Hello! This week we should see an update to MuseScore - now being rebranded as MuseScore Studio to help differentiate the notation software from the website and mobile apps. MuseScore Studio 4.3 adds a few interesting features and fixes many bugs, and I will be highlighting this release in the MuseScore Café. BTW, the mobile apps also just got an update, finally (!) supporting MuseScore 4 files.
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I’m also launching a second Office Hours session at a somewhat later time, to try to accommodate Gold-level members for whom the regular time is not convenient. It is impossible for one or even two times to work for everyone, but I plan to experiment a bit in coming months to see what works best.
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Meanwhile, in ​Practical Counterpoint​, we are focusing on canon - the culmination of our work on imitation and a major building block of many important musical forms.

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 take a look at the improvements in MuseScore Studio 4.3. A new “sound flags” feature to access different playback options within Muse Sounds is one highlight.

Tip of the Week

One of the best new features in MuseScore Studio is “sound flags” - a special type of staff text that you can use to control different aspects of playback for instruments using Muse Sounds. In this video post, I demonstrate how to use sound flags to select different types of violin samples; the same technique applies to other instruments as well.

Musicianship

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Music Master Class

This week in the Music Master Class with Marc Sabatella, we discuss canons and look at the examples composed for the Practical Counterpoint​ course.

In Theory

I have been talking a lot about counterpoint lately in conjunction with my online course, Practical Counterpoint. One of the things I mean when I say I am dealing with “practical” counterpoint is, you don’t have to write a whole canon or fugue to use contrapuntal techniques. Sometimes just one section of a piece might be in canon just employ polyphonic techniques. In this video post, I show how my Music Master Class theme music uses canon as one element of a larger (albeit still quite short) whole.