Hello! This week we will wrap up our summer focus on orchestration and listen to more of the final projects members have submitted. Starting in September, we will be changing gears to look at another topic - to be announced - that I think many of you will find at least as interesting and useful!
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In other news: the music notation software Finale - for many years the leading program of its kind (and what I used for many years before MuseScore) - is being discontinued. The company that produces the software is not going out of business, but they are going to focus on their other products and cease developing and selling Finale. This was just announced Monday and I am still processing the news, but I am hoping to be able to help other former Finale users find a new home here!
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Meanwhile, this week will probably also mark the release of MuseScore Studio 4.4, so you'll be hearing more about that soon. Also coming within the next week or so are some new design improvements to this community site, courtesy of the folks at Circle (where the community is hosted).

Mastering MuseScore

If you are interested in getting the most out of the world's most popular music notation software, join our community with a Mastering MuseScore membership for the most comprehensive training & expert support available!

MuseScore Café

This week in the MuseScore Café with Marc Sabatella, we examine a very loaded question - just how good is MuseScore Studio, really? With the recent discontinuation of Finale, it seems like a good time to consider whether MuseScore is a worthy alternative to the major commercial notation programs. We'll take an honest look at the capabilities, limitations, and future potential of MuseScore.

Tip of the Week

I often hear people asking why their score does not sound the same once posted to the score-sharing website musescore.com as it does on their computer. In most cases, the answer is that you need to upload your score from within MuseScore Studio, not via your web browser. In this video post, I show how to use the "Publish to musescore.com" command within MuseScore Studio to ensure your scores looks and sounds the same on the website as it does on your computer.

Musicianship

If you are serious about learning music - theory, composition, improvisation, and more - become a Gold-level member and receive access to all of our music courses and workshops, as well as exclusive benefits like my weekly Office Hours, in addition to our acclaimed Mastering MuseScore resources.

Music Master Class

This week in the Music Master Class with Marc Sabatella, we conclude our series on orchestration and check out projects submitted by Gold-level members.

In Theory

When orchestrating a passage originally written for piano, you are often faced with a choice not only which instruments to select for each note, but also which octaves to use. There are many different approaches to working this out, but one general piece of advice I can offer is that no matter which octave each note ends up in, it is usually best to arrange it so that the outer voices in each phrase remain the outer voices, even if the octaves change. In this video post, I demonstrate a couple of examples of this principle.