My name is Marc Sabatella, and I am the founder of Outside Shore Music - a pioneer of online music education since the dawn of the web. As the creator of Mastering MuseScore, A Jazz Improvisation Primer, and other resources, I have dedicated most of my life to helping as many musicians as I can. Subscribe to my free newsletter for MuseScore tips, theory insights, and more information on how to create your best music!
Art songs and harmonizing melodies
Hello! We're working hard and having a great time doing so in the new Music Engraving and Musicianship Skills workshops, so I want to thank not just everyone who has joined, but also, everyone who responded to the poll that gave rise to these!
MuseScore Café
This week in the MuseScore Café with Marc Sabatella, we discuss the OpenScore project. This is an ongoing worldwide effort to produce high quality open source MuseScore editions of public domain music. From Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier to classic art songs and now a project dedicated to string quartets, OpenScore aims to make this great music available to all. I'll be speaking with Maureen Redbond - a community member and OpenScore manager - about current developments.
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
This week's project in the Music Engraving Workshop involves a song by Amy Beach from the OpenScore Lieder Corpus that has lyrics in both German and English. As is typical in this genre, italics are used to indicate the translated lyrics. MuseScore allows you to easily create alternative normal and italic lyrics through the use of separate Odd and Even lyrics styles. Just enter your lyrics normally, alternating languages verse by verse. Then select one syllable of the translated lyric, click the italics button in the Inspector, and then click the "Set as style" button ("S" icon). This will set the Lyrics Even Lines text style to be italic, so all the even verses will be formatted that automatically.
Music Master Class
This week in the Music Master Class with Marc Sabatella, we discuss voice leading and work on some of the exercises from the Musicianship Skills Workshop.
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
In this week's lesson for the Musicianship Skills workshop, I shared a handout showing how you can harmonize each note of the major scale using either the I, IV, or V chords.
You can use this idea to harmonize a melody - for example, every time scale degree 6 occurs, harmonize it with IV, and every time scale degree 7 occurs, harmonize it with V. I would not claim this is the ultimate way to go about it, but it does often make a good starting point, especially for chorale-style melodies for which changing chord on each melody note can make sense.
As an exercise, you might try taking some simple melodies and harmonizing them this way. Add the root in the bass to complete a simple arrangement. Here's one I'll bet you know:
Outside Shore Music / Mastering MuseScore
by Marc Sabatella
My name is Marc Sabatella, and I am the founder of Outside Shore Music - a pioneer of online music education since the dawn of the web. As the creator of Mastering MuseScore, A Jazz Improvisation Primer, and other resources, I have dedicated most of my life to helping as many musicians as I can. Subscribe to my free newsletter for MuseScore tips, theory insights, and more information on how to create your best music!
Hello! Thanks for bearing with me over the past week as I was setting up my new studio. While I still have work to do, we should be back to business as usual with respect to my live events.Meanwhile, this week in Practical Counterpoint, we're wrapping up our initial exploration of writing for three or more voices, and in Music Master Class we'll be looking at your projects on this topic. Mastering MuseScore If you are interested in getting the most out of the world's most popular music...
Hello! I wanted to give you a heads up that I am in the process of setting up a new studio, so bear with me if there are any glitches in my live events this week.Meanwhile, this week in the Practical Counterpoint course, we're continuing to expand to three parts and beyond. I'll be posting some new things for us to work on shortly. 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...
Hello! In the Practical Counterpoint course, we're moving on to working with three or more parts, which has implications both for the types of textures and harmonies you can create. One of the most interesting things that should come from this is a realization of just how much of what there is to know about harmony can be learned - and indeed, was originally developed - through the study of counterpoint. Those of you in the course will be experiencing this first-hand, but as always, everyone...