score interpretation software (for instrument using VSTi or Musesounds).
- It was possible to have e.g. arco in voice 1 and pizz. in voice 2, for 2 violins in one staff, it is no longer.
Velocity controls
- MuseScore 3 allows editing Velocity properties of dynamics symbols, hairpins, and of individual notes ( varying effect with SND setting), see Dynamics: Loudness of a note
- MuseScore 4.2 allows editing Velocity property of individual notes, please see and help improve the Properties panel chapter. Has no effect on instruments using MuseSound. source: https://musescore.org/en/node/359743
- Definition is now more in line with MIDI, ie. the onset loudness/timbre control, rather than overall loudness.
- MuseScore 4.2 disallows editing of Velocity property of dynamics symbols and hairpins.
- It is expected a more sophisticated system will replace this
- See (the meanwhile closed/fixed) issue at https://github.com/musescore/MuseScore/issues/10990
Range-control for dynamics-symbols
- In MU3 you can specify area of effect of a dynamics-symbol (p, mf, f, ff...), i.e. whether it applies to the entire score, the whole instrument, or the current stave (hand) only, see Dynamics: Dynamic range
- These options are gone and the feature will be redesigned in the future.
Tuning controls not working
- MuseScore 3 allows setting Tuning of individual notes, and in the synthesizer
- MuseScore 4.2 allows setting Tuning of individual notes, please see and help improve the Properties panel chapter.
- See plans in comments under velocity and synthesizer
Guitar bends not working (back in 4.2)
- Guitar bends played in MU3 but not in MU4
- This is not planned for 4.0 in order to create a new design for mapping the bend shape to the playback
- See the closed/fixed issue at https://github.com/musescore/MuseScore/issues/13544
Play Part Only no longer in Mixer
Independent muting of staves / voices
- The MuseScore 3 mixer had controls to allow you to mute individual voices and individual staves of an instrument
- These controls are missing in MU4, with no obvious workaround
MIDI and other controls for staves in mixer
- In the mixer, setting up the MIDI port and channel, color, and muted voices is no longer possible. The MIDI channel there also controlled assignment of channels in MIDI file export, thus right now, creating MIDI files with specific channel assignments is not possible.
- For some details and an image of the missing controls, see forum post Musescore 4: Where have all the ...MIDI controls... gone?.
MIDI mapping and MIDI CC
- Musescore 3 sends MIDI CC 2 (default CC 2, also available CC1,CC4,CC11) if the SND instrument and sound is configured correctly, see Synthesizer.
- Musescore 3.6.2's Staff and system text custom MIDI CC function is half baked, may deem counterproductive even for advanced Musescore user.
- VST: MuseScore 4 Update: Alpha 2 is now released!: "entirely new playback events system" (meaning the MusePlaybackEvents (MPE) ) and "VST instruments and effects support: Please note that we will be building additional tools, like automation and MIDI mapping in later releases, once MS4 is out" and Tantacrul tweeted "The system translates down to MIDI perfectly. We need to now build a system for hooking up CC events and improving keyswitch capability." : It is unclear as of how musescore end users will be able to customize the message: eg by editing Text ? by editing data on a separate time lane?
JACK
- It does not seem like JACK support is on the radar.
- This is a significant regression for anyone trying to do video synchronization (e.g., for movie scoring).
- See https://github.com/musescore/MuseScore/discussions/13745 for a possible workaround on Linux
- See also #337937: Bring back JACK support for proper Linux Modularity
Highlighting of note heads during playback.
- MU3 highlights the heads of notes which are currently played according their voice.
- Issue: https://github.com/musescore/MuseScore/issues/11313
Piano Roll Editor
- This is expected to be redesigned and reimplemented for MuseScore 4.x.
Audio device selection
- There are some high-level controls for selecting audio devices, but lower-level controls a la MuseScore 3 are not necessarily planned. It remains to be seen how much of an issue this turns out to be in practice.
Capo playback (back in 4.1)
Playback for capo markings returned in MuseScore 4.1 along with a new floating widget to adjust capo properties.
The capo marking lives in the Guitar palette. It's usage is demonstrated in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWEtevLeAmM&t=61s.
Zerberus SFZ Synthesizer
- Not planned; people wishing to use SFZ files will hopefully be able to use VST players.
Metronome: Count-in
Engraving
Fix to line
- MuseScore 3 had a facility to force notes of any given pitch to display on a specific staff line. This is used for a wide variety of purposes, including customizing slash notation, notating string harmonics, handling clef changes within cross-staff notation, differentiating multiple voices under ottavas, suppressing visibility of ledger lines, and other more esoteric but not completely off-the-wall use cases.
- Currently, there is no plan to bring this functionality back - instead, the hope is to come up with native ways to handle each of the different use cases.
- There exists a plugin to do this in MuseScore 4 if needed.
- See https://github.com/musescore/MuseScore/issues/11855
Hook settings (back in 4.1)
- MuseScore 3 had independent controls for start & end hooks, including height
- MuseScore 4 provides a much more limited set of controls
- See the closed/fixed issue at https://github.com/musescore/MuseScore/issues/13653
Other functionality
Advanced Selection (back in 4.2)
- "Select More" is missing two options: "Same measure" and "Same beat" (added in 3.5) are no longer available in Mu4.
Expected back in 4.2.
"Search in selection" is missing too.
Cursor feedback
- In MU3 the mouse cursor changes while dragging the score with left click.
This is no longer the case in MU4.
Advanced workspace
Apply current palette element command (back in 4.2)
- Currently not implemented, but should not be difficult.
- See the closed/fixed issue at https://github.com/musescore/MuseScore/issues/13281
Zoom to page width command
- Currently not implemented, but should not be difficult.
Ctrl+click to select overlapping elements
- MU3 allowed you to select elements underneath other others via Ctrl+click
- Not implemented in MU4
- See https://github.com/musescore/MuseScore/issues/10225
Plugin Creator
- This is expected to be redesigned and reimplemented for a post MuseScore 4.0 release.
Plugin API
- This is expected to be redesigned and reimplemented for a post MuseScore 4.0 release.
- See https://github.com/musescore/MuseScore/issues/8859 and e.g. the closed/fixed issue at https://github.com/musescore/MuseScore/issues/13162 for a missing feature
- As of MuseScore 4.4 must plugins no longer work at all, some can get adjusted with just some minor changes, other need a complete rewrite or can't get made working at all anymore
Plugin commandline option
- the -p commandline option to start a plugin at the start of MuseScore is gone. But --plugin still exists and does the same.
Score comparison tool
- The UI would need to be updated to work with MuseScore 4 but presumably, the underlying code would still be usable.
Split display
- In MuseScore 4, each open score is given a separate OS window, so these windows can be dragged side-by-side to recreate the Split Screen feature in MuseScore 3. (In MuseScore 3, all scores are shown as tabs in a single OS window.)
- “Split display” feature in the version 3 handbook
- See https://github.com/musescore/MuseScore/issues/12248
MIDI import panel
- Needs to get ported, this should happen in a later 4.x.
- See the closed (!) issue at https://github.com/musescore/MuseScore/issues/11918
Image capture tool
- Previously Image capture button, the clean SVG output functionality is highly valued in the musescore.org community, popular among users for educational purposes.
- Not implemented in MuseScore 4 yet.
- Workaround plugin Inkscape 1.2 Extension: Musescore Viewbox by musikai
- Planned, see https://github.com/musescore/MuseScore/issues/15912
Language switch
- Switching language settings now requires a restart.
- See https://github.com/musescore/MuseScore/issues/12379 and the closed issue at https://github.com/musescore/MuseScore/issues/12382
Shortcuts for Key Signatures, Time Signatures, Symbols
- Shift+K, Shift+T, and Z are non-functional. You can access controls via View / Master Palette, so, Shift+F9 followed by K, T, or S.
Shortcut for elision
- Ctrl+Alt+- was added as the shortcut for the elision character in 3.6, relevant especially for lyrics, but this was not fully ported to MuseScore 4.
Multiple Shortcuts
- MuseScore 3 allows the user to set up several shortcuts for one and the same command.
This is no longer possible in MuseScore 4 (except by manually editing the shortcuts.xml, so the functionallity is still there, but the UI for it is missing)
Stacking order
- MuseScore 4 provides useful controls to send forwards / backwards / to front / to back but lacks direct control over the stacking order of MuseScore 3, which allowed for precise setting of values for custom elements you want to resume in multiple places in a score.
- Something that will be missed by advanced users mostly.
MuseScore Drum Line (MDL) (back in 4.4)
- Windows & macOS : MuseScore 4.4 and above as Muse Drumline (requires Muse Hub).
- Linux: not yet available.
Unroll repeats
Split staff
PortableApps (back since 4.0.1)
- Building and providing PortableApps (for Windows) has stopped.
- See see the issue at https://github.com/musescore/MuseScore/issues/15876
Windows 32-bit version
- Building and providing 32-bit versions for Windows has stopped and won't come back.
Frames within frames
- Adding horizontal frames into vertical frames. Along with the ability to modify existing frames within frames (delete, move, resize, add text or image) from pre-Mu4 scores is gone too.
- See the closed issue at https://github.com/musescore/MuseScore/issues/12930 and #339977: Unable to add Horizontal Frame into vertical frame, so this won#t come back
Showing Keys on play in the virtual piano keyboard
- See #338294: Piano keyboard UI not playing when selected/active staff is being being played resp. https://github.com/musescore/MuseScore/issues/14428
Saving parts as separate scores
Features not present in MuseScore 3
These are features that were either removed prior to MuseScore 3, or implemented afterwards but never part of any official release, that are worth noting here.
Multi-measure repeat playback (back in 4.1)
- The layout of multi-measure repeats is working, but not the playback
- There was an incomplete PR for this - https://github.com/musescore/MuseScore/pull/11285
- The feature came back into 4.1 via https://github.com/musescore/MuseScore/pull/15952
Albums
- Feature was removed during the transition from MuseScore 2 to MuseScore 3. Got promised to get reimplemented for Mu3 by the staff, but that never happened
- It was mostly reimplemented for MuseScore 4 as a GSoC project that was never merged.
- It is expected to be redesigned and reimplemented for a post MuseScore 4.0 release, but so far there's no trace of this ever going to happen.
- See #289326: Re-implement the Album feature for Musecore 3/4 and https://github.com/musescore/MuseScore/issues/17868
Chord editor
A GSoC project never merged.
Regressions reported on GitHub
See https://github.com/musescore/MuseScore/labels/regression_ms3 (but not all regressions are marked as such)