How do I harmonize a melody for a horn section in MuseScore?
With Scorehand you type "voice the alto 1 melody in bars 9-16 for the saxes, drop 2" and it writes the harmony parts under the melody in your open MuseScore 4 score. Voicings come from your chord symbols (close or drop 2, with tensions), passing notes get diminished passing chords, and every line stays in its instrument's range.
It works for any section you have staves for: saxes, trumpets and trombones, horns, strings or a choir. Classical-style scores keep the harmony held under passing tones instead of re-voicing every note.
How it works: install in 4 steps
- Get a free key on scorehand.net and click “Download the plugin”. The zip has your key built in, so there is nothing to paste.
- Unzip it into your MuseScore plugins folder, so you end up with a
Scorehandfolder there:
Windows:Documents\MuseScore4\Plugins\
Mac:Documents/MuseScore4/Plugins/(in Finder: Go → Home → Documents)
Linux:~/Documents/MuseScore4/Plugins/ - Restart MuseScore 4, open Home → Plugins and click Scorehand → Enable.
- Open a score and choose Plugins → Composing/arranging tools → Scorehand. Type what you want in the chat.
Example requests and what you get
voice the alto 1 melody in bars 1-8 for the saxes
Result: Five-part close voicing: melody on top in alto 1, alto 2 / tenor 1 / tenor 2 / bari underneath.
harmonize the trumpet 1 line in bars 25-32 for the brass, drop 2
Result: Drop-2 voicings across trumpets and trombones, transposing instruments written correctly.
brass hits on 2 and 4 in bars 25-28
Result: Short accented chords on beats 2 and 4 with smooth voice leading.
Honest limits
- It edits the score you have open; it can't add new instruments or staves. Add the staff in MuseScore first (press I), then ask Scorehand to write for it.
- Each request is one undo step: one Ctrl+Z (Cmd+Z on Mac) puts the score back exactly as it was.
- It works in MuseScore Studio 4.x (Windows, macOS, Linux) and needs an internet connection; your score is sent to our server only to make the edit and is not stored.
- Big jobs (more than about 128 part-bars at once) ask you to confirm first. Vague requests get a short question with one-click options instead of a guess.
- It writes from your chord symbols, or from the harmony it reads in the score when there are none. It is a fast first draft: check it by ear like you would a student's or a colleague's part.
Price
A free trial of 100 applied edits, then 10 free edits every month, no card needed (questions and “nothing to change” replies don’t count). For more, Pro ($19/month, 200 edits), Composer ($99/month, 1,000) or pay as you go with credits: A typical edit uses about 150 to 450 credits (1 credit = $0.001), depending on how much music you ask for; big full-band requests can use 750. Clarifying questions are billed like a request; requests that change nothing are not charged. $10 (10,000 credits) is roughly 25 to 65 edits. See pricing.
Try Scorehand on your own score. Free trial: 100 edits, then 10 a month.
Have a PDF or a photo of the music? Convert it to an editable MuseScore file for free, or transpose it for any instrument, then edit it here with AI.
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