Many musicians are put off “Going Digital” because they don’t know how they will get their music into a digital display system – ie a tablet or laptop. 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:
As always we welcome your comments and feedback on articles.
Over the life of Windows 10 we have seen these versions:
* So, you may ask, “Why have I not seen the latest update (1803) if it was due March 2018”. Well it has been delayed! At the last moment a bug was found that caused a number of BSOD (blue screen of death) on certain hardware configurations so Microsoft (wisely) halted the release of the update to fix it. As of end of April there is still no firm word on its release date, but it will be rolled out to users over a 2 month period.
Recently Cambron launched a new USB portable document scanner called the MusicOne scanner. This short article (based on a previous blog post) gives users of this and similar scanners some hints and tips on getting the best results in Power Music.
Camera technology has come on leaps and bounds over the last few years and the results you can achieve from this scanner are quite amazing. The MusicOne scanner can be used with the built-in software in Power Music Professional or simply as a stand-alone scanner using either the free software that comes with the scanner or the supplied TWAIN driver along with your favourite image editing software. I will cover all this in the blog.
With Power Music your options are:
– Import PDF files – music scores or chord sheets
– Scan your paper music
– Type or copy and paste chord sheets
– Download songbooks from Power Music Store
– Import from ChordPro or MusicPad files
In this post I want to have a look at two particular sources of digital music:
– ChordPro files including OnSong files
– MusicPad .fh (FreeHand) files
UPDATE 5/1/2018: I have added a new section on the “Fall Creators Update” 1709 – scroll to the end to read.
Over the (short) life of Windows 10 we have seen these versions:
And of course there has been a myriad of other minor updates and hotfixes in between.
I would be the first to advise anyone to keep their Windows PC up-to date, so here are my observations on the latest “Creators Update”.
Power Music Store is an online shop where users of Power Music can purchase “virtual” songbooks in Power Music format. You can access all the songs that you purchase using Power Music Box – our unique cloud storage system. See this previous blog “What is Power Music Box?” for more info about the Box.
When you buy music from other stores you either buy a physical book or a PDF or similar for printing. This is fine if you want to use paper. Alternatively you can import these to Power Music by scanning or PDF import and then add the relevant information on authors, categories, copyright etc.
Power Music Store means we have done the work for you in preparing the content and all you have to do is press a button to get all the content and indexing you need in the software on your iPad, PC or Mac.
Each songbook is a collection of “Songs”. Songs in a songbook will contain some or all from the following, where applicable:
This means they are ready for you to use in the software for practice and performance, and easy to find using the above information.
So how does this work?
First you need an a
In our recent survey we asked how best to describe your usage of Power Music and what features you would like to see in future updates to Power Music. We were overwhelmed by the positive comments and by the number of situations in which Power Music is used. From church worship bands to Morris dancing bands – it is good to see it so widely used. A big thank you to all who took part.
We were also really impressed by the detailed responses from you about what features should be added to the new versions of Power Music coming out this year.
It turns out that quite a number of the requested new features are already in Power Music! So the purpose of this article is to explain where these features are and how to use them.
One of the most common questions we get asked on our support desk and at exhibitions is “What is a good source of worship song chord sheets?”
There are many websites out there that let you download chord sheets, but people tell us that quite often there are errors in the lyrics and the chords used are not the original ones. Also it is important that the websites pay royalties to the copyright holders of the songs you download – not all websites do!!
Recently we worked with Integrity Music Ltd, AKA WeAreWorship to create a free songbook of chord sheets that we were giving away at Mission Worship 2016. Integrity Music let you download chord sheets from their website WeAreWorship.com. All you need to do is open a free account with them. I have created a short tutorial video on importing chord sheets from WeAreWorship.
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.
This blog post deals with digitizing your library of paper music.
Whatever your reason you are faced with quite a task. You need to digitize your music. Let’s say you have chosen Power Music Professional as your music management system. So how should you go about this task? Assuming you don’t have electronic copies of the music already in the form of PDF files, then you are faced with scanning the paper music.
