Category: Guest blog

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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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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Featured Musician – Jim McLaren

By Gordon Cameron 15 Oct, 2021 2 Comments

Accordion and piano player Jim tells us about Power Music and MusicOne

Jim has been a long time user of Power Music. He runs a large farm in Fife and has a fascinating blog about farming http://cultsfarm.co.uk/

We asked Jim to tell us about how he uses Power Music and MusicOne digital music stands – so grab your self a cup or glass of something and have a read of what Jim told us…

Firstly, as a musician I play the accordion and the piano. The accordion is mostly Scottish Traditional Music and second accordion to accompany others – I play occasionally in a dance band. I also play the accordion at my local church, either helping out the organist, or occasionally doing all the music myself if he is not available.
Piano playing is mostly classical piano, and as I am working towards my Grade 8 exam I have lessons every week. I also do a bit of vamping for a small accordion workshop group that I play for.

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Featured Musician – Malcolm Corden

By Gordon Cameron 27 Aug, 2021 Leave a comment

Clarinet and Tenor Sax Player

This Featured Musician mixes with A-list celebs at the Grammy and Tony awards ceremonies and has been a guest on The Late Late Show many times. We have known Mal for many years and we meet up on our stand at Christian conferences like Mission Worship. Mal has been a long-time Power Music user.

We asked Mal for his thoughts about Power Music….

I blame my wife Margaret for the fact that I am now a firm devotee of Cambron Software and the application of Power Music, please allow me to explain.

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One Organist’s DIY Page Turning Solution – Gavin Bateman

By Gordon Cameron 15 Nov, 2019 6 Comments

About Gavin

Back in September 2018 Gavin contacted us about wanting a suitable page turner pedal for use at the organ. Unfortunately, there was really nothing available off-the-shelf. He was willing to do a bit of soldering and carpentry so I suggested the AirTurn BT200 was a suitable “donor” pedal for his project. Gavin has been busy and this post, written by him, explains the project. Gavin started working life as a BBC Sound Engineer then after 20yrs changed tack to be a music teacher. Now retired early. He has played the organ since he was 11 and got his ABRSM performance diploma in 2013.

25 Sept 2019 – An update to this post has been added at the end…
15th November – Update and new photos – The Mk III pedal added at end…

This is his story…

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Multi-instrumentalist Ralph Hirs on Power Music

By Gordon Cameron 5 Nov, 2019 1 Comment

One of the things I love about working at Power Music is talking to musicians from all over the world.

Ralph lives in Switzerland and Germany and has been a Power Music user for many years.  He makes use of the Parts feature of Power Music Professional which is one of the lesser known features. Parts lets you store as one song, different instrument scores of a piece of music (eg guitar, bass, drums, keys)  or versions of the music in different keys.

I asked Ralph to write a short piece about his use of Power Music, so here is what Ralph says…

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Bringing Back the Joy of Playing Music

By Gordon Cameron 9 Oct, 2019 Leave a comment

When someone sends you an email saying this, you realise that you are doing something worthwhile:

“I have Power Music up and running and can, once again, see to play my cello. Thank you so much for your patience with talking me through my many queries!
I am thrilled to have found the solution to what was making me very sad. “

The above email was from Mary Hall. She had been playing the cello for many years but had to stop playing due to the deterioration of her eyesight making it impossible for her to read paper music scores. Having to stop playing the instrument you love can be very depressing. However Mary was determined to play again and with our help and many hours of concentration she succeeded.

Here’s her story in her own words…

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Custom Built Bluetooth Pedals

By Gordon Cameron 15 Nov, 2017 1 Comment

It is fascinating the snippets of information you pick up when dealing with a support request for Power Music. One such example was when David Castator contacted us about deactivating some old Power Music installations. This led on to a discussion about other music display software where he casually mentioned that he build his own Bluetooth page turner pedals – interesting I thought!

He then said that he had built a pedal that can control several tablets or PCs from one pedal – VERY interesting!

After further communication with David I asked him to write an article about the pedals he has built. So here it is, in David’s own words.

Any active musician that utilizes a Laptop, tablet, All-in-One and a digital (music) software package understands the need for a foot pedal to turn pages forward and backwards. I have used many of the wired and wireless models on the market. All of which turn sheet music pages forward or backwards on the computer to which they are attached.

My needs began to grow, ie. playing background music, turning to the last song of a play list or to the first song of a playlist etc., etc. As those needs began to increase, the foot pedals on the market did not. You needed to live with page forward or page backward – you could throw a switch manually on the pedal and maybe get it to do one or two more options, but your options were still v Read more...

Interview with Jim Diack – Worship leader

By Gordon Cameron 25 Oct, 2017 Leave a comment

For the last 6 years, East Mains Baptist Church in East Kilbride has been using Power Music with their worship band at every service.

We asked the worship leader at East Mains – Jim Diack – for an interview about his experiences with using Power Music over the years.

We hope you find a “real world” user’s comments helpful.

Here’s the interview…

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