MusTech.Net!

I’ve been an active proponent of Finale Notepad since its inception and “birth” into the computer world.  I was very disappointed by Finale’s self-reported “exciting news” about the product and their subsequent charge of $9.95-$19.95 US for their latest version of Finale Notepad 2009.    Although, there have been a couple of fair freeware music notation programs, most notably Musette a French software initiative for PCs and Rosegarten for Linux, until my latest discovery of MuseScore, I was not very happy with what would be available for people or schools, financially crippled, to use as a Finale Notepad Replacement, nor did I know of many good alternatives.

Presenting MuseScore:

MuseScore

I am thrilled to say that the folks at MuseScore have not only stepped up to the challenge, but I believe that this open-source music notation program, in time, will come close to the level of notation excellence achieved by both Sibelius and MakeMusic with their programs (Mark my words!).   This program could not have “emerged” at a better time as musicians and educators are clammering for a new alternative for their ”simple” music notation needs at no cost.  While I do legally own copies of Sibelius 5 and Finale 2008 as well as have both of these software programs in our Music Technology lab at the college, you can bet I will also now have copies of MuseScore on them as well, not unlike my copy of Audacity that resides with the amazing shareare Goldwave and payware Adobe Audition.

MuseScore in a nutshell via bullets:

1. Cross Platform (Linux and Windows) and GNU GPL
2. WYSIWYG editing
3. Wizard Setup funtions
4. UNLIMITED number of staves
5. 4 voices (or parts) per staff
6. Easy and fast note entry with mouse, keyboard or MIDI (Note: Windows users, I’ve talked to the people at MuseScore and the MIDI entry will be available very soon!)
7. Import and export Music XML
8. Automatic note head positioning
9. DRUM NOTATION INCLUDED!!!
10. Cross Staff beaming ability
11. Unlimited time and key changes
12. Pickup note measure supported
13. Slur editing
14. Unlimited Lyrics
15. Unlimited Chord names
16. Grace Notes
17. Part extraction
18. Plugins are supported!
19. Midi/XML/PNG Export
20. Mixer function
21. Soundfont capable
22. Partial interpretation of Expressions and repeats

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Anyone?   Edublogs.org has stated that they’ve been updating for a couple of days now (stating that they would be “up” later?)  There are a number of ME Bloggers that have their site with Edublogs and I’m getting all kind of errors related to broken links at MusTech.net.

I checked before this post and edublogs.org isn’t even showing a home page now? 

…another good reason to self-host if possible!?!

Anyone?  

This was posted on 10/6/2008 at 12:45 p.m. EST. for those of you that find this a year later!

Here is an article/post for all of the WordPress users that utilize the open-source software found at WordPress.org.  These particular plugins are directly related to music and particularly useful for musicians, whether players, composers, or educators.

The following is a list of current, useful, and hand-picked plugins that I’ve worked with at some point that allow for musicians to begin using their WordPress sites better, more efficiently, and more importantly- what they are looking for in a music specific WordPress Site (see my article about WordPress as a Music CMS):

Performers:

GigPress- A great plugin that allows musicians to let folks know about their upcoming concert schedules, playing venues, and even ticketing information.   I use this on my site, MusTech.netin the sidebar.  Gigpress is an easy way for bands to list and manage tour dates on their WordPress-powered website.

Gig Calender- This plugin is geared toward bands and musicians to manage and display a calendar of their gigs within WordPress. It’s meant to be as easy as possible for both the musician and the fan. It even manages venue data complete with mapping and ticket links.

Events Calendar- Events-Calendar is a diverse replacement for the original calendar included with WordPress adding many useful functions to keep track of your events. The plugin has an easy to use admin section that displays a big readable calendar and lets you add and delete events. The plugin is widget ready so you can easily add a small calendar to the main sidebar with the ability to roll over the highlighted event day to see a brief description of the event or click the day to get a full description of the event without ever leaving your current page. If you are not using a widget ready theme, you can still have the calendar on your sidebar. 

Organizing Music:

Discography- Musicians need a way to easily organize information about their music. This plugin exists to do just that. It lets you publish a list of albums and auto-generates a WordPress page for each song, so that fans can comment, save links to your songs and share them with friends.

Podcasting:

PodPress- PodPress adds tons of features designed to make WordPress the ideal platform for hosting a podcast.  This is what almost all users use to integrate Podcasting into WordPress sites.  A very useful alternative to PodPress is:

Podcasting-  Created for the Google Summer of Code 2007, Podcasting brings complete podcasting support to WordPress. Taking advantage of the latest and greatest in WordPress 2.5, WordPress podcasting has never been so easy.

Media Players:

Inline Mp3 Player- Inline mp3 player replacing any link directly to a mp3 file, such as ‘http://yoursite.com/musicfile.mp3′ into a special link. Clicking it will turn the link into a small media player with a html slider interface. It works simple, click the link the music starts playing.

Embedded Video- The plugin is made for easily embedding videos into a blog post. The videos can be integrated from external portals (like YouTube, Google Video and many many others) or they can be uploaded to the web server or a remote server and integrated as well. Additionally a corresponding link to the video on the particular video portal page or a download link to the local file can be generated automatically, if demanded.

Music Notation:

ScoreRenderer- A WordPress plugin that renders inline sheet music fragments inside posts and comments into images. It supports ABC, GUIDO, Lilypond and Mup music notations.

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It’s called a carnival of blogs and Joel Wagner and I started one for Music Education 5 months ago!   This is a great way for you all to get more exposure to your work(s) meet new folks and spread the word about music, education, and/or technology!

I’ve started a home page for the carnival that can be found right here:
http://mustech.net/muscarn

Here is the basic info right from the source:

The Music Education Blog Carnival was created and is maintained by Dr. Joseph Pisano of MusTech.net and Joel of SoYouWantToTeach.comin order to promote the great works being done by Music Education Bloggers across the Internet.

The Music Education Blog Carnival is published on the 1st of every month and is a recognized member of the communities of blogs as indexed by BlogCarnival.com.  All writings submitted to the Music Education Blog Carnival are examined to ensure that they are valid, interesting, and related to our discussion topic(s).

If you would like to be considered as a host for an upcoming edition of the Music Education Blog Carnival please use the contact form and let us know.

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