Hello! We continue our orchestration theme this week, and I'll be focusing on brass. I have posted a new demonstration and project in the Musicianship Workshop for Gold-level members. It's still not too late to join us!

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 discuss a number of techniques for working with instruments in sections. We'll look at things like entering music where the rhythms are the same for each instrument but the pitches differ, entering markings for all parts at once, combining two parts on one staff, viewing a section by itself, and more.

Tip of the Week

Transposing instruments will normally show a different key signature than other instruments, and MuseScore Studio handles this automatically. It also allows you to force any given staff to use a different key signature than it otherwise would, and to add an empty key signature that does not transpose. These features are useful for polytonal and atonal music, and also for horn parts in orchestral scoring, which traditionally show no key signature at all. In this video post, I show you how to add local key signatures as well as empty key signatures that do not transpose.

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 discuss orchestrating for brass and check out projects and other music submitted by Gold-level members.
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In Theory

Horns can produce beautiful music, but the notation of their parts follows some unusual conventions. From their curious position within the score to the use (or non-use) of key signatures to the way they are typically grouped in pairs, there are a number of things you should know when orchestrating for these instruments. In this video post, I explain six idiosyncracies of horn writing.