Muse Group has released MuseScore Studio 4.7, with a mix of engraving refinements, workflow quality-of-life improvements, and other under-the-hood changes. Virtually all version updates to MuseScore Studio 4 have included updates to playback capabilities, and while the playback updates to version 4.7 may not be the headline as in other releases, there are still meaningful updates here as well.
Barring any maintenance updates, version 4.7 will mark the final release in the MuseScore Studio 4 series, according to Muse Group.
Engraving features
Perhaps the most visible new additions in MuseScore Studio 4.7 are a set of engraving features that expand what’s possible and help avoid the need for painful workarounds. With these continued engraving updates, MuseScore is increasingly covering ground that was once the sole province of Dorico and Sibelius.
Arrowheads on lines. You can now add arrowhead terminations to lines, useful for showing transitions from one playing technique to another, among a variety of other applications. New “Line (left arrowhead)” and “Line (right arrowhead)” options appear in the Lines palette, and in the Properties panel you can configure the line start and end independently with different arrow options as needed.
Chord brackets. A new chord bracket feature lets you surround groups of notes with a bracket — useful for showing left/right-hand distribution in keyboard music, barré positions in guitar music, or simply bracketing a section of notes for editorial or pedagogical purposes. You’ll find chord bracket options in the Keyboard and Lines palettes, along with options in Properties for bracket placement (left or right) and hook position (above, below, or both). Space is automatically created when you add the bracket, making the addition especially simple.
Parentheses for groups of notes. You can now use the existing parentheses controls in Properties to apply a single group of parentheses to a selected chord. Previously, parenthesizing individual notes was possible, but wrapping an entire chord in a single set of parentheses required some workarounds. This intuitive update makes it easy to select and deselect individual notes within a chord, for an overall natural editing experience around parentheses that reminds me of the recent courtesy clef update.
Editable lyric lines. Extension lines and dashed lines in lyrics can now be selected and edited directly, making it easy to drag their endpoints and adjust their length and position. Lyric extender lines were previously stubbornly immovable and can now be easily adjusted.
Automatic curly quotation marks. Curly (or “smart”) quotes now apply automatically to all text objects. If you need straight quotes for a specific reason, you can simply undo after input to revert — but fair warning: you’ll need to answer to David MacDonald for it.
Guitar features
MuseScore Studio 4.7 continues a theme of steady feature additions in guitar over the past several releases.
Dive lines. Guitar dives (where a note or chord is altered with the whammy bar) now work similarly to bends, and new dive elements now appear in the Guitar palette. If you’re writing for electric guitar with any regularity, you’ll appreciate not having to fake these with custom lines anymore.
New capo transposition modes. The capo feature received a significant upgrade in version 4.7. In addition to the standard option of viewing a score in open position, you can now choose to display a score in sounding pitches, or with no transposition at all. These new capo options provide a variety of ways to quickly see and hear what you’d like from your score.
Additionally, fretboard diagrams and chord symbols are now affected by transposition — a welcome integration that means the various guitar-related elements in your score will actually stay in sync when you change the capo position.
Workflow improvements
A grab bag of workflow enhancements rounds out the feature list, and several of these are the kind of seemingly small improvements that can significantly change how it feels to work in the application day to day.
Double-click a note in a chord to select the entire chord. This simple but impactful update is much more intuitive than the ⌘-click (or Ctrl-click on Windows) approach previously required.
Updates to ‘R’ for repeat. While pressing R to repeat a note has been included in MuseScore (and Dorico and Sibelius) for quite some time now, version 4.7 makes some nice updates to the overall functionality, allowing it to work when multiple noteheads are selected on a chord. Also, when previously pressing R to repeat a note in one voice only, it would repeat everything in both voices at that location; this update gives you more granular control over what is repeated. ‘R’ junkies — myself included — ‘r’ejoice!
Duration halving and doubling with ‘Q’ and ‘W’. Press Q to halve and W to double the duration of a selected note or range of notes — select a passage of quarter notes, hit W, and they all become half notes; hit Q and they shrink back down. It works on individual notes, chords, and selections alike, making it a fast way to experiment with rhythmic variations or correct duration mistakes without re-entering notes from scratch.
Respell pitches with sharps or flats. The Tools menu now includes Tools > Respell pitches with sharps and Tools > Respell pitches with flats commands, which allow you to select a range and choose your preferred spelling. A new related option for MIDI keyboard input lets you select ♭ or ♯ in the note input toolbar, and MuseScore will default your inputted notes to flats or sharps in the same way.
Mixer search. When changing instrument playback options, a new search field in the mixer makes it easier to find what you’re looking for without scrolling through long lists of options.
Find/Go to range selection. The existing Find/Go to feature (⌘-F) can now select a range of measures, not just navigate to a single location — a handy improvement for quickly jumping to and highlighting specific sections, especially in longer scores.
Automatic dark mode score inversion. A new option in Preferences > Appearance lets you automatically invert the score display when the app is in dark mode.
Export to video. While FFmpeg isn’t built directly into MuseScore, you can now use it to export video (.mp4) directly from MuseScore Studio. Go to Preferences > Video > Download FFmpeg to get set up, and you’ll then be able to export to video as you would any other file type.
Playback enhancements
Under the hood, MuseScore Studio 4.7 makes some significant moves in the playback department. The audio engine has been refactored, which should improve performance and reduce lag on all operating systems.
ASIO support on Windows. This is a big one for Windows users. ASIO driver support, which was present in MuseScore 3 but notably absent in MuseScore 4, is now back — and the Preferences > Audio & MIDI panel now shows ASIO as an Audio API option alongside your usual choices. If you work with external MIDI keyboards or audio interfaces on Windows, this should make the note input and playback experience feel considerably more responsive.
Start playback from last selected note. Press Shift+Spacebar to begin playback from the last note you selected, rather than from the current playback cursor position.
Tuning and Temperaments plugin. A new consolidated plugin replaces the three previous tuning-related plugins with a single, well-designed dialog. The interface offers a comprehensive list of Western tuning systems with controls for root note, pure tone, individual pitch offsets for each note of the chromatic scale, a global tuning offset, and the option to annotate tunings directly in the score.
Other audio-related updates. The MS Basic SoundFont now includes a restored low pass filter, giving MS Basic playback a slightly warmer sound, and new 16-bit and 24-bit WAV export options give you more control over the quality of your audio exports.
Availability
MuseScore Studio 4.7 is free and available now for Mac, Windows, and Linux. You can download it directly from MuseScore.org or through Muse Hub. Existing MuseScore Studio users will see a prompt when launching the software to update.
Learn more
For full coverage of MuseScore Studio 4, please read our comprehensive reviews of MuseScore 4, MuseScore 4.1, MuseScore 4.2, MuseScore Studio 4.3, MuseScore Studio 4.4, MuseScore Studio 4.5, and MuseScore Studio 4.6.
For the latest information about compatibility for Sibelius, Dorico, and MuseScore Studio, as well as links to the latest news and reviews about product releases, please see the Scoring Notes Product Guide.