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.

Rhys (one name only, y’know, like Cher) has put out this execrable single, Hot Summer. Cringeworthy rhyme-schemes, a chorus that has little more than two notes and two words. (Hot summer… Hot summer… hot hot summer… ) I think the dancing is supposed to look serious. It’s a cover of a song done by German group Monrose of the same name, which may be even worse (certainly the clip is cheap and nasty, and notice how little the girls dance):

I only express such animosity to Rhys’ song because, loathe though I am to admit it, it sticks in my head. But I can’t decide, is the whole concoction, music, lyrics, etc. a good example of naive, pure Camp, or is it simply bad? As Sontag put it in her near-perfect essay “Notes on Camp“:

23. In naïve, or pure, Camp, the essential element is seriousness, a seriousness that fails. Of course, not all seriousness that fails can be redeemed as Camp. Only that which has the proper mixture of the exaggerated, the fantastic, the passionate, and the naïve.

24. When something is just bad (rather than Camp), it’s often because it is too mediocre in its ambition. The artist hasn’t attempted to do anything really outlandish. (“It’s too much,” “It’s too fantastic,” “It’s not to be believed,” are standard phrases of Camp enthusiasm.)

What do you think?

For something more “approachable” though, I love this positively ridiculous pastiche on Chopin’s Minute Waltz for piano solo (Track 10, 5:13). Like nothing else you’ve ever heard.