Hello! You often hear me talk about the Community in these newsletters, and for those of you who participate often, you already know what it's about. If you've never gotten around to checking it out, why not take a moment to do so today? It's free to create an account and participate in our live streams, discussions, etc.

If you've visited before but haven't been lately, there are a number of improvements that have been put in place over the last few weeks, with more to come. One that I just got working this week is that if you post a link to a score on musescore, people can now see and play the score directly from the Community. You can also post scores directly into the chat during live streams, which should come in handy during the next "Ask Me Anything" session of the MuseScore Café. Also, the overall visual appearance of the site has been revamped, including a "dark mode" you can access by clicking the logo at top left.

WIth MuseScore 4 just around the corner and tons of new users expected as a result, the Community is going to continue growing. The technical improvements are nice, but what really makes a community are the people. So thanks to those of you who have joined. For those who have not, we'd love to have you as a member, so if you haven't done so already already, why not join for free now?

MuseScore Café

This week in the MuseScore Café with Marc Sabatella, we continue our third-Wednesday "score of the month" series with a return to the Pathétique piano sonata from Beethoven, which is our project this week for the Music Engraving Workshop.

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

A nice tip for you today: how to split a measure across systems. In Pathétique, some editions do this for the last measure of the introducation simply because Beethoven wrote "too many notes" to fit conveniently on one line of music. But it's also something done a lot in hymns, to allow each line of music to correspond to a line of lyrics, which often means placing the last beat of the last measure of a line to the next line:

To accomplish this in MuseScore, do the following:

1. Select the note you want to start the next line
2. Tools / Measure / Split Measure Before Selected Note/Rest
3. Select the newly inserted barline
4. Press Enter to add a system break
5. Press "V" to make the barline invisible
6. Also select the barline on other staves as necessary and make them invisible as well
7. Right-click the new partial measure at the start of the next system
8. Measure Properties
9. Exclude from measure count
10. OK

It sounds like a lot of steps, but the whole process takes only a few seconds.

Music Master Class

This week in the Music Master Class with Marc Sabatella, I continue to feature your music and also projects 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 last week's Music Master Class, I talked for quite a while about the idea of modulation by third, and I somehow managed to not mention one of the most famous (to a jazz musician) examples there is: John Coltrane's "Giant Steps". The whole chord progression is a series of modulations by major third, going from the key B to G to Eb just over the first five notes of the melody, and then continuing to jump between those three keys every measure or two. Coltrane built a whole system out of this "circle of thirds" that he applied to quite a few otherwise simple chord progressions.

I don't really have much else to say about this, except that it's still pretty awe-inspiring to listen to the classic original recording:

For people not already familiar with this, it's important to understand that all those ridiculously fast eighth notes are improvised over one of the hardest chord progressions anyone had ever played. Definitely a seminal moment in music history!