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MuseScore Practice Tips!
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musescore_practice_tips.md

MuseScore Practice Tips!

If you want to practise one of MuseScore's arrangements on a tablet, computer or phone, these steps will help.

0. tl;dr version

  1. Get the mobile player app
  2. "Favorite" (that's a verb nowadays) a score on the website
  3. Open it in the app
  4. Set the tempo to half the original one
  5. "Mute" your instrument and "hide" all other instruments
  6. Start practising!

1. Choose a 'Player App'

There are 3 versions of MuseScore's player app':

  • The web player app: it is the app you see when you open a score in the browser. To make full use of it, you need to be a "pro" user, which is probably more expensive than what you want.

  • The mobile player app: available for Android (for FREE!) and iOS (for 20kr) it has more or less the same interface as the browser version, but includes the features that the browser app restricts only to pro users. An Android tablet/phone is therefore the ideal way to practise! (But the iOS version costs as much as one of our beers, so maybe small loss?)

  • The full desktop app: available for all major OSs, this is not just a player, and you can do much more with it.

2. Get the score

Once you've chosen your app, read the appropriate parts in the following sections! I refer to web as 'Web App', the desktop as 'Full App' and to the mobile as 'Mobile App'.

Web App

You can skip this step!

Full App

"Download" the "MuseScore" (.mscz) version of the song you want to practise and open it in the desktop app.

Mobile App

You can use the mobile app to search for the score, but it is probably easier to just:

  1. Create an account on Musescore.
  2. Mark the song as you like as a "Favorite" (that's how you send your love to the arrangers too!)
  3. Login to the mobile app
  4. Find the score on the 'My Favorites' menu.

3. Practise!

Web App

If you are not a pro user, you can only play the full score. You can select bars and play from there. If you are a pro user, the controls in the 'hat' icon (next to the 'full screen' icon) are identical with the Mobile App (see below).

Full App

You can click on any bar and hit spacebar to start and stop playing!

  • Using the master score: This is exactly like playing with the full score on the browser.
  • Using parts: Many scores have 'parts' split out of them (hopefully labelled in a helpful way). You can click and play any of them individually, or you can create your own 'practice part':
    1. Go to "File" -> "Parts..."
    2. Click "New"
    3. Select the new part at the bottom of the list
    4. Add the instruments you want (e.g. your instrument and any melody or accompaniament parts you want to listen to)
    5. Click 'OK'
  • Using the mixer: From 'View' you can open a Mixer interface and e.g. hear a solo intrument or mute some of the instruments in any page. Unfortunately you can't hear instruments that are not in the part, so you can't e.g. look at your notes while listening to everyone else!

Mobile app

I haven't played a lot with the app, but the Loop, Tempo Settings and Parts Mixer seem to be AMAZING!

  • Loop: Select bars to play in a loop.
  • Tempo Settings: Adjust tempo as a percentage of the original.
  • Parts Mixer: You can choose which parts are visible and which are muted, to e.g. see your part but not hear it! This is in my opinion the KILLER feature of the app!

HAVE FUN!

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