Orchestrator

A preset system to quickly orchestrate sketches in MuseScore Studio 4.7+

Orchestrator.mp4

Setup

1. Download the latest release from the panel on the right. Unzip to your MuseScore Plugins directory. (Documents/MuseScore4/Plugins)

2. Click Home > Plugins and enable Orchestrator.

   

Tip

Set a keyboard shortcut in MuseScore's Preferences > Shortcuts panel. Search for "orchestrator" and define a shortcut. For example, ⌘⇧+O.

3. Open the Orchestrator plugin and click the Settings (gear) button. In the Settings section, click Add to create a new preset. Rename it, select an instrument and assign notes and pitch modifications as needed. Repeat this process for to create additional presets.

   Move the selected preset up or down with the Arrow buttons. Assign a color with the Brush button. Copy and Paste a preset to a new empty preset. Delete a preset with the Trash button (Cmd/Ctrl+click deletes all presets - useful when loading preset collections described below). Click the triangle button to the right of the preset name to toggle a compact view of only the instruments used by the preset.

   

   Orchestrator presets stay attached to the same score instruments even if you reorder the score. If you rename, replace, split, merge, or remove instruments, unresolved mappings will be skipped. Duplicate instruments are marked with a red sidebar.

   

Tip

Select multiple instruments with Cmd/Ctrl+click to quickly assign them to the same chord note.

4. Close the Settings panel. Each preset card includes the preset name, number of chord notes, and a list of instruments with any pitch offsets.

   Use the Filter to search for a preset or instrument. Use @color (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple or magenta) to filter by preset color, or @n (1-8) to filter by number of chord notes shown on the top right of a preset. For example, violoncellos @orange @3.

   Open or Save preset collections with the folder button. The Presets folder contains over 325 presets including melody, section, and larger orchestral combinations.

   Select different views with the display button. With so many presets available, these other views combined with filtering are helpful to quickly find a preset.

   

   Make a selection in the score from a sketch staff.

   Click a preset to apply the orchestration.

Known Issues

View known issues on GitHub

To Do

If you have a suggestion, or find a bug, please report it on GitHub. I don’t promise a fix or tech support, but I’m happy to take a look. 🙂

Special Thanks

“If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.” ~Isaac Newton

MuseScore Studio developers, wherever they may roam.

Divisimate developers for their free templates.

Release Notes

v1.0 7/15/26

• Initial release

v0.2.9 5/6/26

• open / save preset collections
• auto-refresh instrument lists
• support for reordered score instruments
• duplicate instrument indicators

v0.2.6 4/27/26

• Initial beta release