Hello! First things first - I will be taking this Wednesday off, so no MuseScore Café this week. I'll be back the following week, and also, I will be doing the Music Master Class as usual on Thursday this week.

The Community site will turn one month old this week and is thriving with music and discussion. One interesting recent discussion worth checking out is on the frustration of finding mistakes in your own work.

MuseScore Café

The Café is off this week as mentioned above. Meanwhile, feel free to leave suggestions for future topics! The best way to do that is to leave a comment in my post in the Conversation space in the Community where I ask for your ideas!

Tip of the Week

There's been a lot of talk about plugins lately, so I thought I'd take a moment to highlight some of the ones I personally find the most useful.

• ​Add and remove courtesy accidentals - does a fantastic job of automating a crucial task for making your music easier to read
• ​TempoChanges and TempoStretch - the former gives you playback support for things like ritardando and accelerando, while the latter makes sure your tempo changes within a piece do what they are supposed to even if you decide later to change the overall tempo
• ​Check for parallel fifths and octaves - last week I discussed a strategy for helping you avoid these, but this plugin will find any you missed!
• ​Articulation and Ornament Control - this set of related plugins provide a nice interface for controlling the playback of articulations and ornaments
• ​Batch Convert - useful if you have a folder full of scores you want to convert PDF or another format

This is just a small sample of what's available. For a full list, see the Plugins page on musescore.org. For instructions on how to install plugins, see the Plugins section of the online Handbook. If you have enrolled in my online MuseScore course, you can check out the Plugins lesson there.

Music Master Class

This week in the Music Master Class, I will be focusing on matters of melody, including things like melodic development and ear training. What makes a good melody, how do you get your ideas onto paper accurately, and what can you do to begin to build a melody into a larger composition? I'll talk about my own experiences and look at some of your submissions as usual.

In Theory

Since I'm going to focus on melody for the Music Master Class, I will give you something to work on between now and Thursday. We're going to try some ear training exercises, and I like to use a simple little visual/tactile aid: a printed image of a piano keyboard. It that makes no sound, so you need to provide it yourself by singing as you "press" the "keys". You can download and print my version via my post in the Share & Discuss space in the Community.

Over the years, I have found singing along to my "playing" on this simple little piece of paper (I actually laminated mine!) to be incredibly valuable. In the post linked above, I explain a bit more about how I use it, so you can get started if you like. I'll also be demonstrating and discussing this more on Thursday.

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