Scoring Notes

Music education isn’t just learning how to read alto clef and knowing your intervals anymore. The evolution of music technology education, the changing attitudes of students towards music production, and the importance of teaching foundational skills alongside technology have made the collegiate experience in music more diverse than ever. In this episode, Philip Rothman and David MacDonald engage with guest Ben Fuhrman, a composer and music tech professor at Montana State University. They explore the preparation and skills students bring to music tech programs, focusing on music notation software, DAWs like FL Studio, Pro Tools, and Ableton Live, and the influence of high-profile artists on student choices. Skills that may seem trivial like file management are actually very important, complementing the understanding of concepts in preparing students for diverse careers in music technology.

We also touch upon the evolving nature of music careers, the necessity for students to have both technical and traditional musical knowledge, and the impact of collaborative learning environments in fostering empathy and curiosity in the rapidly changing landscape of music technology.

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Finale, the legendary music notation software program, has been discontinued 36 years after its groundbreaking release in 1988 from Coda Music Technologies. MakeMusic, the company that now owns Finale, has partnered with Steinberg to sell its Dorico application at a specially discounted price directly to Finale users. Jason Loffredo joins Philip Rothman and David MacDonald in a comprehensive discussion about the facts, the business analysis, and the way forward for customers.

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Jason Loffredo’s “Conquering Finale” video tutorial series

The 2024 conference of MOLA: An Association of Performance Librarians recently concluded in Cleveland, Ohio, and by all accounts it was a rocking success.

The conference began with the second annual Tech Fair, a gathering of librarians, product specialists, and vendors, with demonstrations and exhibits bookended by panel discussions about technology as it relates to the performance librarian. The remainder of the four-day long conference featured plenary sessions, breakout groups, and lots of excellent spontaneous sharing of knowledge and experience about a crucial role in the music-making process.

Philip Rothman and David MacDonald recap the conference with a podcast episode recorded in person from Cleveland, with a summary of the tech fair and the rest of the event: from the intricacies of percussion setup to licensing, copyright, and commissioning agreements, and much more.

And, if you like your podcasts in video format, we have a special treat for you: A video of this podcast episode, recorded live.

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Videos from the MOLA 2024 Conference:

Printing music is something that takes skill and attention to detail — both by the music preparer and the printer. When everything’s communicated well, it leads to print shop nirvana and the ideal result for everyone involved.

Philip Rothman and David MacDonald talk through a specific project and illustrate the various steps along the way to set it up for success. No detail is too small, from the page size, to the number of copies, to the shipping methods desired. Philip relays his tips and best practices from the perspective of a professional music printing service.

Then, David gives advice for how to ensure good results if you need to take your project to a more general-service copy shop, or even if you are printing yourself, like some inventive ways to format the page size and convey the instructions to minimize the risk of errors that can be introduced and avoid miscommunication in what is one of the last, most critical steps in preparing a piece of music.

Also: A preview of the 2024 MOLA Conference and Tech Fair.

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With music notation work often intersecting in some capacity with music production and scoring to video, it’s important to know when your software of choice is the best option for a particular need within a project, and when it’s not.

When it comes to fine-tuned formatting and engraving decisions, we can’t move from one notation software product to another without losing that important detail work. However, with the underlying composition itself, the information can be moved quite effectively with MusicXML or MIDI to and from to other software when a particular tool is needed elsewhere.

Steve Morell joins Philip Rothman and David MacDonald to take a look at how video, tempo, and time are handled with the four most popular desktop music notation software options — Dorico, Finale, MuseScore, and Sibelius — and how they compare to the unique notation/DAW hybrid approach from the tablet app StaffPad, as well as other solutions available.

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Video, tempo, and time (oh my!)

We last visited with Steinberg’s product marketing manager Daniel Spreadbury on the podcast upon the release of Dorico 4 in January 2022, and more recently last summer in Berlin at the MOLA conference in a panel discussion with his colleagues and competitors in the music notation software industry.

Although Dorico didn’t have much of a presence at the 2024 NAMM Show, we welcome the opportunity to visit with Daniel here in a similar manner that we did with many of those colleagues and competitors at NAMM.

We start not by focusing on the latest Dorico features, although we do discuss those. Instead, we speak with Daniel about how the Dorico community influences product development, to what extent Steinberg prioritizes customer requests and specific features, and how they balance those with some of the more long-term vision that they may have for the product. He gives us a sense of Dorico’s role within these companies, from a strategic, philosophical, and technical perspective. We explore how much of what they’re doing is done with the other products and services in mind, how those decisions are made, and how Dorico users benefit.

We also talk about industry changes and how those philosophies end up shaping what customers see on their screens and even what kind of music they create.

If you didn’t hear our NAMM wrap-up episode, and interviews with NAMM CEO John Mlynczak, Avid’s Sam Butler, MakeMusic’s Jason Wick, and Muse Group’s Jack Sutton, check those out in the Scoring Notes podcast feed.

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At the 2024 NAMM Show, we interviewed representatives from the businesses in our field of music notation software and related technology.

Today’s podcast episode is a conversation Philip Rothman had with Jack Sutton, Muse Group’s head of communications. Jack’s first visit to NAMM coincided with the company’s first official presence at the show as the parent company of Hal Leonard, which they recently acquired. We spoke about some early fruits of that deal and the longer-term plans that they have for the future of their combined business, which brings together cutting-edge digital products with a vast library of published content.

We also discussed MuseScore and the latest developments with their flagship notation product, and specifically the improvements they’ve made, and plan to make, in the areas of guitar and percussion music, as well as the overall quality of output that they hope to achieve with MuseScore in the future.

If you didn’t hear our NAMM wrap-up episode, and interviews with NAMM CEO John Mlynczak, Avid’s Sam Butler, and MakeMusic’s Jason Wick, check those out in the Scoring Notes podcast feed.

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At the 2024 NAMM Show, we interviewed representatives from the businesses in our field of music notation software and related technology.

Today’s podcast episode is a conversation Philip Rothman had with Jason Wick, MakeMusic’s director of product development. Jason talked with me about their MakeMusic Cloud product, including their Practice tool, Sight Reading Studio, a free online composing application, and their classroom suite. We also discussed MakeMusic’s tight integration with the Alfred Publishing side of their company, the future of Finale, and more broadly considered the company’s values and strategies in today’s landscape of industry consolidation.

Come back next week for another great conversation from the NAMM Show. And if you didn’t hear our NAMM wrap-up episode, and interviews with NAMM CEO John Mlynczak and Avid’s Sam Butler, check those out in the Scoring Notes podcast feed.

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At the 2024 NAMM Show, we interviewed representatives from the businesses in our field of music notation software and related technology.

Today’s podcast episode is a conversation Philip Rothman had with Sam Butler, Avid’s director of product management. Sam talked with us about the new Sibelius features that Avid previewed at NAMM, the new Android application, and Sibelius Cloud publishing improvements.

Come back the next couple of weeks for more conversations from the NAMM Show. And if you didn’t hear our NAMM wrap-up episode, check that out in the podcast feed — David MacDonald and Philip Rothman review all the industry news and analyze what it means for you.

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The 2024 NAMM Show was full of exciting news, products — and, most of all, the interesting people that create the news and products. Especially as it pertains to the Scoring Notes beat of music notation software and related technology, there was a lot to cover, and many miles were logged in service of bringing as much of the experience back to our audience.

David MacDonald and Philip Rothman review each of the major interviews that took place for Scoring Notes during the show with representatives from Avid, MakeMusic, and Muse Group. We also more generally analyze the experience, the information, and what it means for the year ahead in the field.

Concluding this episode is a special interview with John Mlynczak on his first show as president and CEO of NAMM in which we discuss his roots in the music notation field and its importance to the philosophy of the organization.

Stay tuned all this month to the Scoring Notes podcast feed, where each week we will bring special bonus coverage of interviews with Avid’s Sam Butler, MakeMusic’s Jason Wick, and Muse Group’s Jack Sutton, as they each talk about their respective products and companies, and discuss their strategies and approaches to their business.

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