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.

🔗 SoundSource 5.5 adds Shortcuts support for full Mac audio automation – Six Colors

From Jason Snell at Six Colors...

SoundSource 5.5 adds Shortcuts support for full Mac audio automation – Six Colors:

On Monday Rogue Amoeba released SoundSource 5.5, the latest version of its handy Mac sound-routing utility that—let’s be honest—is doing all the heavy lifting for a feature that should probably be a core part of macOS. (Apple doesn’t seem to really care about Mac audio, and that’s good for Rogue Amoeba’s array of products.)

The big feature of SoundSource 5.5 is support for Shortcuts. While Rogue Amoeba’s utility Audio Hijack decided to primarily support automation via JavaScript with some basic Shortcuts hooks, SoundSource is all in on Shortcuts. The app provides 17 different actions, and they affect not just SoundSource’s individual control over apps and audio inputs, but the system’s as well. So with SoundSource, you can now automate many of your Mac’s default audio settings, setting a new default input and output, for example.

SoundSource is one of my most depended-on Mac utilities. Shortcuts support is a natural extension to the app that I have been waiting for.

Most of my desks at school and at home have an audio interface set up that I plug into. While my computer usually defaults to it as the input and output when I plug it in, it doesn't always.

It is great to be able to have Shortcuts automate the selection of my input and output, amongst the other actions SoundSource is capable of.

For example, when I plug in to the front of the band room, my "Rehearsal" automation automatically starts, and one of the steps of this automation is to ensure that the Mac is outputting to my Scarlet Solo audio interface and set the volume to 50%.

Steinberg Summer Sale

Summer Deals:

Save up to 50% on Groove Agent 5 and expansions, Iconica, Dorico, Cubasis and much more. Only from July 7 to July 28, 2022.

Steinberg is running a summer sale right now and some of the cuts are deep. A lifetime purchase of Dorico is 30% off and Cubasis (which is, in my opinion, the most fully-featured DAW available for iPad) is 50% off.

Check it out!

Ben Giroux - Violin Sonata No. 1 in G minor: Fuga, J.S. Bach

I love bragging about my past private students, so here is Ben Giroux (Peabody Conservatory - BM Percussion Performance '21, BM Recording Arts and Sciences '22) performing the fugue from Bach's first violin sonata. Ben filmed and edited this video himself. Ben told me it ws ok to leave his email here in case you are in need of videography, live recording, audio, or video editing. Ben is available and can be reached here: GirouxBL99@gmail.com

Midnight Music: 25+ Ways to Use Canva to Create Teaching Resources

Midnight Music has a lot of great content for music educators. One topic I enjoy their coverage of is Canva, a web-based design tool.

Katherine Miller has some tips for using Canva that are worth checking out. Click the link below to read the post.

25+ Ways to Use Canva to Create Teaching Resources:

Being a teacher encompasses so many different skills. Some skills are taught and practiced in our pre-service work while others we have to figure out once we are deep in the trenches of student learning.

One of the skills that didn’t get much attention, at least in my pre-service program, was the practice of design in helping students gain, organize and use information. I understood the importance of design to prepare, present and practice standards that students needed to master but I didn’t have a way to easily do it.

I can remember copying transparencies to project onto paper so I could trace images to make my classroom materials more appealing. I also remember searching through clipart collections to find the perfect addition to digital items I created. And I will never forget making copy after copy to enlarge, reposition or get things to fit just right. Designing materials in my classroom involved lots of magic tape!

Thank goodness that things change! I have learned new skills and new tools, like Canva, have been created to make design as easy as drag and drop!

Google Docs now supports some Markdown

From The Verge…

# Google Docs now supports limited Markdown. —>

Google is adding Markdown support to Google Docs on the web, letting you format your document using text shortcuts rather than keyboard ones. In a blog post announcing the feature, Google says it’s doing this through its autocorrect feature, so it will automatically format the text for you after you type it in Markdown format. For example, if you type “# Google Docs is getting more Markdown support” it’ll automatically get converted to a level one heading.

Google says that Docs already supported a few Markdown autocorrections for bulleted and numbered lists, and checkboxes. It’s adding much wider support, though — you can now use Markdown to add headings, bold and italicize text (or do both), strikethrough (though it’s done using a - on either side of your content, rather than the traditional ~), and links. That’s a far from complete implementation of Markdown, but at least it covers most of what I personally use the language for.

Markdown is extremely useful and easy to learn because of its natural syntax that doesn’t look like code.

I wrote a little bit about why I use Markdown, and how it can be used to better organize and compose content in Learning Management Software. Read that here.

While Markdown is typically used to compose text documents and web content, it will only make your experience easier if you spend most of your time inside of Google Docs.

I found some of Google’s support documentation on Markdown here.

Pixelmator Pro 2.4 gets an update!

Pixelmator Pro 2.4 was recently released.

You can read more here. This version adds tons of new stuff, including color adjustments and effects layers.

Pixelmator Pro is always my recommendation for people who need a Photoshop-like tool, but without getting a degree in Photoshop or buying a monthly Creative Cloud subscription.

Pixelmator seems like it gets easier to use every update. It’s wild how much power they pack into an interface that is inspired by Photoshop workflows, but immediately accessible anyone who has used a personal computer.

My favorite features of Pixelmator Pro in recent years include:

• One-click machine learning feature which can remove things from the background or foreground, and sharpen low-quality images
• Shortcuts support (which can automatically batch edit images on my computer, generate my podcast show art, and more)
• It’s easy to use interface

Check it out on the Mac App Store.

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!