Scoring Notes

Christopher Willis joins us for the first of two episodes. Chris is the composer of the score to the film ”The Personal History of David Copperfield.” On this episode, we talk with Chris about that score and its fresh take on familiar musical ideas to match the aesthetics of the picture. We learn about juxtaposing traditionally notated music with the world of audio samples and the technology that’...

Adrian Holovaty is the founder of Soundslice, a service that syncs audio, video and music notation into a beautiful browser-based player. Adrian started Soundslice as a way to transcribe guitar excerpts for himself, and in the past decade it’s grown into a robust platform for music professionals, teachers, and students to learn any kind of music in a unique way. Adrian talks to us about their phil...

Katie Wardrobe is the founder and director of Midnight Music, a thriving service which helps music educators integrate technology into their teaching. Katie provides workshops, presentations, online training courses and ebooks for her community, and on our show she tells us all about how she uses notation software and many other tools to achieve results. Katie shares with us her surprisingly low-t...

David William Hearn is the founder and lead designer of StaffPad, the revolutionary music composition app for pen-and-touch devices like Windows Surface and iPad. StaffPad automatically detects your musical handwriting and instantly converts it into music notation and plays it back using high-quality sound libraries. There’s a lot more to StaffPad, and David tells us all about it, including the St...

Justin Tokke joins us on the show. Justin is the technical lead at the music publisher Carl Fischer, and you may also know him as the founder and admin of Music Engraving Tips, a web site and Facebook group with more than 20,000 members. Justin talks to us about his work in publishing, including everything from learning the ropes printing scores to the intricacies of digital distribution. We uncov...

Daniel Ray and Martin Keary from Musescore join the podcast. Martin tells us about making his popular Tantacrul videos and how those critiques of software programs eventually took him from Microsoft to being the head of design at Musescore. Daniel talks to us in his capacity as director of product strategy about the open-source community powering the product and the way Musescore aligns with the g...

Sam Butler is the senior principal product manager for Sibelius. We talk with Sam about the challenges and opportunities of keeping Sibelius running through the pandemic and what it means for both professional and educational users. Sam tells us about the strategy of releasing more frequent Sibelius updates, what some of his favorite features are, and what they’ve got cooking up for the future. We...

Nicholas Buc is a composer, conductor, and arranger whose recent conducting engagements have taken him around the globe conducting live-to-picture concerts featuring the most beloved movie scores of our time. We discuss his career and the many ways that music preparation and technology can provide the score with the Midas touch in those high-stakes performances. Nick helps us avoid the phantom men...

Newzik started in 2015 as a music reader solution for iPad, and since then it has grown into a complete digital solution that serves musicians, publishers, orchestras and opera companies. CEO Raphaël Schumann discusses its recent developments and its bright future after raising €3 million in private investment. How do you technologically revolutionize the long-established custom and practice of w...

For decades, Emily Grishman has been one of Broadway’s most sought-after copyists, and her list of credits includes the most acclaimed music and theatrical productions. We talk about her career and how the means and manner of producing music has changed along with advancements in the music notation software she uses every day. Come along with us as we learn what Emily has to say about the world of...

We explore the latest updates to Dorico and Sibelius. Dorico 3.5 introduces pitch-before-duration input, figured bass, a line style editor, graphic slices, and much more, while Sibelius 2020.6 brings a more advanced MusicXML import method and a number of accessibility enhancements. Plus, an answer to the age-old question: When should you take the plunge and update your software? Philip Rothman and...

Philip Rothman and David MacDonald discuss the essential elements of score preparation and production that make a difference in not only the perception of your music, but how it gets rehearsed and, ultimately, performed. Everything from rehearsal marks, placing cues, laying out your music, and page layout can be expertly fine-tuned by music notation software — but only if you know what results you...

Philip Rothman and David MacDonald officially inaugurate the Scoring Notes podcast. They reminisce about how they first got hooked on writing music with notation software, how they eventually became fascinated by the ever-changing developments in the programs and in the field, and why so many student compositions have a tempo of quarter note = 100 bpm. Also: The brief history of the Scoring Notes...

Steinberg product marketing manager Daniel Spreadbury talks with Scoring Notes about the Dorico 3.5 release. We learn about pitch-before-duration input (a.k.a “Speedy Entry”), semantic figured bass notation, VST expression maps, and what a “graphic slice” is. Also: Daniel talks about what it’s like creating music notation software in the middle of a pandemic, and we f...