I find music scores to be absolutely beautiful documents. In middle school I was engrossed by creating my own music and, more importantly, writing it down. There’s video evidence of me being jazzed about receiving a “Lyricist’s Notebook” for Christmas around that time. I also recall purchasing a journal of staff paper for ambitious ideas I had. Yet turning musical ideas into something that can be shared, let alone something that would look good, felt out of reach. When the itch to create music struck me again last week I remembered a new-to-me program, MuseScore, that changed everything.
I appreciate careful formatting and typeface choices that make legible and fetching documents. I’ve always searched for ways to recreate the look of professional documents I interacted with as a student, and have often found success. Once you get outside the realms of a novel, the problems become apparent and awfully specific, so at each obstacle I’ve needed to pick up now programs. I first experienced with mathematics. Did you know math, just like music, has a vast swath of specific notation that most people don’t care about, and don’t easily fall into the typesetting that tools like Word or Google Docs can manage?
Luckily, there’s been a fairly standard option in that world for decades. The \LaTeX language is nearly universal and well-supported. I began using it to create any document that required math, or had particular formatting that I didn’t want to have that “Microsoft Word look”.1Some people seem to not notice what I mean by this. For me, it’s a “feel” thing, and I abhor it.
I also had the opportunity to learn some basic InDesign skills at work, which transferred nicely to using Affinity Publisher once I no longer had access to the Adobe suite. I picked up some basic vector art skills and have used Vectornator to create images and diagrams.2I showed it to my wife as well, and it’s become a popular tool for making certain figures for academic papers in her lab. All these tools are great and let me create documents that, just a decade or two ago, would require much more money and probably some professional assistance.
Music notation is a whole different beast. It’s niche even when compared to mathematical notation, and has a formatting metaphor entirely unlike text on a page. Up until very recently, the best options were all expensive proprietary applications, very similar to Adobe products of years past, that by all accounts didn’t work particularly well. The only alternative was handwriting notes on staff paper, or writing plain-text guitar tabs (in the case of Ultimate Guitar).
Enter MuseScore. I first learned about this tool through Kyle Tsuchiya, a fantastic percussionist who I was lucky enough to play with in a University of Minnesota concert band. He has a strong social media presence, and I saw he was using MuseScore to write and share snare drum and drum set riffs. I toyed with it then but didn’t have a need for it. However, the name stuck with me.
When inspiration struck last week, I downloaded it again and went to work. The organization makes their money by operating an online sheet music marketplace, and that funds the free editing software that they create. I’m now able to make beautiful sheet music on my own using a program made by people who care about spreading this ability to anyone interested. The best part is that I find the tools to be good and fairly intuitive. They have robust keyboard shortcuts to streamline typical functions. They have a tool to “link” staffs, which was important for me since I was creating guitar tabs and I always want the tablature to be available in addition to the standard treble clef notation.
MuseScore is fantastic, and I’ll happily recommend it to anyone I happen to come across that’s interested in making their own sheet music. But the larger reason that I’m extremely excited by this discovery is that it marks a point in my life where creating beautiful documents of all types is accessible to nearly everyone. Nearly every kind document can now be created using software that is free or very affordable, allowing people of all ages and skill to try making their own mark. There’s something special about having the means to imitate the people and creations that inspire you, and then start to build your own version.
I have no clue how often I’ll use MuseScore. If it’s like \LaTeX, Affinity Publisher, or Vectornator, the answer is somewhat infrequently. But it’s free and available whenever the mood strikes, and that’s a liberating fact that streamlines my creative process.3Of course, it also represents one fewer excuse along the lines of “Oh, I could never do that because I don’t have…” But hey, facing reality is good. I’m thankful for the people who pioneer these democratizing tools for creation4It doesn’t just end at document creation. There are awesome music (Garage Band, though that’s locked behind owning Apple products, and Ardour) and video (DaVinci Resolve) tools out there, along with other programs for hobbies that I don’t happen to have yet like CAD., and will eagerly await the next niche tool that suddenly becomes available for all to use.
- 1Some people seem to not notice what I mean by this. For me, it’s a “feel” thing, and I abhor it.
- 2I showed it to my wife as well, and it’s become a popular tool for making certain figures for academic papers in her lab.
- 3Of course, it also represents one fewer excuse along the lines of “Oh, I could never do that because I don’t have…” But hey, facing reality is good.
- 4It doesn’t just end at document creation. There are awesome music (Garage Band, though that’s locked behind owning Apple products, and Ardour) and video (DaVinci Resolve) tools out there, along with other programs for hobbies that I don’t happen to have yet like CAD.