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!
Presenting
Hello! First, I'd like to apologize if you had trouble accessing the community site yesterday - there was a brief outage across all of Circle (where the community is hosted). All should be well now. Mastering MuseScoreFor the ultimate guide to the world's most popular music notation software, see my online course Mastering MuseScore 4. MuseScore CaféThis week in the MuseScore Café with Marc Sabatella, we'll look at techniques for notating plainchant - music with no fixed meter and sometimes employing special conventions with respect to noteheads, stems, and lyrics. 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. ProjectThis month we're working on the short string quartet piece Symphosium that you may recognize as the theme music for the Music Master Class. See the full post here (enrolled students only). Tip of the WeekI use MuseScore a lot for presenting music to others, such as when teaching or otherwise demonstrating music. For this purpose, I like to have as clean a view of my score as I can, uncluttered by extraneous editing controls. MuseScore has never had a feature dedicated to this, but you can do a decent job of it by creating a custom workspace and setting it up appropriately.
Musicianship SkillsIf 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 ClassThis week in the Music Master Class with Marc Sabatella, we'll look at some improvisations created as part of the Basic Music Theory course, and I'll give some further insight into the process. 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. ProjectThis week's project for the Basic Music Theory course involves modal improvisation - see the full post here (enrolled students only). In TheoryWe often hear about the "tritone" in music and how it is considered dissonant and even possibly controversial. The original tritone in music was the ascending interval from F to B. You may also know this interval as an augmented fourth, or even as a diminished fifth if we spell the B enharmonically as Cb, or if we reverse the notes to put the B on the bottom. But where does the name "tritone" come from? It's actually quite simple: to get from F to B, it is three whole steps (or whole tones): one from F to G, another to A, and a third to B. Three whole tones: a tritone. The effort to avoid the tritone is one of the factors that led to the introduction of Bb a generally accepted pitch for music. For more on this, see the full post here. |
Until next time, keep making music! Marc Sabatella c/o ConvertKit, 113 CHERRY ST #92768, Seattle, WA 98104-2205 |
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...