Power Music on ARM

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

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!

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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How small can a PC get?

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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New Mini-PC for Large Screen MusicOne

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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Featured Musician – Jim McLaren

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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So what’s so great about Power Music?

With an increasing number of music display apps coming onto the market, we thought it was time to talk about why our users think Power Music is great! All the points below are taken from comments we have received from our users over the years by email, phone and face-to-face at exhibitions.

We always welcome feedback about Power Music so feel free to send us your comments and suggestions, especially ones like this recent comment from Jeroen Jacobs – a German pianist…

Your software is best in the world. I have not seen better, more stable, more versatile, more easy to use software. It’s just great. Never need anything else.
I use it together with a Microsoft Surface Pro.
It’s super stable.

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Windows 10 “Creators Update”

Microsoft are at it again! Another major update to Window 10.

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:

  • The original 1507 (July 2015)
  • 1511 (November 2015) AKA “November Update”
  • 1607 (August 2016) AKA “Anniversary Update”
  • 1703 (April 2017) AKA “Creators Update”

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”.

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Interview with Jim Diack – Worship leader

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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Updated Blog Post – Review of Page Turners

Back in December last year I wrote “A Review of Page Turners – Not the Human Variety“. Since then there have been a couple of new pedals launched and one is no longer being manufactured. This is an update to that article.

So if you are thinking of moving to electronic music display or are already a user, I thought a 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 post are mine. These pedals all work really well with Power Music and most other music display apps.  If you have other experiences with page turners please feel free to post a comment.

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