MuseScore is very promising and the UI is built in a way that I think new and more advanced features will fit well into it, especially in regard of audio and composing. While you can do all sorts of things in Finale, it is usually only as an unsupported work around – this makes Finale so difficult to use, and so prone for problems (every update could break your workaround probably therefore Finale hasn't really been updated for the last 10 years or so, it is stuck). Same with different kinds of tablature, for example tablature for lute (which is my field…). For example, figured bass is much better thought through in MuseScore, more flexibility, easier to use. Support for early music is better than in Finale or Sibelius which were mainly designed with more conventional notation in mind.

OK, regarding tools for composing and audio, Finale has still the edge over MuseScore – but there are also features that are unique in MuseScore.

Of course, there are still some music writing features missing that Finale offers, but honestly those are easy to work around using other apps, as anyway for more extended (professional) work one would export and edit the sheet music in an DTP app (and you can just edit the output in a vector graphics app before…). And I have been using it daily, since it (nearly) completely replaced Finale for me. I hadn't had any crashes or even bugs for the last months using it. While MuseScore was at version 1, I couldn't imagine to dive into it, since it crashed far too often – and stability is crucial if you want to do more than just playing around.īut now, since version 2 is out for a while, I can happily report that it is rock stable. I was watching MuseScore for a long time, as Sibelius has become abandonware and Finale hasn't done much progress in the last decades (you are paying the yearly update fee a.k.a.

Instal the new for mac MuseScore 4.1.1