Hello! As I mentioned last week, I'm taking the rest of December off from most of my regularly scheduled activities (so, no Office Hours, MuseScore Café, or Music Master Class). But I did want to get this special edition of my newsletter out to let you know that MuseScore 4.2 has released, and along with it, the new Muse Guitars sound library.

By the time you see this, you may have already been informed of the update by the check within MuseScore and/or Muse Hub. As of this writing, however, these automatic updates have not been fully pushed out yet. Depending on your system configuration, you may have to take action in order to install these updates. So in this special edition of my newsletter, I want to give you pointers to information on how to get MuseScore 4.2 and Muse Guitars.

Also, I wanted to give a heads-up to those of you enrolled in the Harmony & Chord Progressions course - expect to hear from me again this week with further info about continuing your Gold-level membership.

Mastering MuseScore

For more information on MuseScore 4.2, Muse Guitars, and how to install them, see the following resources:

• The official announcement (on musescore.org) of MuseScore 4.2 & Muse Guitars
• A release video (on YouTube) produced by the MuseScore team, highlighting what's new
• ​My own announcement (on our Community site) with further details on how to install or update

From my perspective, here are the top reasons to update, even if you had previously been sticking with Musescore 3:

• Tons of bug fixes
• Quite a few useful new features
• Improved performance
• Numerous enhancements in Muse Sounds
• New Muse Guitars
• Support for ARM-based Linux systems (including Chromebooks)

The #1 requested feature that MuseScore 3 users had been missing - the ability to select individual sounds within soundfonts - is among the additions in 4.2. So if that's what you have been waiting for, wait no longer! There are still a few features from MuseScore 3 not yet implemented, but as with previous MuseScore 4 releases, you can install 4.2 alongside 3.6.2 and they don't interfere with each other. So there is no reason not to have 4.2 available.

If you're already enjoying MuseScore 4, then updating to 4.2 is a no-brainer!

For more info on how to do the update, see my post on our Community site.

Musicianship Skills

As mentioned above, I will be following up later with those of you enrolled in the Harmony and Chord Progressions course, with more information about your Gold-level membership. I'd love to see you continue enjoying these benefits, which include my Office Hours and also access to all other courses and regular ongoing projects. So stay tuned!

Meanwhile, for those of you not in the Harmony course - or who missed the Music Master Class last week - I wanted to make sure you had the opportunity to check out all the music that everyone created. Here is last week's special session with the performances, which includes links to the pieces on musescore.com or elsewhere so you can listen to them individually in better sound quality.

Finally, for those of you who have been following my own saga of learning and working on In the Bleak Mid-Winter, here is my finished arrangement for voice and piano. It's quite a harmonic workout, incorporating almost everything we covered in the harmony course - and in ways that I hope you will find musically effective.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, everyone!