Hello! I hope those of you affected by the heat waves and "domes" this month are staying cool, literally and figuratively.

Now that the Practical Counterpoint​ course has officially concluded, we will start looking at a broader selection of topics in the Musicianship Workshop and Music Master Class in coming weeks. I know that a number of folks are still working on their fugues and I hope to be able to take a look at some more this week, but don't worry if you still need more time. I will start posting new material to work on next week, but I'll continue to make room for more fugues as people complete them!

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 explore the various types of notation found in jazz, rock, and pop music - some of which have also found their way into modern classical music, movie scores, etc. Chord symbols, slash notation, bends, and more - we'll look at what these notations mean, how to add them in MuseScore, and how to get the best playback for them.

Tip of the Week

Tablature notation for guitar and other similar stringed instruments is based on the idea of indicating notes according to the string and fret used rather than the pitch produced. Each pitch can potentially be played in as many different positions as the instrument has strings, and tablature lets you specify exactly which position should be used. If you then try to transpose a passage up or down using the standard pitch-based transpose tool, MuseScore may elect to change the string assignments rather than keeping the same string and only changing the fret. In this video post, I demonstrate how to use the Up/Down cursor keys to transpose a tablature passage while keeping the original string assignments.

Musicianship

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Music Master Class

This week in the Music Master Class with Marc Sabatella, we will check out additional fugues completed as part of the Practical Counterpoint​ course, and we will discuss ideas for new projects.

In Theory

If you've heard much Baroque music, you've almost certainly encountered the Picardy third - a major chord that is used at the very end of an otherwise minor-key piece. In some ways, the practice can seem curious and a bit of a dated cliche to many today, but it's possible to use the idea with subtlety and make it work in a modern context. In this video post, I show a typical Baroque example from a Bach fugue, and then look at a passage from the popular jazz standard, "Alone Together".