Type notes, get engraved notation.
Pick what you are writing for — a single melody, piano, voice and piano, SATB or men’s choir, or two parts — then write each part as note names with rhythms. Words go under the vocal lines and chord symbols above the top stave, and the score is engraved as you type. Download it as PNG or PDF when it looks right.
The instrument row sets how many staves you get and how they are joined. A single melody is one stave. Piano is a braced grand staff. Voice and piano is three staves. SATB and TTBB are four bracketed staves barred together. Two parts is a bracketed pair.
Note name, octave number, then a slash and the rhythm. C4/q is a middle-C quarter note. Rhythms are w for whole, h for half, q for quarter, 8 for eighth and 16 for sixteenth, with a dot after for dotted. Commas separate notes and a vertical bar separates measures. Sharps and flats are written C#4 and Bb4.
Vocal parts have their own words field. One word per note, in order. Break long words where the syllables fall — a-maz-ing across three notes — and the syllables line up under their notes.
Key and time signature apply to the whole score. Chord symbols go one per measure above the top stave, and are the normal way to write a lead sheet.
PDF for printing and sharing, PNG for dropping into a document or a slide. The score engraves as you type, so what you see is what exports.
Music notation is a two-dimensional layout problem with rules that fight each other. Notes must be spaced so that rhythmic relationships are visible, but also so that lyrics do not collide, but also so that measures fill the line evenly. Professional engraving software resolves these with decades of accumulated heuristics. The horizontal spacing here is computed by measuring the widest word in each measure and allocating room accordingly, which handles the common cases and is why a measure with a long word takes more width than its rhythm alone would justify.
The number after the note name is the octave in scientific pitch notation, where middle C is C4. The C below it is C3, the C above is C5. This is the most common convention and the one nearly all software uses, but be aware that some older sources call middle C by other names, so a pitch that looks an octave out usually means the source was using a different convention.
Treble clef puts middle C on the first ledger line below the stave. Bass clef puts it on the first ledger line above. So the same written position means a different pitch in each, and a bass part written in treble clef will sound nearly two octaves too high. Choir music conventionally writes tenor parts in treble clef sounding an octave lower, which this does not model — write tenor parts in bass clef at the pitch you want to hear.
Engraving convention allocates horizontal space by note duration, so a half note occupies visibly more room than an eighth and the eye can read rhythm from the layout alone. That convention breaks the moment you add words, because a syllable under an eighth note needs the same width as the word requires regardless of how briefly the note sounds. Setting a long word under a short note is one of the oldest problems in music typesetting. The approach here is to measure every syllable in a measure, find the widest, and allocate each note in that measure at least that much room, then flatten the duration-proportional spacing so short notes are not starved. The visible result is that a measure containing a long word grows wider than its rhythm alone would justify, which is exactly what a hand engraver would do.
Each syllable is attached to a note, and rests are skipped rather than consuming a syllable. This means the number of syllables must match the number of sounding notes, and a mismatch shows up as words drifting away from where they belong. Counting the notes in a measure and the syllables underneath is the fastest way to find the error.
Usually a rhythm code that is not recognised or a missing comma. Check that every note has a valid rhythm after the slash and that measures are separated by vertical bars. Rebuilding one measure at a time finds it quickly.
The syllable count does not match the note count. Rests do not take a syllable. Count both and add or remove hyphens where the syllables should split.
The tool does not enforce the time signature strictly, so an overfull measure engraves rather than erroring. Add up the rhythms and check against the time signature.
Write sharps as C#4 and flats as Bb4, with the accidental immediately after the note letter. Accidentals implied by the key signature do not need writing.
Rows wrap automatically as you add measures, and PDF export breaks the score across as many pages as it needs, always between systems rather than through the middle of one. The score is fitted to the page width and stays the same size whether the piece is four measures or forty, so page two is as legible as page one. PNG export is still a single tall image, which is the right shape for dropping into a document or a slide.
Not currently. Each stave carries one voice. For a hymn in open score, use the SATB setting and put each voice on its own stave.
MuseScore is free, open source, and a genuinely capable engraving program: MIDI keyboard input, playback, parts extraction, page layout, plugins. If you are preparing music for performance, use it. It is also a substantial download with a real learning curve. This is for the case where you want one tune written out cleanly in five minutes without installing anything.
Professional tools with professional prices, used for published engraving. The output quality is a visible step above everything else. Irrelevant for a chant tone; essential if you are typesetting a score for sale.
Manuscript paper and a pencil is still the fastest way to capture an idea, and nobody should feel bad about it. The advantage of typing it is that the result is legible to other people, can be re-keyed and reprinted, and does not degrade in a folder.
Note name, octave, then a slash and the rhythm: C4/q is a middle-C quarter note. Use w for whole, h for half, q for quarter, 8 for eighth, 16 for sixteenth, and add a dot for dotted. Separate notes with commas and measures with a vertical bar. Sharps and flats are written C#4 and Bb4.
One word per note, in order, separated by spaces. Split a long word across notes with hyphens where the syllables fall, like a-maz-ing. Leave the field empty for an instrumental line.
Yes. Pick an instrument set and you get a stave per part, correctly braced or bracketed and barred together: piano as a grand staff, voice over piano, SATB choir, men’s choir TTBB, or two parts. Each part has its own notes field, and vocal parts have their own words.
Those are full engraving programs and they win on anything substantial — MIDI keyboard input, playback, parts extraction, page layout. This is for the small job: one hymn tune, a lead sheet, a chant tone, with no install and no account. If you are preparing a full score for performance, use MuseScore.
No. Reading noteheads from a photograph is unreliable enough that the result would need checking note by note, so you are better off typing it. Nothing you enter here is uploaded either way.