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Scoring Notes

Scoring Notes

We love music notation software and related products and technology, so that’s what we cover here. You’ll find timely news, in-depth coverage about the field, and honest reviews about products you use every day. You’ll learn about the interesting people in our field and find out our opinions on ever-changing developments in the industry.

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  • 20 episodes
  • Avg 59 min
  • English

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  • Yesterday · 1 hr 33 min

    Q & A(gain)

    You sent more questions than one episode could hold, so we split them in two. Part one was brought to you by two letters: AI. This is everything else in the mailbag, from the practical side of the music notation software and technology world. Philip Roth

  • August 1 · 1 hr 33 min

    Q & A(I)

    We asked for your questions, and you sent so many that one episode couldn’t hold them. This is part one of two — and part one is brought to you by two letters: A and I. That wasn’t the plan; it’s just where the mailbag pointed. Philip Rothman and David M

  • July 4 · 30 min

    Half-time report: what’s new, and a call for your questions

    Philip Rothman and David MacDonald are back after a short break, and true to form, the conversation drifts from yard work and heat waves before landing on the actual business at hand: it’s time to open the phone lines again. For the third time — af

  • June 6 · 1 hr 28 min

    Score preparation and production double-checklist

    Six years after our “Score preparation and production notes” episode — Episode No. 2 — essentially launched the podcast, 163 episodes later, Philip Rothman and David MacDonald return to the article that inspired the conversation: David’

  • May 2 · 56 min

    Richard deCosta gives your score a voice

    What if your notation software could sing? At the top of this episode, we play a short clip, performed entirely in Dorico with NotePerformer handling the orchestra, and a plugin called Cantai rendering the baritone voice. That voice is synthesized direct

  • April 4 · 1 hr 18 min

    Freshly pressed

    After a stretch away from the mic with NAMM coverage and a few product launches in the interim, Philip Rothman and David MacDonald return for an episode that, as David puts it, is “delightfully very nerdy.” To kick things off, David turns the

  • February 28 · 37 min

    NAMM 2026: An interview with Sam Butler and Joe Plazak

    At the 2026 NAMM Show, we interviewed representatives from the businesses in our field of music notation software and related technology. In this interview, we talk with Sam Butler, Avid’s vice president of product management, and Joe Plazak, Sibelius pr

  • February 21 · 29 min

    NAMM 2026: An interview with Chris Swaffer

    At the 2026 NAMM Show, we interviewed representatives from the businesses in our field of music notation software and related technology. In this interview, we talk with Chris Swaffer, senior product manager of software at Fender, about how he thinks abo

  • February 14 · 33 min

    NAMM 2026: An interview with Sebastian Murgul

    At the 2026 NAMM Show, we interviewed representatives from the businesses in our field of music notation software and related technology. In this conversation, we speak with Sebastian Murgul, co-founder and CEO of klang.io, to talk about a category that

  • February 7 · 42 min

    NAMM 2026: An interview with John Barron

    At the 2026 NAMM Show, we interviewed representatives from the businesses in our field of music notation software and related technology. In this conversation with John Barron, international product specialist at Steinberg, John reflects on Dorico’s curr

  • Dec 6, 2025 · 32 min

    Perfect Pitch: Unlocking Jacob Collier’s musical brilliance

    We’re very pleased to bring you this episode, and more to come in the future, thanks to our friends at Twenty Thousand Hertz, a podcast that tells the stories behind the world’s most recognizable and interesting sounds. People with perfect or &#822

  • Nov 22, 2025 · 1 hr 2 min

    A Scoring Notes holiday shopping trip

    ‘Tis the season to be thankful for all of the products and services in the world of music notation software and related technology, and for the Scoring Notes audience who tunes in to hear us opine on them! We show our appreciation by bearing good t

  • Nov 1, 2025 · 58 min

    Cleo Huggins, the designer of the first music font [encore]

    We talk a lot about fonts on the Scoring Notes podcast. But there was a time when there were no music fonts. And then, there was one. Cleo Huggins, on the staff of Adobe in 1986, designed Sonata, the very first music font. It’s hard to imagine toda

  • Oct 4, 2025 · 1 hr 7 min

    The lowdown on updates

    Recent updates abound in Dorico, MuseScore Studio, Sibelius, and across the Apple operating systems. Whether you use all of these products or just one of them, we help you get current with the latest features and improvements, so that you can make the mo

  • Aug 30, 2025 · 1 hr 20 min

    With freelancing comes responsibility

    Freelancing is a kind of freedom. Freedom from a regular schedule, an office, or a permanent boss. But with freelance work comes responsibility. Part of your job as a freelancer is deciding what the work should be and finding the clients who are going pa

  • Aug 9, 2025 · 1 hr 11 min

    You have questions, we have answers

    We open the Scoring Notes mailbag, contemplate the musings of our audience, and try to leave no question unanswered in this fun and informative podcast episode. More from Scoring Notes, referenced in this episode: Finale’s twilight zone: Ensuring a smoo

  • Jun 28, 2025 · 1 hr 5 min

    Send us your questions! (plus a classic episode)

    Have you ever listened to an episode of the Scoring Notes podcast and wished you could ask a question directly on the show? Two years ago, we opened up the phone lines directly, so to speak, and they were jam-packed! So much so, that we ended up devoting

  • Jun 7, 2025 · 53 min

    MOLA 2025 conference and tech fair wrap-up

    Hosted by The University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre & Dance in Ann Arbor, Michigan, the 43rd annual conference of MOLA: An Association of Performance Librarians ran from May 30 through June 2, 2025, and brought together music librarians, pu

  • May 3, 2025 · 1 hr 19 min

    Daniel Spreadbury on Dorico 6: “Our largest release to date”

    Steinberg’s product marketing manager Daniel Spreadbury returns to the podcast to discuss Dorico 6 and its bevy of features for music composers and preparers. Daniel talks in-depth with Philip Rothman and David MacDonald about a few of the headline

  • Apr 5, 2025 · 39 min

    Tune Tech: Distortion, sequencers, Auto-Tune, and more

    We’re very pleased to bring you this episode, and more to come in the future, thanks to our friends at Twenty Thousand Hertz, a podcast that tells the stories behind the world’s most recognizable and interesting sounds. From electric guitars to sam

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