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Robby Burns
David MacDonald unboxes the Odla music notation ...
David MacDonald unboxes the Odla music notation controller

sibelius

macOS Ventura, music notation software compatibility, iPad news

Robby does hot takes on macOS Ventura, iOS and iPadOS 16.1, and new iPads.

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Show Notes:

David MacDonald unboxes the Odla music notation controller

David MacDonald reviews the Odla music notation controller at Scoring Notes.

Odla, an input device that “touches” the music | Scoring Notes:

Despite all the developments users have seen in music notation software and related technologies, the ways we actually get notes into the software hasn’t changed much in the last couple decades. Odla, an Italian music technology startup, is changing that with their new hardware controller for MuseScore and Dorico.

While other input devices rely on an instrument-style controller like a MIDI keyboard or “music alphabet” shortcuts on a computer keyboard, Odla directly models the five-line staff itself. The bright red staff-line buttons make Odla look pretty cool, and the connection between input and notation was obvious and intuitive from the moment the device hit my desk. As Odla’s tagline goes, it is “music you can touch”.

This device seems really interesting, and I like the idea of having MIDI input devices that embrace the visual nuances of staff notation.

David has an immeasurable amount of experience with notation software and gets straight to the point while testing this thing out. Check out the Odla here.

PlayScore, with Anthony Wilkes

Anthony Wilkes joins the show to talk about PlayScore 2, a sheet music scanning app. Anthony is the CEO of PlayScore, and in the conversation we talked all about what it can do, the challenges of developing music scanning software, and practical uses for teachers and students.

Patreon supporters receive bonus conversation about machine learning, the future of score scanning software, and automation.

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Become a Patron!

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Thanks to my sponsors this month, Scale Exercise Play Alongs.

Show Notes:

App of the Week:
Robby - Audio Hijack 4
Anthony - Dorico

Music of the Week:
Robby - Listen to This - Audio Guide Anthony - On BBC's first ever live broadcast of Beatrice Harrison, featuring cellist Clare Deniz

Tech Tip of the Week:
Robby - Universal Control
Anthony - iPad multitasking

Where to Find Us:
Robby - Twitter | Blog | Book
Anthony - Twitter | Website

Please don't forget to rate the show and share it with others!

Dorico 4

Dorico 4 is out! I've been testing it for the past few months, and I'm not even sure I am scratching the surface of what it can do. It is, in my opinion, the most important and exciting update to Dorico since its release in 2016.

This past summer, Dorico released an iPad app, which has many of the design updates and features seen in Dorico 4. You can read my first impressions about the iPad version of Dorico, and hear my conversation with Product Marketing Manager Daniel Spreadbury, here.

Fortunately, the Scoring Notes blog posted a review, which you can read here.

Here are some quick things that I am excited about in Dorico 4

Licensing

Dorico 4 uses Steinberg's brand new Steinberg Licensing, replacing the Steinberg e-Licenser. The e-Licensor was one of the two or three most frustrating licensing processes on my Mac. The new Steinberg Licensing is one of the least frustrating processes for licensing software on my Mac.

Once Dorico 4 launched, I was presented with the option to move my existing Dorico 3.5 license over and log into my Steinberg account. Once completed, Dorico can run on up to three machines without connecting to the web. This is a super easy and generous way to handle licensing.

Key Editor

I covered this in my iPad First Impressions post, so I won't go into too much detail here. The bottom area, which previously only contained project properties, now includes new note input methods like a piano, fretboard, and drum pads. It also integrates a piano roll and mixer right into Write Mode.

I really enjoy writing with notation and a piano roll visible on the screen at once. Perhaps this is because I am comfortable with DAWs. But I think it also speaks to how easily I conceptualize and edit rhythmic duration on a piano roll. Ethan Hein summarizes this well:

You can also view a mixer in the bottom area while in Write Mode. Cool.

Jump Bar

"Command pallet," "command search," "quick open"... whatever it's called, this feature is becoming very popular in pro-software. If you have used Sibelius, you might be familiar with their Command Search feature. The feature is also quite popular in productivity software. I love using Command+O in OmniFocus to open projects and perspectives quickly. In my note app Obsidian, Command+O smartly searches my notes, and Command+P acts upon them.

The idea is that you have a keyboard shortcut that brings up a search, you start typing, and then the software smartly displays some options on the screen for places it thinks you want to go or things you want to do.

Dorico has added this feature with their new Jump Bar, and I couldn't be happier. Just press the letter J, and you can type "m30" to bounce to measure 30 or "dynamics" to bring up the dynamics popover.

Popovers are my favorite part of the Dorico workflow, but I sometimes forget which keyboard shortcuts belong to which menus. In my opinion, having one command that allows for natural-language searching is a workflow win. Even if it is technically more keystrokes to find things, there is way less mental overhead in just typing what you want plainly.

Improvements to Play Mode and the Interface

Play Mode moves a handful of track options to the left, making it more familiar to users who work inside DAWs. Working with inserts and effects feels less esoteric in this design. I like it.

Project Templates

You can now turn any project into a template. Templates appear in the File menu, under the New from Project Template selection.

Previously, I used a Siri Shortcut to manage project templates in Dorico. I wrote about that for Scoring Notes here. My shortcuts method handles some of the file management for you and is worth a look if you want to learn more about macOS and iOS automation.

Generally, I think it is a benefit to store templates inside of Dorico, and I will be taking some of my most frequently used templates in the Shortcuts app and moving them inside of Dorico.

Library

Dorico moves most options relating to customizing the app's behavior into a menu called Library. It drives me nuts when professional creative software stores its settings across numerous custom preference panes throughout the application. This adjustment makes customizing Dorico's various options more discoverable, regardless of the mode or context they relate to.

The new library features also include many new options for font styles, which I am sure will make David MacDonald very happy.

M1

Dorico 4 works with Apple Silicon. From Scoring Notes:

Dorico 4 is the first Dorico version, and the first of any of the major desktop applications, to support Apple silicon Macs, such as the M1 MacBook Pro, iMac, and Mac mini. If you have an Apple silicon Mac, Dorico will run as a native application by default. However, if you use VST plug-ins, Dorico can only load VST plug-ins that can run natively on Apple silicon as well, and these must be VST 3 (there is no support for VST 2 plug-ins on Apple silicon). It is possible to force Dorico 4 to run under Rosetta 2 on Apple Silicon, which will allow VST 2 and Intel-native plug-ins to be loaded, though at the expense of slower overall performance.

Overall, Dorico 4 is a huge step forward. I imagine a lot of the work on this update was done in preparation for the iPad release. Now that both versions exist, I expect that the shared development platform between desktop and mobile will mean that future updates are released in side-step and continue to be feature-rich.

Top Ten Blog Posts from 2021

I thought it would be fun to take a look at the analytics on the blog this year and acknowledge the most popular posts written in 2021.

Here they are!

  1. Dorico for iPad: First Impressions

  2. Creating a Song Remix Project for Your Music Class Using Soundtrap and Neural Mix Pro

  3. forScore for the Mac

  4. Sibelius Comes to iPad

  5. 3 Soundtrap Projects Your Students Will Love

  6. Develop Performance Skills

  7. Take, Leave, Transform! -- What Do We Keep From Last School Year?

  8. Getting Young Performers to Compose

  9. Automatic Instrument Rental Forms

  10. Ukulele Resources, Pedagogy, and Curriculum

And a bonus!

  1. iOS 15 and Safari Extensions

Though not a blog post, My Favorite Technology continues to be one of the most popular pages of robbyburns.com. It contains a list of my most depended on hardware, software, and services.

,

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.

#43 - iOS 15 and macOS Monterey, with Paul Shimmons

Paul Shimmons returns to the show to talk about the features in Apple’s new operating system updates, and how we plan to use them.

Patreon subscribers get a bootleg version of the recording, without the ads, and including bonus conversation about notation apps on iPad.

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Buy me a coffee

Show Notes:

Tuesday, 26 Oct 2021 14:10:49.jpeg

App of the Week

Paul - Ultimate Drill Book

Robby - Sofa

Music of the Week

Paul - Powerhouse - White Heart

Robby - Cory Henry - Best of Me

Where to Find Us:

Robby - Twitter | Blog | Book

Paul - Twitter | Website

Please don't forget to rate the show and share it with others!

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.

Sibelius for iPad, with Joe Plazak (Principal Software Engineer and Designer)

This week on Music Ed Tech Talk I am joined by Joe Plazak, Principal Software Engineer and Designer of Sibelius, to talk all about their summer iPad release.

Listen below or in the podcast app of your choice! I look forward to writing more about Sibelius for iPad down the road.

Episode Description: Joe Plazak (Principal Software Engineer and Designer) joins the show to talk about Sibelius for Mobile and their new iPad app.

This episode is sponsored by Blink Session Music: Because Virtual Lessons Are More Than a Video Chat.

Backstage Access Patreon Subscribers can listen to extended discussion including Joe Plazak's Book of the Week and some of my reflections on writing Digital Organization Tips for Music Teachers.

Subscribe to the Blog... RSS | Email Newsletter

Subscribe to the Podcast in... Apple Podcasts | Overcast | Castro | Spotify | RSS

Support Music Ed Tech Talk

Become a Patron!

Buy me a coffeeBuy me a coffee

Thanks to my sponsors this month, Blink Session Music.

Show Notes:

App of the Week:
Robby - CleanShot Joe - Tips

Album of the Week:
Robby - Jack & Owane - Part One: Shredemption Joe - Pomplamoose - Impossible à prononcer

Tech Tip of the Week:
Robby - Make your own custom keyboard shortcuts Joe - Hold the spacebar on iPhone to get a cursor

Please don't forget to rate the show and share it with others!

I'm on the iPad Pros podcast to talk about Dorico and Sibelius for iPad

I am pleased to be a guest on the iPad Pros podcast this week to talk about Dorico and Sibelius for iPad.

Tim Chaten does an awesome job with this show and has a background in composition. If you want to spend quite a bit of time with us and hear my thoughts on these two professional scoring programs for iPad, give it a listen!

YouTube version here:

Find Robby elsewhere on the web