Richard's blog

If you need to, or want to, score music, would like to recommend you to try Musescore, a free/open-source software (FOSS) music notation software.

Every year I have searched for an emerging, quality FOSS notation product. Musescore is that product. Certainly, Musescore is young software, it crashes occasionally, it is a little glitchy, there are a few things I would like it to do that it doesn’t do.

But I would prefer to concentrate on the positives. It’s been a long wait for those of us who can’t justify the (considerable) expense of pay music scoring software. Using Musescore, it feels like the wait is worth it. At its core, Musescore is a multi-platform, WYSIWYG FOSS music notation editor. I think that’s unprecedented. Previously FOSS notation software was either too basic, platform-specific, or non-WYSIWYG. Better, Musescore is mostly very intuitive, well-designed, and offers very high levels of customisation of the score. They are aiming very high. I used it to score a complicated piano arrangement with loads of weird tuplets, exploded staves and unusual grace notes. It came through with aplomb.

If I were Sibelius or Finale, I would be quaking in my boots. I think Musescore is already miles better than Finale Notepad, Finale’s “free” version of its product. It’s better because it doesn’t come with a raft of restrictions which limit it to simple scoring. And while it may not have some of the advanced features offered by the two incumbent providers, it seems only a matter of time. Many of these features are non-critical, such as precision in MIDI playback and quantized MIDI input.

I believe it’s only a matter of time because Musescore has pushed into the “viable alternative” territory. In the same way that programs like Inkscape, OpenOffice, and Firefox are completely viable alternatives to their pay cousins (and often better), Musescore already offers features that demand to be taken seriously. Musescore is already a perfectly viable program for many relatively complex notation tasks. Off such a creditable base, Musescore deserves to garner the community input that will allow it to be the complete alternative to any pay product.

So if you thought notation software was something you couldn’t afford, try Musescore. I think you’ll be very pleased.

On Nicholson St in Carlton.
I love the heritage of some of these signs. They have an earnest artlessness that imparts a real sense of place and time. Artlessness isn’t something that goes much with marketing, where the awareness and associations tend to be managed to the nth degree. Even seeming artlessness is often highly staged, such as RACV’s Jason call centre ads or iinet’s BOB. I reckon there’s a case for preserving as much true, authentic artlessness as you can find in a heritage brand. Where people have become wary of agency schmick and having their psychology over-understood, artlessness is a refreshing reminder of a different meaning for consumer orientation.

Bought at the wonderfully named Ranking Ranqueen, a Nanoblock Sika Deer. His name is Frank.

When I saw this by the roadside in Izu, I thought, “Gee, that’s a kinda fastidiously sculptural, and large, piece of topiary for a roadside in the Middle of Nowhere. Those Japanese really do like sculpting their plants.”

Just saw an ad for Taiwan Tourism showing women picking tea in the fields. It’s almost certainly a tea plantation! Case dismissed.