Second only to playing the piano.
Orchestrion turns any score into an instrument. You tap the rhythm — on a MIDI keyboard or the computer keyboard — and Orchestrion plays the notes of the piece, at your own pulse. Pitch accuracy is taken out of the equation; what remains is the music itself — a secure rhythm and real nuance still make all the difference.
One idea, many ways to play it: rhythm-focused practice in the music lesson, kids getting familiar with notation while having fun, music lovers discovering repertoire from the inside, covering that keyboard part your band can't do without, or karaoke-like sing-song around the computer.
It opens MuseScore (.mscz) and MusicXML (.mxl, .musicxml) files and ships
with a handful of pieces, from Frère Jacques to a Chopin nocturne. Built on
MuseScore's engraving and playback engine.
Website: https://orchestrion.app/
Grab the latest release:
- Windows —
.msiinstaller (available in English, French and German) - macOS — signed & notarized
.dmg - Linux — AppImage:
chmod +x Orchestrion-*.AppImage && ./Orchestrion-*.AppImage
Requirements: CMake 3.28 (3.31 on macOS), Ninja, Qt 6.10 or later (upstream MuseScore
states 6.8 but uses 6.10 API; with the qtnetworkauth, qt5compat, qtscxml and qtshadertools modules),
a C++20 compiler, Git LFS, and network access at configure time (MuseScore's
muse_deps downloads prebuilt third-party libraries).
git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/saintmatthieu/Orchestrion.git
cd Orchestrion
git lfs pull
cmake -B build -G Ninja \
-DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=RelWithDebInfo \
-DSMTG_ENABLE_VST3_PLUGIN_EXAMPLES=OFF \
-DSMTG_ENABLE_VST3_HOSTING_EXAMPLES=OFF \
-DSMTG_ENABLE_VSTGUI_SUPPORT=OFF
cmake --build build --target installThe executable lands in build/install/bin/. If CMake configuration fails with
confusing missing-target errors, the submodules are probably missing — run
git submodule update --init --recursive.
GPL-3.0 © 2024 Matthieu Hodgkinson.
Some bundled scores are community engravings — see
scores/attributions.json for credits.