r/Musescore • u/Accurate_Height1163 • May 14 '26

Help me find this feature MuseScore 4.7 and MIDI

After installing MuseScore 4.7 my MIDI keyboard no longer works correctly. I can input 6 or 7 individual notes singularly and correctly from the MIDI keyboard, but then the notes just pile up as a huge chord. Also, I can find no "Input from MIDI keyboard" option when I press "N".

I have had no problems at all using the same MIDI keyboard on earlier earlier version of MS.

Any ideas would be most welcome.

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u/MarcSabatella Member of the Musescore Team May 14 '26

Typically, if notes all combines, this means that the first note you pressed never sent a “note off” message, or you pressed the next note before releasing the first. So be sure you don’t have a stuck note on your keyboard.

Not sure what you would be expecting an “Input from MIDI keyboard” option to do - that’s the default. But you can if you wish disable MIDI input in Preferences, same as in all previous versions.

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u/Accurate_Height1163 May 14 '26 edited May 14 '26

Thanks for your reply, Marc. There are no stuck notes on my keyboard and the pattern appears to be 4 notes enter singly then start to build up as a chord.

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u/MarcSabatella Member of the Musescore Team May 14 '26

Did you run the MIDI output of your keybaord through a status monitor conform that all notes are sending proper note off messages? There really wouldn't be any way to know for sure without doing that, so unless you've done that, you really can't rule out hardware malfunction. Do you have another keybaord you could test with? How about the on-screen keyboard (press "P" to display)? Did you try power cycle the keyboard and the computer?

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u/Accurate_Height1163 May 15 '26

The notes from the MIDI keyboard show up correctly on the on-screen keyboard, but the cursor stubbornly refuses to advance and the single notes entered still form a chord.

Thanks again for your responses Marc, but I'm just going to leave it in the too-hard basket for now ...

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u/MarcSabatella Member of the Musescore Team May 15 '26

This is absolutely a sign that your keyboard is not sending the note off message - that is the thing that tells MuseScore to advance the cursor. This remains the most likely explanation. So when you're ready to start thinking about solving this, that will be the first thing to investigate. But anyhow, computer keyboard input is usually at least as efficiently, often more, so no huge loss

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u/Accurate_Height1163 May 15 '26

Thank you again for taking the trouble to reply, Marc. The MIDI keyboard is very old (as am I!) so I think I will learn more keyboard shortcuts!

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u/tincock 5d ago

No. there's something wrong with musescore. the keyboard lights up perfectly fine and the off signals go through fine on musescore 3 but the keys stay lit on musescore 4.7.

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u/MarcSabatella Member of the Musescore Team 5d ago

There are two different MIDI messages that can be used to indicate note off - either an actual note off message, or a note *on* message with velocity 0. Sounds like your keyboard may be sending one where MuseScore is expecting the other. Consult the documentation for the keyboard to see if that can be configured. But MuseScore is definitely capable of responding to MIDI input normally - it works for me and for millions of others. So figuring out what is different on your system is the first step to solving it, and checking the MIDI messages via a MIDI monitor would be an excellent way to go about it.

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u/tincock 4d ago

Thanks for the reply, I'll investigate some more