Hello! An important note to members outside the US: we started daylight savings time this week. That means if you didn't also set your clocks ahead in your part of the world, my live events will now be an hour earlier. So be sure to do the math to see what 12:30 Eastern now works out to be for you! For the rest of spring / summer / fall, events will be at 4:30 PM (16:30) UTC.
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Meanwhile, a new batch of lessons is now available in the Practical Counterpoint course, so be sure to check them out, as well as the discussions and exercises in the Musicianship Workshop space. If you haven't enrolled already, it's not too late to do so by becoming a Gold-level member.

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 welcome all newcomers to MuseScore! I'll give an overview of what the program can do and walk through the process of creating and working with a simple score. I also expect many long-time users might learn something new along the way...

The free MuseScore Café is live on Wednesday at 12:30 PM Eastern (16:30 GMT, or 17:30 during the winter months), and you can access past episodes in the archive.

Tip of the Week

If you want to use copy & paste (or many other MuseScore features), your first step is normally to make a range selection to tell MuseScore what you want to copy or otherwise operate on. In this video post, I show you a number of ways of creating range selections, using both mouse and keyboard.

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'll be looking at species counterpoint exercises and discussing the material from Practical Counterpoint.

The free Music Master Class is live on Thursday at 12:30 PM Eastern (16:30 GMT, or 17:30 during the winter months), and you can access past episodes in the archive.

In Theory

A lot of music - classical, pop, and more - uses vocal harmony in parallel motion. By that I mean, a second voice singing in the same rhythm as the melody but a third or sixth (usually) above or below. This is a wonderful sound in itself, but sometimes you might want to create a more complex sound for certain pieces or just individual sections of pieces. In this video post, I show how we can use a couple of basic techniques of counterpoint to create interesting vocal harmonies that work more independently but still fit the original harmony and don’t obscure the melody.