Microtuner by Ableton

Ableton released a Microtuner recently. I have had a lot of fun playing around with it using these Scala files.

Microtuner by Ableton:

Microtuner by Ableton is a MIDI device that lets you import, edit, and generate microtonal scales. Load scale files, create custom scales, and morph between tunings in real time – all with polyphony, MPE, and Lead/Follow modes to sync your scales across instruments.

One of these days, I'd like to make more Scale Exercise Play-Along Tracks, and this tool very well might help me get the process done quicker.

Be sure to check out the demo songs in Ableton's blog post. Very cool.

MaskerAid is an app that allows you to quickly and easily add emoji to images with machine learning

Casey Liss, co-host of one of my favorite podcasts, has released a new app called MaskerAid.

Announcing MaskerAid:

In short, MaskerAid allows you to quickly and easily add emoji to images. Plus, thanks to the magic of ✨ machine learning ✨, MaskerAid will automatically place emoji over any faces it detects. There’s several reasons you may want to hide a face:

• The face of a child who is too young to consent to their image being shared
• The faces of the children in your classroom, or your own classmates, who really don’t need to be in your images
• The faces of protestors who are standing up against a grotesque war
• The other faces in a particularly great shot of you, but was taken as part of a group

I can definitely see this coming in handy for sharing photographs of the classroom. You can check out MaskerAid here.

Band Score Order in Dorico 4.0.10 -- Ehler

Band directors rejoice! The latest Dorico 4 update improves score ordering for band instruments. Click and read band director Ehler's blog post below to learn more about this feature.

Band Score Order in Dorico 4.0.10:

It’s a little tricky to find the band score order toggle; you do so by right-clicking the sorting icon at the bottom of the left-pane, which will give you options between different score orders (leaving room for more to come).

If you set that right from the start, then as you add instruments, they’ll appear in the correct order. If you unwittingly were working in orchestral score order first and need to then adjust, simply switch it over to band score order and then left click the same icon again to have it impose that score order on your players.

Ehler provided feedback to Steinberg about this feature and for this I say thanks!

Dorico 2 Released for iPad

Speaking of Dorico, Dorico 2 for iPad is now out on the App Store. It's free and comes with many improvements, my favorite being Apple Pencil support in Read view.

When I wrote about Dorico 1.0 for iPad, I expressed my enthusiasm for it sharing similar code with the then-upcoming desktop version of Dorico 4. Basing the iPad version on the desktop code has indeed expedited feature releases. I am hopeful for the development speed that both the mobile and desktop versions of Dorico will receive in the future.

While I don't use the read view in Dorico for iPad a ton, I am excited to see the addition of annotation support with Apple Pencil. Even though it doesn't do note input, this development shows that the Dorico team is iterating fast and responding to user feedback.

Check out the Dorico release below.

Dorico for iPad 2.0 now available from the App Store:

We are pleased to announce that a new version of the top-rated music notation app for iPad, Dorico for iPad, is now available for free download from the App Store. If you already have Dorico for iPad installed, go to the Updates tab in the App Store app on your iPad to grab the update.

This new version brings many of the new features added to Dorico 4 for macOS and Windows to iPadOS and adds support for freehand annotations in Read view using the Apple Pencil for those users who choose to take advantage of the optional in-app purchase subscription. Read on for more details.

Kanban Boards in Todoist

I am preparing two presentations for the Ohio Music Educators Association Professional Development Conference next month, and one of the sessions is on collaboration and communication apps for music teams.

As I prepare this session, I came across this blog post draft from a while back that I think could be helpful for those looking for a graphical way to think about their various teaching responsibilities...

You can now "visualize your workflow with Board view in Todoist" by testing the beta version on both iOS and the web. Read more here.

I am pretty committed to OmniFocus for personal project management. But I have always liked Todoist. Todoist is the service I recommend to most people for tasks. It is simple to use and has a free tier. And if you pay for the subscription, it is full of features almost all the features you could ask for from a to-do app. Its native apps are not as well-designed as Things or as powerful as OmniFocus, but they are good enough.

If you are the kind of visual thinker who prefers a board-style for project management, Todoist will now allow you to depict your projects and tasks in a drag-and-drop, card-style interface.

Music notation software, macOS Monterey, and Apple Silicon M1 Macs (Scoring Notes)

If you are on a Mac and are still debating an update to Monterey, or if you are debating an M1 Mac purchase, I recommend this blog post from Scoring Notes.

They are keeping track of compatibility with Monterey and M1 across all the major music notation apps.

NPR Playlist - 50 Best Albums of 2021, Ranked

For a while, I had a holiday tradition of taking "best albums of the year" posts on the web, and making Apple Music playlists out of them.

NPR has started doing this, which saves me some time, but I sort of miss the ritual.

Anyway, here are links to their streaming playlists. I always learn about some good new music listening through this list every year.

Some of my favorites I have already heard are, in no particular order...

• An Evening with Silk Sonic, Silk Sonic
• Mood Valiant, Hiatus Kaiyote
• Floating Points, Pharoah Sanders & The London Symphony Orchestra

NPR Music's 50 Best Albums of 2021, Ranked : NPR

If the year presently coming to a close was a dance, it'd be a hesitant shuffle, tentative steps toward — or heyyyy, maybe away from? — an uncertain future. So maybe that's why, when we sat down together to discuss which albums we loved the most over the course of 2021, NPR Music's staff and contributors found ourselves drawn to albums by artists making breakthroughs, moving forward with clarity, without balking at the obstacles falling in their way. Our list of the year's 50 best is topped by an album that was unmatched in concept, songwriting or performance, but it had so much good company. Everywhere on this list you'll find the thrill of artistic revelation, musicians finding themselves, willing something new into reality. There's plenty of fun, but little escapism. Many of these albums are stacked with great songs, but these aren't snacks. Even when slight they are composed, with a sense of purpose. This is nourishment. Look around. You'll find something fortifying to build you up for the road ahead. (As a bonus, you can find our list of the 100 Best Songs of 2021 here.)

_Stream NPR Music's 50 Best Albums of 2021:Spotify _/_ Apple Music _/_ Tidal _/_ Amazon Music _/_ YouTube Music

Guest Post on Scoring Notes: Use Shortcuts to quickly create score templates on macOS and iOS

I wrote a post for the Scoring Notes blog, published today. The post is all about using the Shortcuts app on iOS (and now the Mac) to create custom templates in music notation software.

I did my best to provide basic context for the Shortcuts app so that this post can be accessible by any teacher, musician, or composer. The post includes a link to download both the shortcut and an example score template so you can tweak it to your heart’s content. Here is an excerpt:

Use Shortcuts to quickly create score templates on macOS and iOS — Robby Burns | Scoring Notes:

Even though apps like Sibelius, Finale, and Dorico don’t come with their own built-in Shortcuts actions, the addition of several new file-based actions from the Automator makes creating templates possible.

The shortcut below is three simple steps. I searched for each action in the right sidebar and dragged them in the order I wanted them to occur. Here’s what each step does:

1. Looks for a score I made in Dorico that is set up in 4/4, in concert B♭ major, and with all of the instruments common to a middle school bands.
2. Saves a copy of that file to the Desktop.
3. Opens it in Dorico.

Click here to keep reading on Scoring Notes.

Guest Appearance: Passing the Baton

I am happy to join Theresa Hoover and Kathryn Finch, authors of the Passing the Baton book, on their YouTube interview series this week.

This week’s interview features Robby Burns, a middle school band and general music teacher in Howard County, Maryland. Robby talks about how he incorporates creativity and music composition in his middle school band classes.

Episode 14: Creativity Through Music Composition (Part 2 of 3)

If you are into this, you should definitely check out the most recent episode of my podcast featuring Theresa, herself.

Check out this great Scoring Notes blog post and podcast episode about preparing music worksheets and teaching materials

This blog post from David MacDonald, writing for Scoring Notes, has some great tips about making teaching documents and music worksheets using some of the most popular music notation software.

There is a lot music teachers can learn in this post, and from the associated podcast episode. Click the link below to read more.

Preparing teaching materials in music notation software - Scoring Notes:

If you have ever taught music lessons or classes, you have likely needed to share some small bit of music notation with your students that isn’t quite a full score or part, but still requires some amount of staff notation. Preparing this sort of document can be tricky because notation software is built around a certain set of assumptions suited for performance materials — scores and parts — which may not always serve learning materials like quizzes or scale sheets.

In this article, I’m going to cover some of the workflows, workarounds, best practices, and other considerations that I have used in preparing my own materials for the university music theory and composition courses I teach.