David MacDonald

Composer David MacDonald writes music that is serious and clever, while embracing a fondness for groovy rhythms and delightful surprises. He simultaneously embraces and pokes fun at expectations. David lives in Wichita, Kansas, where he teaches music composition, theory, and technology at the Wichita State University.

How To Make Concert Programs The Right Way

by

If you’ve been in a position of having to create a concert program, or have them emailed from colleagues and collaborators, you know there are lots of ways to deal with positioning composers and titles. In this tutorial, I’m going to talk about the right way, using the tools that are built-in for exactly this purpose, that will make your programs look great and keep them easy to maintain: tab stops. Instead of entering the perfect number of spaces and tabs between titles and composers, you only need one tab, and let … Read more

Better Music Experiences Come To Zoom With High Fidelity Audio

by

A recent release of Zoom has brought, among other things, “High Fidelity Audio Mode” (High fidelity music mode in the application settings) to the Windows and Mac clients. The feature was announced in August and rolled out publicly on September 1, 2020 with the 5.2.2 update. Musicians who have been using Zoom and other videoconferencing platforms for sessions, rehearsals, and performances since the coronavirus pandemic began earlier this year have struggled against an audio system that is optimized for spoken word. The new mode improves audio quality in ways that make the platform work … Read more

Breaking Up With Adobe

Breaking Up With Adobe

by

It’s not you, Adobe. It’s me. You see, I am a long time Adobe software user. I started using the institutional licenses in school at the University of Missouri, and Adobe Creative Suite 3 was one of the first pieces of “pro” software I ever purchased. After CS6, when Adobe moved to the Creative Cloud subscription plans, I was torn. On one hand, it was going to be expensive. On the other hand, I used this software an awful lot, and I always got excited about new features when they became available. … Read more