MuseScore got a major release out. It’s been all over the (specialized) news.

I’ve got a major arrangement in the works, so I didn’t upgrade. Most of the announced improvements were around the new engraving fonts, and since my piece is jazz in MuseJazz style, I didn’t really feel like I was the target audience.

And as a sane software engineer, I fear change, especially when I’m using it for something serious at that time.

But then it decided to upgrade itself on its own¹.

Well, the new one’s there now, so I might as well try it out. (After backing up my scores, of course.)

…and so far I only have good things to say about it. Of course I didn’t care much for the new dialog that prompted me to convert to the new fonts. But the rest of the interface hasn’t actually changed, so it’s that much muscle memory I won’t have to unlearn. And I discovered a few other improvements, outside the fonts’ scope, that did resonate with me.

• The new export dialog is a lot better indeed. The flow now looks different between PDF and MP3, which is a good thing. So much less expected confusion when it comes to overwriting files with the wrong type.
• This may have been there before, but it’s the first time I try it: notating a glissando results in one beeing played back. And it sounds reasonably good, too! Nice surprise.
• Chord symbols have an audio representation when moving around! Quite useful to detect typing mistakes. From a quick look in the inspector, it seems they can actually be set to echo at playback time as well. I know people for whom that’s going to be a life changer.

So… nothing harmful detected for now, and more good stuff. I’m almost tempted to migrate to the development version. Upgrade your installations if you haven’t already.

Congratulations on a release well done, MuseScore team!