Color

Hello! If you've already enrolled in the Mastering MuseScore 4 course but haven't really started exploring yet, what are you waiting for? Or if you started and then got side tracked, now is a great time to return to it. I keep adding lessons every week, so there is always new material to check out. That includes a new welcome message and tour I added at the beginning recently, to help you find your way around.

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 how to work with parts in MuseScore 4.

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.

Notation Project

This month, we're working on entering a choral piece for four voices - see the full post here.

Tip of the Week

Having lyrics between the two staves of a grand staff with the melody moving back and forth between the staves is a common thing to want to do, but it can be tricky to achieve:
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There are a number of ways to get MuseScore to do this and have everything line up. The "brute force" way is to attach lyrics to the notes as you see them, then flip the lyrics on the lower staff to above, and adjust their position manually until they align. For quick examples, that might be fine. But there are arguably better ways that don't rely on manual adjustments. The above example uses invisible notes in voice 2 on the top staff. For a run-down on how I did this, see the full post here.
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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, I'll look at a couple of jazz-inspired pieces - an original by Greg Dunn and an arrangement by Larry Hankins . Both demonstrate the concept of focusing on thirds and sevenths in piano voicings and I'll talk about that as well also other aspects of the music.

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.

Musicianship Project

Learn to add color tones to your thirds and seventh in jazz voicings - see the full post here.

In Theory

In this week's lesson for the Musicianship Project, I discuss a specific strategy for adding color tones to chord voicings based on thirds and sevenths. But there is also a simple hack that a lot of pianists in the jazz and pop worlds use that is quite effective. It relies on the fact that the ninth of any chord is right next to the root, so any voicing that includes the root can be converted to one using the ninth by simply moving the finger that otherwise would have played the root a little to the right.
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For some examples, see the full post here.