Hello! We're getting close to the end of the year, and I'll be taking a Christmas break from my regularly-scheduled activities, including this newsletter. We're also wrapping up the Harmony and Chord Progressions course this week, so be sure to get your final projects in. Thursday will be a special session of the Music Master Class - a virtual concert featuring everyone's music!

By the way, I'll still be checking in on the community site, and I do expect to send out an announcement when MuseScore 4.2 releases (which should be before the end of the year if all goes well).

Mastering MuseScore

For the ultimate guide to the world's most popular music notation software, see my online course Mastering MuseScore 4.

MuseScore Café

This week in the MuseScore Café with Marc Sabatella, we take a look at all that happened in the world of MuseScore this past year, and we talk about what's to come.

Tip of the Week

If you have elements in your score that you wish to hear but not see (such as pedal markings), MuseScore allows you to mark them invisible. These don't appear in print or PDF or on musescore.com, but by default they do still appear grayed-out on-screen for easier editing. You can, however, make them disappear completely. In this video post, I show you how to make elements invisible and how to control whether these show on-screen or not.

Musicianship Skills

If you want to learn more about music - theory, composition, improvisation, and more - become a Gold level member and receive access to all of our music courses as well as exclusive benefits like my weekly Office Hours.

Music Master Class

This week in the Music Master Class with Marc Sabatella, we will be featuring the final projects from the Harmony and Chord Progressions course. This will be a special session to close out the year on a celebratory note!

In Theory

If you study music theory at all, sooner or later you will encounter a rule about avoiding "parallel fifths" - two intervals of a perfect fifth used consecutively between the same two musical voices. You may also learn about "hidden fifths" or "indirect fifths" that are also considered objectionable, as well as certain exceptions, such as the so-called "Mozart fifths" or "horn fifths" that are considered acceptable. You may also be familiar with things like "power chords" in rock guitar that are all about exploiting that sound.

But there is another very common situation in which we commonly see parallel fifths, and that is in piano accompaniment. It's a common enough scenario that I think it deserves its own name, so I will call these "piano fifths". In this video post, I show some examples and explain why they are to some extent almost unavoidable and not necessarily a bad thing.