Author: Gordon Cameron

Power Music on ARM

By Gordon Cameron 25 Jul, 2024 3 Comments

Introduction

In this (fairly long) article I am going to talk about the ARM processor (CPU) and investigate running Power Music on the latest Windows on ARM computers.
Why am I looking at this? Software or apps are written to run on a specific type of processor. The two main types of processors are the Intel x86 family (32 and 64 bit) and ARM. An app written to run on x86 will not run natively on an ARM CPU.
Power Music Professional, Essentials and AF are all Intel x86 apps and in the last few months several major PC manufacturers have announced new ARM based Windows devices.
Would Power Music run on them? – that was the question.

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Guest Blog: Alun McCarthy – Worship Musician

By Gordon Cameron 18 Jun, 2024 Leave a comment

Power Music on my MusicOne 12 Green

Back in 2015 (Wow! that’s nine years ago!) we did a Featured Musician blog on Alun McCarthy.

Alun was an early adopter of Power Music and has been using it ever since! Recently he purchased one of our MusicOne 12 Green systems – based on a refurbished HP Windows tablet. He suggested he could do a follow-up blog about his experience with the MusicOne.

Here it is…

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When things go wrong!

By Gordon Cameron 14 Oct, 2023 Leave a comment

Power Music Help Centre to the rescue.

Recently we received this email:

Hi there.
Just wanted to send you a huge Thankyou. We had a database issue this morning but it was so easy to find the backups and fix it thanks to the instructions that were incredibly easy to find and follow.
Great product and fantastically well organised help centre!
Huge thanks

The email was from Ewan who is the worship leader at Chipping Sodbury Baptist Church. Ewan has been a Power Music users since 2011 – over 12 years! We first met at Mission Worship where we were exhibiting in the amazing Floral Hall in Eastbourne.

I thanked him for the comment and he replied with the full story of what went wrong that Sunday morning.

So here Ewan’s full story…

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3 Ways to “Going Digital” with your music

By Gordon Cameron 25 Jul, 2023 2 Comments

Updated 25/7/2023

“Going Digital” has so many advantages over paper but one of the most common questions we are asked is “How do I get my music into a digital display system?” “I want to use Power Music on my iPad, tablet or laptop, so how do I get my music?” This article describes three ways to get your music into Power Music and start taking advantage of using electronic music display.

In the blog post, we will take a look at:

  • PDF files
  • Scanning paper music
  • Power Music virtual songbooks

As always we welcome your comments and feedback on articles.

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A Review of Page Turners – Not the Human Variety

By Gordon Cameron 18 Jul, 2023 5 Comments

page-turnerA review of page turners including the new flic 2 Bluetooth button.

The art of being an efficient (human) page turner is a highly sought after skill for performing musicians, particularly those whose hands are occupied on a keyboard or keyboards. But not all musicians have a page turner.

I remember well the time a few years ago I attended a Christmas concert in the Kelvingrove Art Galleries in Glasgow, where Kevin Bowyer was manfully struggling with a large book of music on the piano, as he accompanied the choir singing carols. Watching the pages of the book slowly flipping over, as if in slow motion and then Kevin’s antics at getting back to the page he was wanting to play was most amusing. I have to say that today Kevin is now a total convert to electronic music display and no longer has this nightmare.

So if you are thinking of moving to electronic music display or are already a user, I thought a short review of the current crop of (non-human) page turners might be helpful.  I am only reviewing ones I have personal experience of and the opinions expressed in this blog are mine. These pedals all work really well with Power Music. If you have other experiences with page turners please feel free to post a comment on this post.

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How small can a PC get?

By Gordon Cameron 30 Jun, 2023 Leave a comment

MusicOne mini-PCs

When we launched the Large Screen MusicOne we looked for a small PC to run Power Music. The Large Screen MusicOne uses a touchscreen display from 22 to 27 inch. The last thing a musician needed was a large desktop PC or even a laptop connected to the touch screen.

In this blog I am going to look at the options for the mini-PCs available for MusicOne.

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Dave and Pat Bilbrough – Power Music and MusicOne Users

By Gordon Cameron 25 May, 2023 Leave a comment

Featured Musicians

From time to time we like to do an article that focuses on a user of Power Music and MusicOne digitals music stands.

Dave Bilbrough is a very well known Christian song writer, author and worship leader. Dave and his wife Pat use Power Music and a MusicOne 16 when leading worship.

One of Dave’s claims to fame is that he lead worship in the 1970s at the Royal Albert Hall, London when he was 19!

Now, with over four decades in full-time Christian ministry and numerous albums later, he is recognised as one of Britain’s foremost worship leaders and songwriters.

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The New MusicOne 12-Pro

By Gordon Cameron 2 Mar, 2023 Leave a comment

Including guest contribution from Don Dickson

Going Green

Here at Power Music we like to do our bit to help save the planet. The new MusicOne 12-Pro uses a refurbished Microsoft Surface Pro 5. These have powerful 7th Gen i5 processors, 8GB RAM and a 128 or 256GB SSD. With the disposal of waste computer devices becoming a major problem we are using these Microsoft officially refurbished devices in an attempt to help reduce waste. They have many years of life left in them and are easily powerful enough to run Power Music Professional and store 10s of thousands of pages of music.

One of our happy customers for the MusicOne 12-Pro is Don Dickson – a long time user of Power Music. Don send us an email about his experience with the MusicOne 12-Pro and he is happy to share it with you.

Read Don’s comments…

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New Mini-PC for Large Screen MusicOne

By Gordon Cameron 10 Jan, 2023 Leave a comment

For many years now we have been selling MusicOne Digital Music Stands. These have touchscreens from 16 inch to 27 inch and can either be mounted directly on a music rack of a keyboard/organ or on a tripod floor stand.

The smaller MusicOne, 16 and 20 inch, are all-in-one Windows PCs but the Large Screen MusicOne have a separate mini-PC to run Power Music Professional or AF.

We have been supplying either Intel NUC mini PCs or Stick PCs but with technology moving on, we can now supply a new format of mini-PC which is somewhere in size between the NUC and the Stick PC. This is an exciting new format for MusicOne, so this blog is a review of this new format mini-PC.

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Kerne Clemence “Need a Pianist?”

By Gordon Cameron 26 Jul, 2022 3 Comments

Update to Blog July 2022:

Recently Kerne sent us this email – he wants to share his new setup with you…

“Sometimes, we all arrive at a time when we want to put “pen to paper” to express something special.
I have just got home from accompanying a couple of ABRSM Singing Exam candidates. As another academic year draws to a close, I just felt I wanted to repeat my fulsome gratitude to you for the wonderful Power Music Professional software which continues to serve my needs so brilliantly.
Page-turning, lighting, play-lists, portability, reliability, flexibility re annotations, legibility, access – the list goes on.  All problems brilliantly addressed and dispelled.
I have 4133.85Mb of music stored.  I have deleted nothing since November 2013.
I follow the MPA Code of Practice by insisting that students have the original, hard paper purchased copy in the room at exams, concerts, etc.
The most important issue for me is RELIABILITY.   I used to worry, but now never give it a second thought.   A top of the range Lenovo ThinkPad was money well spent.   My memory stick back-ups are all spread around my house to give me the best chance of retrieving at least one should the worst happen whilst I am away.
Your concept, implementation and service to musicians is of incalculable value.”

Meet Kerne Clemence…

This is Kerne’s story about his own career and about how he uses Power Music.

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