Domestic Geek

Back when I was a music student in college in the late '80s, I was introduced to the most fabulous piece of music software called Finale®. Many of the graduate composition students wrote their scores with it. When I was student teaching, my mentor also had it and used it to write practice drills for her students. It was the top of the line music notation program back then and I'm happy to see that they are still the premier software package available for musicians, composers and music educators today.

It truly is an amazing tool and easy to use. It now includes a lot of sound libraries and you can import music clips, as well. It certainly has come a long was since its early midi playback.

I see that the company that produces it, MakeMusic, Inc., also has a piece of software called SmartMusic®. It's a music practice program, even providing accompaniments for the popular Rubank series. I wish that had been available back when I was studying music. Perhaps I would have taken it more seriously and better a better musician through its use. There's a wonderful tour on their website describing how this program works.

So if you're a professional musician or a student, go check out MakeMusic's site and see these and the other wonderful computer software titles they produce. There are free demos available for download. It's making me want to get back into music again.

NOTE: I think this was a paid post at one point, but I'm leaving it because the software really is awesome!

It's starting to feel like fall in the morning. I love it when there is just a tiny cool nip in the air.

After the super busy last two weeks at work where the supervisor realized I could've been more help had I been trained to be an operator already, I finally started learning how to do that yesterday. Wow, there is so much to do to get customer files ready to print. If one doesn't already exist, I'm seriously considering starting a blog to provide tips to designers to make better files. When I first when to a DMG meeting, I couldn't understand why designers and prepress people hated each other so...now I get it. The majority of the fault lies with designers who don't really understand the printing process or how to provide usable files. Just because you can kind of get around a page layout program doesn't make one a good designer. Just sayin'.

Vegas is looking less and less like a reality. I'll wait a couple of weeks to rescind my vacation request at work, but I don't have the money to go and don't see getting it in time either. I also decided that I'm really going to get serious and get the embroidery business I want up and running in the new year (I really want my own business and don't want to be working where I am in 5–10 years). Going to a blogging conference when I'm sick of blogging just isn't making sense. While I'd love to see the gals I've met online there, it's not enough of a motivating factor when I have a goal I want and need to achieve. I still want to go to Vegas, but I want to make sure I have the funds available to do all that I want to do there (i.e. a Blue Man show, a Cirque show, etc.) I also really want to go with Marcus, so that means driving and even more time off from work. I may make plans to go spring or something when I actually get paid vacation time from work.

OK, even though I took a 3 hour nap when I got home from work, I'm tired and have to get up for work in five hours, so I'd better head off to bed.