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!
Writing rhythms
Hello! I want to remind those of you who are All-Access Members that today at 12:30 PM Eastern are my Office Hours, where you can meet with me and other members to face to face along with other members and get help with whatever you need. It's an amazing benefit of membership, and it's especially relevant for those of you working through the Jazz Piano Holiday course, as I can playing through pieces at the keyboard and give feedback.
MuseScore Café
This week in the MuseScore Café with Marc Sabatella, we return to the subject of rhythm and how to write it in a way that is readable. Much about how we read rhythm is based on recognition of the eight basic patterns, and I will show you what they are and how to use them.
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 quick way to clean up the notation of rhythms in your score is to run Tools / Regroup Rhythms, which fixes common errors such as not clearly showing beat 3 in a 4/4 measure:
Music Master Class
We will continue to look at arrangements-in-progress created for the Jazz Piano Holiday course. We will spend some time looking at the especially tricky issues of jazz rhythms.
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
The word syncopation is one we often hear but don't always agree on what it means exactly. I don't claim to have the One True Definition or the term, but I can say, for the particular sense of that term that I have in mind, I do have an extremely straightforward and objective way of explaining it. Simply put, a syncopation is a note on a weak beat that is not immediately followed by one on the next strong beat. So in eighth note terms, it's a note on the offbeat not immediately followed by one on the next beat. Whether that's because the syncopated note is held over the strong beat, or because there is a rest on the strong beat, the effect is the same: a bit of pleasant surprise.
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, hello! This week in Practical Counterpoint, we begin the section on imitation, so you can look forward to hearing much about that. This week I also am starting the ball rolling towards crowd-sourcing a library of high-quality scores in MuseScore format. We'll discuss this during Wednesday's MuseScore Café, and hopefully return to the subject in the weeks ahead. My goal is to eventually have a reliable way of finding the "best" MuseScore editions of any given piece for further study....
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...