Glossary
Listed below are technicial terms and musical terms, which are frequently used in MuseScore or in the Handbook. Links to relevant handbook chapter are provided. To help musicians who are capable of reading a notation but do not know its proper name, image is provided. This chapter does not aim to be a dictionary of all musical notations, see External links.
The differences between American English and British English are marked with "(AE)" and "(BE)", respectively. Editors and translators of this chapter should add the individual entry for each term.
A
Acciaccatura
A short grace note which appears as a small note with a stroke through the stem. Musescore creates a quick playback, the playback duration is not affected by duration of the parent note.
Accidental
An accidental is a sign appearing in front of a note that raises or lowers its pitch. See . chapter. Musescore creates playback for common accidentals only, they includes , , , , , and triple flats. To create microtonal accidentals such as quarter tone, see Chapter.
Ambitus
Note (or vocal) range used in a . Used particularly in early music. See chapter.
Anacrusis (mostly BE)
See .
Anchor
The point of attachment to the score of objects such as Text and Lines: When the object is dragged, the anchor appears as small brown circle connected to the object by a dotted line. Depending on the object selected, its anchor may be attached to either (a) a note (e.g. fingering), (b) a staff line (e.g. staff text), or (c) a barline (e.g. repeats).
Appoggiatura
A long which takes value from its associated note. Musescore creates playback as such. It is acceptable to execute written appoggiatura as acciaccatura nowadays but Musescore does not create such playback. Appoggiatura's functions include: passing tone, anticipation, struck suspension, and escape tone.\
Arpeggio
An arpeggio tells the performer to break up the chord into the constituent notes, playing them separately and one after the other. The arrow arpeggio symbol indicates the direction in which the player should play the notes of the chord. See chapter.\
Articulation
A marking or symbol indicating how a note should be played, usually by altering the length of a note or shaping its attack and decay. See chapter.
Barline
Vertical line through a , staves, or a full that separates . See chapter.
Caesura
A caesura (//) is a brief, silent pause. Time is not counted for this period, and music resumes when the director signals. See chapter.\
Capo (text)
A text to indicate the setting of the transposing device used on an instrument. See . Not to be confused with .
Da capo (D.C.)
A directive to repeat the previous part of music. See chapter. Not to be confused with .
Edit mode, text edit mode
Used to edit adjust literal layout position and content of Text, contrast with and . See and chapters.
Eighth note
A note whose duration is an eighth of a whole note (semibreve). Same as a quaver (BE).
Flat
Sign (â™) that indicates that the pitch of a note has to be lowered one semitone, see and .
Ghost note
In music, notably in jazz, a ghost note (or a dead, muted, silenced or false note) is a musical note with a rhythmic value, but no discernible pitch when played. Musescore supports crosshead (cross notehead), diamond notehead(the small diamond same as musescore 3), slash/diamond notehead (new in musescore 4), and adding brackets (parentheses) to a note, see chapter.\
\
Half Note
A note whose duration is half of a whole note (semibreve). Same as a minim (BE).
Hemidemisemiquaver (BE)
A sixty-fourth note.
Implode
*
A feature allowing the user to combine voices from separate staves onto one staff. See chapter. This is similar to, but not exactly, score reduction (). See also .
Interval
The difference in pitch between two notes, expressed in terms of the scale degree (e.g. major second, minor third, perfect fifth etc.). See
Jump
Jump objects are notations such as "D.S. al Coda", found in the "Repeats & Jumps" palette. See chapter.
Key Signature
Set of or at the beginning of the . It gives an idea about the tonality and avoids repeating those signs all along the . A key signature with B flat means F major or D minor tonality. See chapter.
Legato
Legato is a play style which involves playing the notes in a slurred manner. Legato may be written as text or shown through the use of .
Local time signature
The time signature on a single staff when different from the overall score time signature. See .
Line
Musescore Lines, a type of objects capable of attaching (anchoring) to a horizontal continuous range of more than two notes or rests, or vertical collection of notes (chord). See chapter.
Measure (AE)
A segment of time defined by a given number of beats. Dividing music into measures provides regular reference points to pinpoint locations within a piece of music. Same as (BE).
Measure repeat sign
A measure repeat sign looks like a "percentage" symbol having the two circles filled, or a slash with a dot at each side. See chapter.\
Natural
A natural (♮) is a sign that cancels a previous alteration on notes of the same pitch, see → and →.
Normal mode
The operating mode of MuseScore outside or : press Esc to enter it. In Normal mode you can navigate through the score, and move elements, adjust Inspector properties, and alter the pitches of existing notes.
Operating System (OS)
Underlying software that controls and manages the hardware and other software on a computer. Popular OSes are Microsoft Windows, macOS, and GNU/Linux.
Ossia
*
An alternative passage which may be played instead of the original passage (from the Italian for "alternatively", meaning "or be it"). See chapter.
Part
1. Musescore's automatic staff extraction function, see .
2. A single melody line in a polyphonic musical composition. MuseScore 4 never uses this definition, but there is a similar feature .
Quarter note
A note whose duration is a quarter of a whole note (semibreve). Same as a crotchet (BE).
Respell Pitches
Change accidental used on a note but keep note's pitch. See chapter.
Rest
A musical symbol that indicates silence. See chapter.
Score
1. In MuseScore support forums and the MuseScore Handbook, score generally refers to a computer file with the suffix .mscz - and to its visual representation on a computer screen as well as its audio playback.
2. In some chapters of the MuseScore Handbook, score means the layout and formatting of "Full score" or one particular Musescore part. See .
Text
A Musescore Text object is an object that contains individual characters that can be entered and removed by using (typing on) a computer keyboard. See chapter.
Tie
A curved line between two adjacent notes of the same pitch to indicate a single note of combined duration. See chapter. A tie is not a .
Velocity
A property of objects inside Musescore that controls how loudly note(s) are played, see musescore 3 handbook chapter. Velocity property of notes are edited using Properties panel: Playback tab, see chapter.
Voice
1. In Musescore, voice is a software feature, you can use up to 4 voices per staff, see
Written pitch
Transposing instruments (such as the clarinet, French horn, trumpet etc.) are notated at a different pitch (and key signature) to how they sound. The notated pitch is called the written pitch. Contrast with . See chapter.
