musescore / musescore/MuseScore

Ability to add freehand curving lines

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#34,130 3 comments 1 reaction 1 assignee View on GitHub

@davidstephengrant is already working on this.

Since Jul 10, 2026.

engraving needs design
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C++
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Description

Your idea

MuseScore should support a freehand curved line drawing feature, even if it only supports sinusoidal waves as an MVP.

Problem to be solved

Scores like https://vmirror.imslp.org/files/imglnks/usimg/a/a9/IMSLP678837-PMLP751372-Grainger_The_Warriors_Full_Score.pdf#page=107 (see Harp) and even the John Williams Star Wars score (Hal Leonard) use a notation that can indicating freely moving about between approximate notes in a glissando.
I haven't found an adequate way of doing this with MuseScore that will survive part extraction, score re-layout etc.

Freely drawn curves have other potential uses for graphical scores etc.

Image (Penderecki example)

Image (Barry Morse example)

Image (Theremin music, hand-written only)

Prior art

Common notation since 1916 or so.

Additional context

No response

Checklist
  • This request follows the guidelines for reporting issues
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