Side quest: MuseScore There’s always an exploding task. It’s a good idea to focus on a task. Sometimes, though, the focus can raise something else. I mentioned before that I don’t particularly like using MuseScore. It’s a marvelous piece of software, but I find it more work than GuitarPro or TuxGuitar. The reason that it’s more work is that it can do more.
Every piece of expanded capability requires more configuration.
That configuration starts to feel like too much, like extra work, pre-work, even, side quests, diversions.
And so I am trying to make a simple template to make it easy to create charts. If I’m going to be doing Stella, let’s make it easier to keep track of what I’m doing.
MuseScore is a lot of work, but it’s really quite worth it. The capabilities it has make it really attractive to me, like being able to save my own chords and have them persist in a library. I also like that you can make something exactly what you want it to be. For example, you can make it play lots of instruments and have the sound bank be extensible .
Here’s a few things I’ve done to make this easier for you to use.
I’ve created a template you can use for sheets.
I’ve saved a style .
You can import them and get going. Here’s a PDF of the output and a graphic of what it looks like.
Guitar Lead Sheet
35.2KB ∙ PDF file
Download Download You can make changes to this pretty easily. Use the Song Properties to change information like the source, composer, arranger, etc.
You can Add→Text to make this more configurable, like taking out the lyricist, for example.
You can go to Format and edit the styles to change the header and footer. MuseScore 4 has macros for what you can put in. It’s easy to configure. Now, what becomes difficult is adding notes. It doesn’t need to be.
I’ve given you the template and style and also a PDF of what it can be. Try it out! I’ll be using this for my Stella experiments.
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📎 Files and downloads are available in the original Substack post.