I'd like to do a bit of a write up about a program I’ve been using for about a year or so called musescore.
At the time I was looking for a program to write out charts. I had heard of sibelius and finale but they seemed so expensive. So I looked around and found a free one called musescore.
A lot of the time ‘free software’ just doesn’t seem to cut it, with bugs or limited features etc. Like at the moment the free software I’m using for editing videos is just not that great..... Which makes me even more thankful about a program like musescore cause it has pretty much everything needed to write out charts.
At first I started using it for writing out transcriptions of bass lines or solos I liked.
Whenever I got stuck somewhere with how to do something, there’s a great community forum with a lot of answers. For example, I wanted to put some accent rhythms above part of the staff. I was directed to the symbol section where I could search through a bunch of signs to drag and drop onto the staff.
But then I started using musescore in a way that perhaps it wasn’t designed for. I started randomly clicking notes along with numbers (numbers control the value of the note like quarter or sixteenth notes) anywhere on the staff as a tool for songwriting.
Then I would listen back and pick out any phrases that stood out, or said something to me. Sometimes I got nothing, but surprisingly most of the time something came out.
I gathered a few or more ideas, then just played around putting it in different places, changing the key, or editing notes etc. Now I had something that had come from randomness. Something that I would never have thought of, or something I just wouldn’t play on my instrument. Pretty refreshing.
From here I added some bass notes that seemed to fit, then some chords that would align with the bass note and melody.
Then there was a song!
And then some more…..
Arranging the music on the staff clearly, demo recorded, thought out and questioned, edited and questioned again took much longer. But I was really happy with the result. Mainly because they’re just so unlike anything I’ve written before.
I hopefully will get a bit of money together to record them in the next 6 months or so. I just wanted to share a little of the process of creating in this way.