MuseScore being today's Advent Calendar format means it's probably the best time to start hashing out what the new MuseScore 4 features mean for the format here on BotB.

the way we've done MS before is to stick with the default soundfont (in MS3 it's named "MuseScore_General.sf3") and nothing extra. that way, voters can just download the score file, play it back, and vote. easy!

MS4 possesses similar base functionality if you just download and install MS4; the default soundfont is now named "MS Basic" but the process is the same.

HOWEVER!

alongside the release of MS4 is a(n optional) fancy new launcher architecture from the company named "Muse Hub", through which you can install their applications (MuseScore included) as well as their new, free "Muse Sounds" orchestral library, which uses some entirely different, non-MIDI way of interpreting score markings and instructions, and of course sounds very different. it's an exciting thing for anyone who's worked with notation software before and brushed up against the brutal limitations of expressiveness in computer score playback.

this brings me to the central question here: should Muse Sounds be allowed for future use in the format?

it is, after all, free. and it offers a fantastic level-up in terms of what we're capable of achieving in the format. presumably it's here to stay, so limiting ourselves to the old way might be unnecessarily restrictive and not very fun. folks using old versions or plain MS4 can indicate somewhere on their score to use the MS3 soundfont instead, if desired.

on the other hand, it seems a lot to ask of voters to download and install not only a hefty piece of software (almost 300MB) but ALSO an even heftier orchestral sound library (15GB!) just to be able to accurately play back the submitted file. and there will be big discrepancies for anyone listening without Muse Sounds. (keep in mind this is more of an issue for XHBs; but it seems unwise to split how the format is treated between XHBs and majors)

plus, considering there was already a somewhat contentious thread about the Muse Group company and the data they collect, installing even more software from them may not be seen in a very positive light.

on the MuseScore website, you can choose to download either Muse Hub or just an installer for MuseScore 4. it is therefore possible to bypass the whole new functionality of Muse Sounds, but i'm unsure of whether it's best to do so, especially bearing in mind that it's free and the features are very enticing. even though it sort of makes old MuseScore entries on the site obsolete, the presence of the MS Basic soundfont at least should make them more-or-less playable. (i've tried my old entries and the only significant difference is that it puts them at the wrong base pitch for some reason?)

what do you all think? how should this format be approached now that the playing field has totally changed?

i'd...begrudgingly argue in favor of it. don't get me wrong, the fact that muse group scours data from audacity users is REALLY shifty and a clear negative trend among tech companies of all walks of life. HOWEVER, if we really think about it, musescore as a format wouldn't be that much separated from midi if we continued to just allow the ms basic sounds. i've been all for format diversification since 2020 and i think, for a little bit at least to test the waters, the muse sounds should be allowed in the format. if it's free and can work in a vast majority of musescore installs, it shouldn't be a problem.

Just for clarification: Does running MuseScore through Muse Sounds collect any telemetry data, currently?

what is midi playback of a score? it’s an attempt to reproduce in software the sound of a live performance. it is to a score as desktop emulation is to a ROM.

if musesounds more faithfully imitates a live performance, as advertised, then i would categorise it as a higher-quality emulation - fair game.

following this chain of reasoning, what is analogous to hardware playback? a live performance itself, of course!

therefore i submit that not only should musesounds be permissible (but not mandatory!) as a playback/rendering engine, but furthermore that recordings of live performances of .mscz entries should be accepted as valid renders.

roz brings up a point that i had not even thought of before. if musescore is the de facto music notation format for botb, it would almost be baffling for the format to have renders in said format strictly be direct exports from the program itself. notation is designed to be played by a musician or ensemble - it would and should be equally acceptable to have such render the piece.

however, the problem i would see arising - and the reason why it isn't entirely baffling: where would you get an ensemble who could do their piece? of course, botbrs can render it themselves if they can play all of the instruments included. and yet, more questions: how much time would they have to/spend on playing it and editing it together? what if they can't play all of the instruments and don't know anyone who can? it would probably be too much trouble for the average botbr to handle, and even if not, it would most likely take a while before the final product is done.

i agree, but don’t see how that’s substantially different from the same situation in other formats. most BotBrs don’t own the (often expensive) equipment to hardware render their chip entries either and we all agree emulated playback (e.g. NSFplay) is an acceptable substitute - the vast majority of chip entries are rendered this way.

i understand why most musescore entries can’t/won’t be performed live. i just think it should be allowed, if you have the will and the means.

this isn't quite the same topic, but while i think live performance "renders" are wonderful in principle, it's sort of unfair to anyone who doesn't have access to players/instruments/ensembles (which is basically anyone who isn't a student or connected to the concert music realm lol), to then be judged on the same playing field utilizing a standard MIDI *or* Muse Sounds render.

plus, not everyone will be attempting to write a realistic score capable of performance by real instrumentalists in the first place, instead trying to make the most of the software's audio output. the format is already a little strange in this way, since by default in a major they'll be judged on their audio output only, not how much time may or may not have been put into a polished, readable, functional score for real human beings. and.. that kinda has to be fine, for the same sort of gatekeeping reason. people go to school for years to learn how to do that, and you can't expect that expertise of everyone submitting to musescore format on this web site. the audio output kinda has to be the point, imo, to keep things fair and equitable.

[This n00b ashamed of what written. - BotB]

i use to view mscz as a program that wld make funny sounds and produce a score as collateral. kinda learned how to (slowly) read music like this.
and others come from the other direction, knowing how to musix and then making a score, producing audio as a result.
teh cute duality of it makes mine heart soar...

abt renders though, hardware renders and live performance are comparable. not all botbrs have access to the real hardware, but hardware renders are still permitted, no? since others can render it for those who cannot, and send to em. and it often sounds much amazingness. so imo, musesounds is trying to emulate a hardware render and i think it shld be allowed for those who want it.

Is there a cogent argument against just splitting into "MuseScore" and "MuseScore+"? For vanilla MuseScore, the host of an individual battle can decide whether v3 or v4[MS Basic Only] is acceptable, or allow both with submitters having to declare a version in the song name.

that would be an acceptable outcome. it's basically how the nes expansion audio is being handled as of right now

I think the answer to that question and some others asked here is what's the format about and what criteria should be used to judge it and how to reinforce it.

If the emphasis is on the notation itself it shouldn't be a problem to let any kind of plugin be used in MuseScore, if it's on the output it Muse Sounds would put people in an uneven playing field, despite the "technically being part of the program" which is also not true unfortunately.

I'm probably just salty to find out that I could only get it through Muse Hub which I can't install, despite being able to install MuseScore 4 just fine.

Edit: Wait reading what I said, I realized I just made another point, Muse Sounds is not part of the program itself, and formats like Renoise require that it's only using vanilla features so one doesn't need external programs for playback, even if free.

If the emphasis is on the notation itself it shouldn't be a problem to let any kind of plugin be used in MuseScore, if it's on the output it Muse Sounds would put people in an uneven playing field, despite the "technically being part of the program" which is also not true unfortunately.

I don't think the emphasis is on either one of those facets to the exclusion of the other, and I think this is a false dichotomy.

It's similar to the tracker formats - it's not entirely about the interface nor is it entirely about the "sound". If it was entirely about the interface, people wouldn't be allowed to choose between OpenMPT and Impulse. If it was entirely about the sound, nobody would care if it was composed in Cubase.

Muse Sounds is not part of the program itself, and formats like Renoise require that it's only using vanilla features so one doesn't need external programs for playback, even if free.

It seems to me the reason for that restriction on Renoise is more so that people won't have to track down 50 different extensions on 50 different sites, 45 of which have been defunct for decades, in order to listen to each other's productions. It doesn't make much sense trying to interpret it in terms of "vanilla purity". There's just no free developer-provided "expansion pack" that everyone can point to, and trying to provide a third-party "greatest hits" pack turns into a whining match of "X was included but not Y, whyyyyyyyyyyyy".

I mean, mod trackers don't (always) come with samples, it doesn't follow that samples are therefore not "vanilla features".

MuseScore is a very unique format here, i think. even before MS4 and Muse Sounds, it was in a strange position. Yukari is right to point out that the real question at the heart of all this is "What is this format about, and what criteria should be used to judge it?"

MuseScore can be used to produce an audio end-product for which the score is basically irrelevant - i.e. you just use it to make sound - as well as its "intended" use of writing out sheet music for real live musicians, for which the audio output is basically irrelevant.

it doesn't strictly make sense to restrict the format on BotB to either of those things, honestly. in the spirit of creativity, folks should be able to use the software how they like. BUT... this is where things start to get messy, because the submissions have to be voted upon.

while the "intended" use of MuseScore is to create some polished, readable sheet music - for which computer playback has long been treated as an afterthought or at best a helpful mock-up while composing - it requires a specific subset of musical knowledge to really engage with. there are plenty of BotBrs who don't read sheet music, or who haven't had the good fortune of growing up participating in ensembles like wind band, orchestra or choir. they are not well equipped to judge the format if the resulting score is what matters, and that doesn't sit well with me.

it also pushes people out of the format who *are* more interested in just using MuseScore to produce the sounds that they want to hear, which is a perfectly reasonable use case even if it's not the primary function of the software. those people don't deserve to be pushed out or voted down; they are, after all, using the same software the format is about. (score-writing can be a focus of a bitpack, mind you, though i found from trying that myself that i wasn't a fan of restricting people in this way.)

this is why i'm ultimately in favor of the audio output being the criteria to vote upon - even if it's sort of "missing the point" of the primary function of MuseScore, it strikes me as the only way to keep an even, fair playing field that doesn't outright restrict people from participating and/or voting.

of course, this may make things more challenging for folks who want to write a nice, readable score for humans. all the various markings of a score have infamously not been well-handled with MIDI, and that's part of what makes Muse Sounds (and relatedly NotePerformer) such an exciting development. however, thanks to their existing expertise they should still be able to wrangle together a passable enough audio rendering of their score to associate with their entry and be voted upon; this strikes me as a better compromise than being exclusionary to other use cases of MuseScore.

another angle to look at is - in majors, most folks are just going to listen to the render of the entry rather than peeking at its source file. MuseScore is essentially both a graphical and a music format, but the former is only relevant to some people. for those focusing on score-writing, it can be mentioned in the description and therefore be donloaded and analyzed by anyone who might want to examine the score.

now, back to Muse Sounds - something mioh said about hardware renders sticks with me here and makes me skew slightly in favor of Muse Sounds being supported in the format going forward. if a BotBr can't or won't install Muse Sounds, they can always request a Muse Sounds render from another BotBr. i do think this is quite analogous to requesting hardware renders of chiptunes from someone with the physical device; you may not know quite what it's gonna sound like, but it'll be a more authentic representation of your work. i think that's a fair way to give everyone access to the new sound library and has plenty of precedent.

i don't agree that live performances fall under that same banner though, just because of how much extra human work is required to achieve the "render". asking someone to click some buttons on the computer and hit Export (or with chiptunes, plug in a machine and record its output) is several orders of magnitude easier than giving sheet music to real players, asking them to learn it, and then recording it; and as i mentioned before, very few folks will have access to that ability in the first place, unless they are a student, are already involved in concert music, are an instrumentalist themselves, or some combination of the three. i don't think that's fair to everyone else, because then the equivalent of "asking for a hardware render" becomes "hey can you/people you know print all this out, learn to play it, rehearse, and record it? thanks". that's way too much in my opinion - even though it's a lovely idea in principle (it's super rewarding to hear others play your music).

one thing this *doesn't* solve is how to handle XHBs with respect to Muse Sounds; those who don't have it installed might be restricted both in their own writing and their ability to listen to other entries as intended. while potentially renders can be shared in chat, i don't think that's a great solution, and i'm still not sure what the answer is. i'd rather it not just be "well, deal with it". i'll be curious what others think on the matter.

this turned into quite a long post, but as i said when i started, MuseScore is in a really unique position here because it can be utilized both by those with the knowledge/desire to work with it "as intended" and those who don't, and i truly want to support both. having been through years and years of concert band and then music school in college, i am well aware of how much gatekeeping goes on, and i don't want to see that attitude reflected in the BotB format (or on BotB in general lol). letting people run wild with "MuseScore as audio generator" as well as making readable sheet music is the way to go, in my opinion, and that means focusing on the audio output, to keep things inclusive and fair.

@Lint_Huffer: I might have not chosen the best terms in "vanilla features", but I think my point was clear.

I mean, mod trackers don't (always) come with samples, it doesn't follow that samples are therefore not "vanilla features".

The tracker module samples are contained within the module file itself, someone wanting to play the file doesn't have to grab the samples themselves.

@damifortune: people who want to focus on the sound production aren't being more pushed out of the format then people using external plugins on Renoise or Soundfonts/sound modules in MIDIs.

The limitation in those is something made to not only put everyone in an equal playing field both when it comes to the rendering format, as well as allowing anyone to listen to said rendered format when they open the file.

Also we all know Hardware Renders almost always don't offer any advantage compared to emulation aside from the novelty except for cases of bad/poor emulation. And even then there's a huge difference from that to a plugin that completely changes how the sequence is interpreted.

Also the difference between a Tracker format (which musescore is more similar to) to a Chip format needs to be considered when doing these comparisons.

i think we should scrap audio renders for musescore and just replace it with a pdf render of the sheet music you produced and ask the voters to imagine how it'd sound in their head /j

not that i'm a musescore user so i'm not sure how valid my interpretation is, but i think having the export be either soundfont OR muse sounds is probably the best way forward, similar to how we sometimes put "please listen with/without interpolation" for s3xmodits

i think most computers in the past 10 years will have enough space to spare 15 gb for the new sounds, and if not the old sounds are workable with as well, i imagine they can do stuff the new sounds wont be able to as well so yeah

seems like there's a general consensus here
but just to reiterate.....

Majors: can't expect people to do more than listen to the renders
XHBs: people will be vorting on their own musescore playback

anyone can request another botbr to do a nice muse sound render

....I do think the lyric features of musescore is something that doesn't translate well to the audio-only-ness of the renders, but it has me thinking it would be cool to use musescore for bits in a major where people have to pick one of the musescore songs submitted and produce it as an allgear/vocals :D/

that is a wonderful idea for a major :O

and thank you for weighing in! this is an exciting time for the format i think