Ever wished Money Manager EX would look at the Notes column (downloaded from your bank) and automatically assign a payee and category? The following instructions and SQL script do this.

Live music over Zoom can sound terrible for the audience: Tinny audio, short notes, or worse yet silent. It doesn’t have to be this way. Complete the first two sections in 10 minutes to noticeably improve your sound. Continue with later sections if you have the money and time to further improve your sound.

I just switched from Quicken to Money Manager EX for tracking personal finances. Here’s what it took to transfer the data.

LinuxSampler is one of the best samplers available for Linux, yet the installation process requires a high level of technical expertise. My instructions differ from the official instructions by observing the following rules:

1. The instructions are strictly sequential.
2. The instructions explain any technical terms that are beyond the vocabulary of a typical computer user.
3. The instructions are current. They refer to the latest versions of Ubuntu and the latest code for LinuxSampler.

Transposition in MuseScore 0.9.5 and earlier makes guesses on the pitch-spelling of the transposed notes and often guesses incorrectly. I created a reference table that can be used for transposing notes without losing the correct pitch spelling. A human transposing notes would use their existing knowledge of scales, plus various other mental tricks. However the method outline below uses a different approach that should be easier to code.

The following usability issues are selected based on frequency of use, difficulty of use, user feedback (via the forums and mailing list), and personal experience.

For many users the mouse is the primary means of interacting with MuseScore. This article focuses on the icons in the Note Input toolbar and the Palettes with the goal of optimizing mouse interaction in MuseScore.

present below my initial impressions and observations during my first few days with MuseScore 0.9.2 (Revision 888) for Windows XP. I wrote down any issues I encountered day-by-day.

Due to the complexities of music notation, music software has a tendency to have many modes. Notation software may have a separate mode (tool) for note entry, title text, lyric text, slurs, expressions, accents, etc. Compare this to handwritten notation which uses one tool for all these elements: a pencil. Understandably notation software can be daunting or frustrating for even the seasoned musician or composer. Due to the complexity of music notation and the limitations of the computer interface, it is not possible to achieve an entirely modeless design. Even when composing by hand most people will encounter at least two modes: writing (with pen or pencil) and playback (usually piano). However, the notation editor Canorus should strive to minimize unnecessary modalism by reducing the number of modes and reducing the barriers between these modes.

How to create a PDF file of a music score: PDF files allow you to share electronic copies of your music scores with people who do not have Finale and do not wish to install additional software.

In the process of note-setting Spanish hymns using the notation software, Finale 2006, I discovered just how tedious it is create elision slurs. (Elision slurs are those curvy lines used in many languages to join two syllables under one note; See picture at bottom of page). The method described in the official documentation is nothing but a sloppy hack. Until Finale cleans up their act, I document an alternative procedure that should save you time and tediousness.

The trumpet enjoys one of the most elaborate and colorful histories of any instrument. Early forms of the trumpet appear across many ancient cultures. The trumpet’s connotations differ from place to place and time to time. The development of the trumpet is an interaction of music, culture and technology. The interaction of these aspects is not straightforward. Sometimes they working in cooperation, other times in competition. These aspects tend to balance (or counter balance) each other, but ultimately they produced a virtuoso instrument: the modern trumpet.

Writing for university newspaper, around the web, and Wikipedia (2005–2009).