# MuseScore 4 will add a sequencer and VST support



## mgpqa1

Super early in development, but it sounds like big changes are coming.









MuseScore 4. Moving from notation software to composition software.


Hello, fellow musicians! Today, we are happy to announce a new chapter in the history of MuseScore: we are now actively working on the development of MuseScore…




musescore.org


----------



## d.healey

mgpqa1 said:


> Super early in development, but it sounds like big changes are coming.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> MuseScore 4. Moving from notation software to composition software.
> 
> 
> Hello, fellow musicians! Today, we are happy to announce a new chapter in the history of MuseScore: we are now actively working on the development of MuseScore…
> 
> 
> 
> 
> musescore.org


Yep, looking forward to these improvements. It will also have support for Note Performer which a lot of people have been requesting.

I hope they also support other plugin formats and continue development on the MIDI-out side of things. I've also asked some questions in that thread that I'm waiting for a response to... Things like will Musescore retain loaded plugins between projects or will every plugin needed to be reloaded when you switch between scores.


----------



## joebaggan

This thing is still free right? If they keep improving it'll start making composers wonder why they're paying 600 bucks on Dorico or Sib when they can get something great for free. Granted the $$ tools will be better for engraving, but can see Musescore covering the needs for composing soon, especially with new emphasis on playback and supporting Noteperformer.


----------



## Dewdman42

we shall see


----------



## d.healey

joebaggan said:


> This thing is still free right?


Always will be. They've always accepted donations, and now they are owned by ultimate guitar they have a few full time paid developers and tantacrul as head of design.


----------



## starpainter

> *The Sequencer*
> Building on our existing piano roll, the sequencer is a new page in MuseScore’s history. The ambition is to eventually allow composers to create highly polished audio - bypassing the need for a companion DAW. We will fully synchronize the ability to work in both the Notation and Sequencer modes, with the option to detach the piano roll as a separate interface element.



And then also the VST things, that's quite a high bar they have put themselves. Can't wait really to see all this in action. This really sounds very very promising indeed!


----------



## José Herring

joebaggan said:


> This thing is still free right? If they keep improving it'll start making composers wonder why they're paying 600 bucks on Dorico or Sib when they can get something great for free. Granted the $$ tools will be better for engraving, but can see Musescore covering the needs for composing soon, especially with new emphasis on playback and supporting Noteperformer.


I did a live choir piece and did it all in muse score. While I think it's cool that the big ones have all these integrated features, if I'm writing for a live ensemble using a notation program, all I care about is that it looks good and that it has a piano sound. Kind of why I haven't been able to justify paying $600 for a separate notation program. Music score already looks better than 99% of the sheet music I've played throughout my life. I mean seriously if you've seen the parts to Beethoven's 7th you'll be like, MuseScore works just fine.


----------



## rudi

It's looking very promising indeed...

The sequencer screenshot looks impressive (and is reminiscent of Dorico too). That along with VST support and all the existing scoring facilities should set the cat amongst the pigeons! I also like the new streamlined aesthetics.

I love the new spacious and uncluttered look. It keeps the focus on the score itself instead of having a myriad of palettes and toolboxes dotted around the screen. I should think that you can customise what palettes are displayed. One of the things I love in REAPER is how you can customise the layout / menu to tailor it to your workflow.

The "Home | Score | Sequencer | Publish" tabs on top remind me a bit the Dorico screen modes. And the general layout with direct access to palettes and instruments on the left, and the inspector on the right takes a leaf from Photoshop which IMHO has one of the best workflow layout around.

I am really excited about it and can't wait to try it when it comes out.


----------



## jonathanparham

Welp we'll see where this goes. I was hoping Sibelius or Finale would get a little smoother. Now I wonder how StaffPad and Musecore will battle it out. lol


----------



## wcreed51

StaffPad and Musecore are totally different animals. No battle there


----------



## jonathanparham

wcreed51 said:


> StaffPad and Musecore are totally different animals. No battle there


yeahhh but if Staffpad had multiple ways of entering notes it'd be more interesting. lol


----------



## EvilDragon

Amazing that they took Tantacrul (Martin Keary) to redesign their UI/UX!


----------



## Dewdman42

I remember seeing that video last year!  

Sounds like MuseScore is going to get a whole lot better, hopefully not less free. I still think it will be years if ever for it to catch up with Dorico, I'm not holding my breathe. Its great at creating incredibly beautiful scores in a free package. I have my mom using it because not only does it print beautiful scores, it is extremely easy to use because not a million features, which will change drastically when they enter into the playback wars...

We shall see... something to watch for sure...


----------



## EvilDragon

MuseScore is open source software under GPLv2. That means it will always remain free.

Martin has experience with every notation software out there (and video on most of them). Things are gonna be just great under his deft UI/UX guidance, methinks. As for playback, let's see what happens.

Oh also - VST3 support only, no VST2 support (because they couldn't get VST2 SDK in time due to Steinberg being pricks).


----------



## EvilDragon

Also here's Martin's 1 hour diatribe on Dorico


----------



## Dewdman42

EvilDragon said:


> Oh also - VST3 support only, no VST2 support (because they couldn't get VST2 SDK in time due to Steinberg being pricks).



oh man. :emoji_angry:


----------



## EvilDragon

Not a huge problem, there are VST3 wrappers, like BlueCat Patchwork.


----------



## Dewdman42

well simply hosting the VST3 is not a big problem, but if you care about midi plugins then yes its still going to be a problem. Since its GPL, if they make the source freely available it may be possible for people that have the VST2 sdk to build it for their own uses with VST2 support. I hope they allow that at least..


----------



## EvilDragon

I mean it's open source, so yeah you could totally code up your own VST2 support, if so inclined... Surge synthesizer is in the same situation - VST2 support is there, but pipelines don't build them, you gotta own VST2 SDK if you want to compile VST2, otherwise it's just VST3 and LV2.

(BTW I think BlueCat's Patchwork can also load MIDI plugins, so you can totally do whatever.)


----------



## Dewdman42

yea no duh, but that's not what I meant. It would be possible for them to include a simple compile flag that includes it or not.


----------



## EvilDragon

Sure but they still need to actually write support for VST2 headers (a compiler switch is not enough), which, if they don't have the SDK, they can't. So somebody with VST2 SDK ought to do it.


----------



## Dewdman42

Alight, well I hope they do it anyway. Its not hard to obtain the headers, its just illegal to distribute any products unless you have the license. I personally will not be spending any time trying to keep a MuseScore fork up to date...so there is that. If they don't provide VST2 support I am unlikely to use it. Anyway I have Dorico and don't care that much, was just meaning to give a frownie face about the fact Steinberg is screwing things up a bit here. Peace Evil Dragon.


----------



## d.healey

EvilDragon said:


> Oh also - VST3 support only, no VST2 support (because they couldn't get VST2 SDK in time due to Steinberg being pricks).


There is a free (GNU GPL) VST2 alternative header. I wonder why they don't use that... https://git.iem.at/zmoelnig/FST


----------



## Dewdman42

its debatable whether that violates the license agreements with Steinberg. If I were them I would not take a chance on that either. Certainly they can use that to develop any code surrounding VST2, but they should not distribute any binaries that are built that way. Its a thorny issue to go down that rabbit hole.

However there are numerous open source projects out there, which either don't ship the binary at all, and always require their users to build it, or at least provide the option to build it yourself. And if you have the VST2 headers, then you can set a flag and build VST2 support into your own private working copy of the program.

The VST2 headers were widely distributed before the change, many people obtained them without ever signing a license. Legally you can't make a binary and distribute it without a license, but obtaining the actual headers is not hard.

If you use the allegedly reverse engineered headers from FST or others...its debatable about what would happen. In this case MuseScore would be a free alternative to Dorico and I could see Steinberg coming after them at some point, why take a chance.... I wouldn't either. 

But its not at all illegal to include code for supporting VST2 hosting and providing a compile time flag for those savvy enough to download it from GitHub and build it themselves, providing they have the VST2 headers.

Its not practical for a separate party to maintain a separate fork just for this reason. Unless the MuseScore folks do it, then we should just get used to the fact that it will not support VST2.


----------



## EvilDragon

FST alternative headers do violate the VST2 license (which pretty explicitly forbids any reverse engineering), they should not be used unless you really want trouble (curious how Steinberg didn't C&D that, but that's not to say that they won't notice it at some point and do it). At least not until Google v Oracle case is closed. If that case is sorted in Google's favor, then Steiny's license would not apply and reverse engineering VST2 headers would be legit - at least from my understanding.



Dewdman42 said:


> Its not practical for a separate party to maintain a separate fork just for this reason. Unless the MuseScore folks do it, then we should just get used to the fact that it will not support VST2.



It doesn't have to be a fork. I mean sure you (not you you, but whomever you ) fork it, add support for VST2 headers and compiler switch, you pull request that back into main repo, then it's up to them to decide if they want to merge. From that point onward your fork is not really necessary, maintenance would fall onto the main repo holder (or any other contributor).


----------



## Dewdman42

Actually writing the VST2 code would not be that hard. Someone has to do it. You're right, if MuseScore folks are not willing to do that, then someone else could do it an make a pull request. But unless they actually do pull it and use it, then it would be mostly a wasted effort because its not practical to maintain a fork just for that. I personally would not waste a single minute doing that unless they gave me a heads up ahead of time that they absolutely would take it into their mainline. Bottom line, they need to coordinate it...regardless of who actually does the coding for that...if at all... It needs to be part of their "plan" or it won't happen.


----------



## EvilDragon

Yep, true, which is why they have developers channel on Telegram to talk stuff through. Might be worth a shot. I know I'm not doing it, though.


----------



## Bollen

I wonder if using VE Pro is a way around the VST2 support issue...?


----------



## d.healey

Bollen said:


> I wonder if using VE Pro is a way around the VST2 support issue...?


Any external host will be a suitable work around, as long as Musescore continues to support MIDI out.


----------



## Dewdman42

That's going to be the same result as using Patchworks or PlogueBidule or any number of other sub-hosting chainer plugins that come themselves in a VST3 version and are able to host VST2 within. There are free ones too. VePro doesn't add anything to help there.

So the problem is passing data through the VST3 barrier with certain kinds of midi events is problematic. Most VST2 instruments will work fine inside a VST3 subhoster, but a few little gotchas might come up related to things like CC keyswitches and stuff like that. Its the raw midi VST2 plugins that are really SOL in some ways on a DAW that only supports VST3.

An external program would be another way to handle it of course, but then you lose sample accuracy.


----------



## t888

EvilDragon said:


> Amazing that they took Tantacrul (Martin Keary) to redesign their UI/UX!



Not sure, but perhaps open source projects don't as readily accomodate the "shoot the messenger" model?


----------



## JyTy

Notepreformer support! Love it! ❤️❤️❤️


----------



## mducharme

It is going to be hard for them to build NotePerformer support without VST2, since NotePerformer is only a VST2 instrument. They are unlikely to release a VST3 version of NotePerformer since Finale and Sibelius do not support it yet, afaik.


----------



## d.healey

mducharme said:


> They are unlikely to release a VST3 version of NotePerformer .



Depending on the framework that Noteperformer uses it could be as simple as changing a compiler option and pointing it to the VST3 SDK.


----------



## Dewdman42

That is very unlikely for note performer because it is very deep in midi processing which is exactly problematic in vst3. Not only would it involve a lot of complete reworking, but in some cases vst3 might not even work entirely correctly for note performer. Yes juce plug-ins can be converted easily but extremely doubtful that note performer is based on juce. When you common code like that, it is lowest common denominator. In order for note performer to work properly in vst3 it will most likely have to move to entirely new paradigms using note expression data and other vst3-only concepts which cubase is probably the only host fully supporting.

in short I think we might as well forget expecting note performer to work with muse score unless he were to work out something entirely customized that doesn’t use vst at all in any form.


----------



## EvilDragon

Why so grim, dewdman? 


MIDI processing can definitely be done with VST3. It's just abstracted (and looks like Steinberg did it for good reason, considering MIDI 2.0 is happening).


And actually looking at this thread, Arne Wallander is more than happy to port NotePerformer to work with MuseScore once they add VST support ("If Musescore were to add a system where we could create a high-quality integration, we would be happy to port our software."). Apparently it doesn't matter to him if it's VST3, and looking at NP3's GUI, it might very well be JUCE-based, considering fonts and general vectorial look of things.

Hell, even the MuseScore 4 blog post mentions integration with NotePerformer:








Dewdman42 said:


> In order for note performer to work properly in vst3 it will most likely have to move to entirely new paradigms using note expression data and other vst3-only concepts which cubase is probably the only host fully supporting.



Erm, I don't think so.  I feel you're mixing some things here - note expression or whatever has nothing to do with NotePerformer really. There's nothing special in what NotePerformer is doing, on a conceptual level. It's just delaying the playback by one second (remember Synful Orchestra?). This is par for course with all sorts of audio plugins that require latency compensation. All NP is doing is receiving all the MIDI data from the notation software, and its algorithms make that into believable playback. Really nothing that VST3 can't do here - all it needs is supply the MIDI note on/offs and CCs.


----------



## Dewdman42

No. Note expressions are part of the vst3 plugin spec and certain atomic midi operations can only be handled properly in vst3 by using that part of the vst3 spec to communicate midi from the host to the plugin. I’m not mixing anything. Raw vst2 Midi buffers are not supported in vst3 and do not exist. Other plugins will also have problems in vst3 because of this. It may not always be obvious but the exact ordering of cc events and such is not assured unless the vst3 spec in its entirety is used, including the use of note expression data structures to transmit Midi data that decorates note data in a way where the ordering matters. Note performer just happens to be rich in this regard and will definitely be effected by either losing some of that precison in the midi stream or else having to base it in vst3 paradigms, some of which are not even supported by most hosts


----------



## Dewdman42

And hey if the muse score team gets it working with note performer whether by vst3 or some other way then great but I’m just saying, they can’t just recompile it for vst3 as someone suggested


----------



## Dewdman42

Ps vst3 has absolutely nothing to do with midi 2.0. In fact the whole point of vst3 is to REMOVE midi from the api. It is abstracted completely away from midi. In theory that could be good except for tools like note performer and other midi manipulation plugins are given bigger challenges to solve because of this


----------



## d.healey

EvilDragon said:


> all it needs is supply the MIDI note on/offs and CCs.


I believe note performer does more than this. I think it has to have some integrations with the notation software to see what markings are in the score. If this wasn't the case then I would expect them to release note performer for use in DAWs too.


----------



## Dewdman42

Just to add to that, I have had private conversations with the author of note performer and he has told me point blank it’s far too complicated to be used generically in a daw. He basically said forget it, not possible.

if he works closely with the musescore team there are always work arounds so maybe they will but there are several other notational programs that don’t support it either, so at some point I’m sure he is doing the math to make an economic decision about whether it will be worth the time and effort.


----------



## d.healey

Dewdman42 said:


> I’m sure he is doing the math to make and economic decision about whether it will be worth the time and effort.


I think it will be, this has been one of the top requests from Musescore users for a few years.


----------



## Dewdman42

One thing for certain if they DID make it work with musescore it would fundamentally change the situation putting musescore way on the map. We can always hope. My money is still on dorico though.


----------



## mducharme

What would be sure to change things is if MakeMusic and Avid both added VST3 support into their software. I think enough Finale and Sibelius users would have to request that in order for it to be prioritized.

MuseScore 4 is only in the earliest stages of development as they said - those "screenshots" are really only visual mockups of what they would like the program to look like and the features they would like it to have. I'm not even sure they've said how long it will take to get there, but based on their plans and the amount of work it looks to be, I would assume it would be approximately another three or four years, so hopefully you would see MuseScore 4 stabilizing in 2023 or 2024. By that time, Finale and Sibelius might support VST3.


----------



## EvilDragon

Dewdman42 said:


> Ps vst3 has absolutely nothing to do with midi 2.0. In fact the whole point of vst3 is to REMOVE midi from the api. It is abstracted completely away from midi.



This is exactly what I said  MIDI being abstracted in VST3 makes it easier to support MIDI 2.0 features, I'm pretty sure of that.


----------



## EvilDragon

mducharme said:


> I'm not even sure they've said how long it will take to get there, but based on their plans and the amount of work it looks to be, I would assume it would be approximately another three or four years, so hopefully you would see MuseScore 4 stabilizing in 2023 or 2024.



Doubtful. They are moving very fast. We could see it in a year or so.


----------



## mducharme

EvilDragon said:


> Doubtful. They are moving very fast. We could see it in a year or so.



I've been following the development of MuseScore over the last several years. I think that short timetable is highly unlikely. I'm not saying it isn't possible, and I'm not saying they can't do it, but just very highly unlikely. It would be a huge amount of work even for a team that is being paid for the work, and they aren't always getting paid for the work.


----------



## EvilDragon

Dewdman42 said:


> Just to add to that, I have had private conversations with the author of note performer and he has told me point blank it’s far too complicated to be used generically in a daw. He basically said forget it, not possible.



In theory, he could totally make NP work in Reaper. Reaper exposes all notation events as simple MIDI text messages (which means notation is also exported in MIDI files and as such is portable, should any other program support such implementation), and Reaper's scripting and extension API is far-reaching.


----------



## Dewdman42

It has more to do needing a lot of look ahead because of many time based symbols like crescendos, etc. The way his engine renders the sound it can’t just produce the sound by responding to midi events it has to look ahead, see a lot of stuff over time and generate an evolving sound. I had this same thought as you that we ought to be able to automate any midi tracks with enough midi controllers to accomplish the same thing but he basically pushed back on this entirely, note performer is not a simple sample player responding to events, it has to look way ahead and make more complex decisions about how to generate whatever sound it generates, in ways that are apparently more complex.


----------



## EvilDragon

That lookahead is totally possible in Reaper, audio and MIDI events can be accessed by extensions from anywhere in the project.


----------



## mducharme

I really can't see Arne being interested in putting effort into getting NotePerformer working with Reaper, even though it may be possible.. It is really outside the scope of what NotePerformer is supposed to do, IMO.


----------



## Dewdman42

EvilDragon said:


> That lookahead is totally possible in Reaper, audio and MIDI events can be accessed by extensions from anywhere in the project.



Sure. Technically speaking lookahead is entirely possible in any DAW simply by reporting a large latency. I'm just reporting what Arne told me. As to how or why he would decide to add support to different DAW's or notational programs I think is, in his view, because each one requires custom hooks into the host according to him. I'm quite sure he would open it up for all hosts if he thought it could be done with not too much effort. Otherwise he has to to do the math and decide if it will be worth his time to develop and support each host, apparently requiring some custom hooks or coordinated effort with the host developer in each case in some way.

I'd love to see it supported directly in DAW's and in all notational programs, including staffpad ( he already told me its not going to be in staffpad), reaper, MuseScore, Notion, Overture and pretty much any other notational....and all the DAW's too why not. But he says "not". I do think it would really help out MuseScore in particular, a lot. MuseScore being open source, its hard for them to include any kind of built in sound engine that is any good and still have a free program. If it was at least "able" to accommodate NotePerformer, then people could decide on their own if they want to buy it and it would enhance MuseScore tremendously. But we'll just have to see what happens...its really up to Arne...but also he has to work directly with the MuseScore team in some way to make it happen, so we shall see.

Just by adding VST3 support, at least MuseScore could be used with VePro and many software instruments and for many people would be a fine solution.... but then that will depend on what kind of notation-playback engine they build into it, as to whether it will be any good or not.


----------



## Tempfram

This still doesn't seem to let you work with audio like a DAW does.


----------



## Navid Lancaster

EvilDragon said:


> Amazing that they took Tantacrul (Martin Keary) to redesign their UI/UX!



That was the best move they ever did. Been a user of Musescore since Ver.2. I also have Notion but I'm not a fan of it. When I upgrade to Studio One ver. 5 later this year I'll see how well Notion integrates but until then it's Musescore all the way.


----------



## d.healey

Musescore 4 release planned for next year - https://www.scoringnotes.com/podcas...iYpXNsztr_iJsijzzNpjO4hL7_MMZEsunk6kuUxEmJYgw


----------



## Matt Damon

d.healey said:


> It will also have support for Note Performer which a lot of people have been requesting.


----------



## mventura

EvilDragon said:


> Amazing that they took Tantacrul (Martin Keary) to redesign their UI/UX!




LOL! I'd love to see Martin Keary review Notion. I think it has a very nice UX design that MuseScore could get inspiration from.


----------



## odod

hail Musescore and the team!!! amazing work guys


----------



## mducharme

@Wallander Does this mean that you are planning a VST3 version of NotePerformer?


----------



## Wallander

mducharme said:


> @Wallander Does this mean that you are planning a VST3 version of NotePerformer?


I don't know yet, but we may need to create a dedicated VST3 bridge to interface with Musescore, yes.


----------



## samphony

EvilDragon said:


> Amazing that they took Tantacrul (Martin Keary) to redesign their UI/UX!



I love his videos


----------



## Dewdman42

That would be a game changer for MuseScore


----------



## mducharme

Dewdman42 said:


> That would be a game changer for MuseScore



Possibly. But the other issue in MuseScore is that the default engraving is really not up to snuff and it can actually be a lot of work to manually adjust things to try to correct it. 90%+ of the MuseScore scores I see are really engraved quite poorly. I know they are trying to improve that, but it is a big job.


----------



## Dewdman42

maybe but its free and for a lot of people good enough. Decent sound playback would find its place for an awful lot of people. Not publishers who will continue using mainly finale for the rest of our lives apparently.


----------



## mducharme

Dewdman42 said:


> maybe but its free and for a lot of people good enough. Decent sound playback would find its place for an awful lot of people. Not publishers who will continue using mainly finale for the rest of our lives apparently.



Yeah, it is good enough, as long as you aren't actually writing music for real people to perform. I would be embarrassed to give MuseScore default output parts/score to performers, and the amount of work it would take to get them looking reasonable would make me seriously want to use something else.


----------



## Dewdman42

as you should! I probably wouldn't use it for that task either unless/until they improve part extraction and other needed features for that sort of work. 

I happen to think it is capable of producing gorgeous piano scores. 

And it's free. Also would be a nice tool to use for simply composing with traditional notation, and nice sounds if they get the VST3/Noteperformer thing sorted out.


----------



## d.healey

Dev build of M4 is now available (it's very rough and not ready for production)
https://ftp.osuosl.org/pub/musescore-nightlies/


----------



## Dewdman42

Ohh fun. Will check it out


----------



## mducharme

mducharme said:


> I've been following the development of MuseScore over the last several years. I think that short timetable is highly unlikely. I'm not saying it isn't possible, and I'm not saying they can't do it, but just very highly unlikely.



Following up on my post quoted above - there is new news out of the MuseScore camp.






Update on MuseScore 3.6 and 4.0


Hello everyone. The 'internal' team have been pretty busy over the last few months. There has been a lot going on, some of which I'm not quite able to speak…




musescore.org





There were too many problems in the core application for them to get to MuseScore 4 just yet. So now they are instead working on an intervening MuseScore 3.6 that will have engraving fixes and rewrite large chunks of the codebase, but no VST and no new sequencer mode etc.

The engraving improvements of MuseScore 3.6 are well worth it. MuseScore 3.5's default engraving is pretty horrible, I feel. So anything they can do to make engraving better, I would really support. However, I think most people in this thread are most excited about the sequencer and VST support, which are not in 3.6.

As a result of this major rewrite of the codebase in MuseScore 3.6, I suspect MuseScore 4 will be delayed, probably significantly. The sort of rewriting of their code base they are looking at doing for 3.6 is a *lot* of work even by itself. As stated in my quoted text above, I disagree with @EvilDragon's assertion that you could see it in a year. When you have an established code base that you have screwed up when writing the first time, it can be a huge issue to rewrite from scratch in a way that preserves the display of existing scores.

The reason I suspected these delays in MuseScore 4 is that the MuseScore code base was never written at all with the VST support or sequencer in mind, and a lot of core changes are necessary so that the application can work in that way.

In my view, where MuseScore is at right now is at a much different spot than Dorico. Dorico was built from the ground up with the built in sequencer support and VST support. In MuseScore, it wasn't, and they are having to look at how to redesign the core of the application so that they are better able to integrate those features.

I stand by my previous assertion - we are likely to only see MuseScore 4 in a usable form for VST playback in 3 or 4 years.


----------



## d.healey

> *WHEN DO WE EXPECT MUSESCORE 4.0 TO BE RELEASED?*
> 
> On current trend, we expect MuseScore 4.0 to take between 8-10 months to complete.


I think this is optimistic, but I'm hopeful it's accurate.


----------



## mducharme

d.healey said:


> I think this is optimistic, but I'm hopeful it's accurate.



It is certainly optimistic. I also don't think it is accurate if you are expecting to get to MuseScore 4 with the promised features in that timeframe. They will probably release a "MuseScore 4" 8-10 months after MuseScore 3.6, but it will almost certainly be hugely incomplete compared to their promises. That is why I say "for a usable form for VST playback". Steinberg's Dorico team has been developing their VST playback for 4 years and it has only recently become barely usable. Maybe it is that the MuseScore developers happen to be several times more skilled than the Steinberg Dorico developers, but I doubt it.


----------



## EvilDragon

There's a solid enough number of active developers on MuseScore that I am pretty sure they can make it within a year, and without screwing it up along the way too.


----------



## VSriHarsha

Do you know how to make a particular instrument play, only the 2nd time ( I mean when selected bars are repeated ) with the other instruments, but not the first time. 

I gotta say am quite new to MuseScore. I am wondering if it’s possible at all.


----------



## d.healey

VSriHarsha said:


> Do you know how to make a particular instrument play, only the 2nd time ( I mean when selected bars are repeated ) with the other instruments, but not the first time.
> 
> I gotta say am quite new to MuseScore. I am wondering if it’s possible at all.


Probably best to ask on the Musescore forum.


----------

