BandInMuseScore

Accompaniment generator for MuseScore, something like Band-In-A-Box, auto-magically powered by MMA Musical Midi Accompaniment.

View project on GitHub

BandInMuseScore

Accompaniment generator for MuseScore3, an OpenSource alternative to Band-In-A-Box and others, auto-magically generated by MMA Musical Midi Accompaniment.

Illustration: One click accompaniment generation from Chords in MuseScore3

Example

Hear for yourself how the plain few measures of the sample BandInMuseScore track below sound better with the default Folk accompaniment (tiny mp3), in our example directory: MSCz > MMA > MIDI > MP3

Illustration: Simple Score exampe

This plugin has been tested on Linux (Ubuntu) and Windows with MuseScore 3.2.3. It should work fine on MacOSX as well, or any other OS with Python 3. It is work in progress, usable and perfectible, suggestions and help are welcome (see Roadmap).

HowTo

  • Install MMA MIDI Accompaniment for your OS (it’s Free). Additional info see INSTALL.md, esp. for Windows.
  • Download BandInMuseScore plugin and uncompress it in your MuseScore plugins direcory.
  • Open your score with chords symbols in MuseScore
  • Enable plugin BandInMuseScore3 from the Plugin Manager, then run it from the plugins menu. The generated accompaniment will open in MuseScore.

Features

MuseScore Chords, Tempo, Time Signatures and (simple) Repeat Bars elements are natively supported.

Any Staff Text element (shortcut CTRL+T) in your score will be considered as a MMA directive and provided as such to the accompaniment generator. You can therewith change the groove/style, the instruments, add metronome clicks and do much more, such as in the Roman Rock in our example directory: MSCz > MMA > MIDI > MP3 + PDF

Illustration: Score with Roman chords and directive annotations

To prevent cluttering your Scores too much, simply make the MMA Staff Text elements not visible, so they don’t export to PDF.

Some others elements would be great to have but are not there yet, don’t hesitate to contribute some code to improve the plugin:

  • KeySignatures
  • Dynamics

Customizing Accompaniment

MMA Musical Midi Accompaniment has multiple available styles, grooves, patterns and many more features. Including the ability to generate melodies, tailor instruments and much more. Read it’s reference manual and customize your accompaniment to your liking.

Many styles are provided to play with, from foxtrot to rock via waltz, calypso, blues, jazz or trance. It’s possible to import your favorite BandInABox songs or Yahama STYles files into MMA, read it’s documentation.

Roadmap / Contribute

Please help us for the following (mostly in priority order)… some of which I may do if I find some time:

  • find a way to merge lead and accompaniment in a new score.
  • improve the quality / features of the generated MMA accompaniment.
  • add interesting MMA styles and grooves to MMA, and thus BandInMuseScore.

Support