Here at Scoring Notes podcast headquarters, we’re getting ready for some new episodes for the spring and summer. Those warm days are still a little ways off, though. On a brisk evening in New York yesterday, I had the pleasure of seeing Michael Good and his wife JoAnn Close, who were visiting the Big Apple for a few days taking in the sights and sounds.
We caught up before a performance by Cécile McLorin Salvant and The Knights, and a program of timeless jazz ballads newly arranged by none other than our very own Darcy James Argue, at a little-known venue in midtown Manhattan:
Few people have had as much of an impact on the field of music notation software as Michael has had. He’s the inventor of MusicXML, the standard interchange format for music notation applications, which is what makes such robust interoperability possible among hundreds of programs, and was a co-founding chair of the W3C Music Notation Community Group, which is now responsible for maintaining the format.
I’m happy to report that Michael is enjoying his retirement and is remaining very active, with travel and participation in various opera and music groups on his regular schedule.
The interview we did with Michael remains one of our most popular Scoring Notes podcast episodes. It occurred to me that this would be a good opportunity to revisit that episode, and a few others in the archive, for your listening pleasure over the weekend, or whenever you next have an opportunity.
So here, in no particular order, are a few of our more “evergreen” episodes featuring interviews with some of the most notable people in our field. Enjoy!
Michael Good, the inventor of MusicXML
On the Scoring Notes podcast, David MacDonald and Philip Rothman talk with Michael Good. If you’ve ever needed to open a music notation file in a different program, you’ve relied on MusicXML to do it. Michael Good invented this now-ubiquitous format two decades ago, and we find out how it happened. Listen now:
Official transcript
Behind “Behind Bars” with Elaine Gould
In this wide-ranging conversation, Elaine Gould talks with us about her early background and how she came to the profession of music preparation and editing. We uncover the seeds that eventually became Behind Bars, and the decades-long journey from meticulous refinements to its eventual publication and virtually overnight success. Listen now:
Cleo Huggins, the designer of the first music font
Cleo Huggins designed Sonata, the very first music font, in 1986. It’s hard to imagine today, but it was revolutionary at the time, and a leading industry publication called it the “Music Product of the Year”. Cleo tells Philip Rothman and David MacDonald about her early studies with some of the great typographic experts of the 1970 and 1980s, and how her work in graphic design, 3-D animation, background as a violinist, and a key meeting with Steve Jobs about the launch of the first Macintosh computer all led to her taking responsibility for creating Sonata. Listen now:
The rights stuff, with Jim Kendrick
You may know all about writing music. But what about your rights and music? That’s what Philip Rothman and David MacDonald unpack on this episode with Jim Kendrick, one of the industry’s foremost experts on the subject. As an attorney and music publisher representing major composers and institutions, Jim has decades of experience navigating the often-complex world of intellectual property on behalf of his clients, and he deftly steers us through the intersection of creativity, copyright, and technology. Listen now:
Official transcript
How to charge for music preparation (encore)
When preparing music, you always make sure what goes on the page is pitch-perfect. How about what goes on the bill? Should you charge hourly? By the bar? Some other way? Philip Rothman and David MacDonald break down the all the elements of a successful music preparation gig, from the initial conversations with the client, how to formulate the best approach to pricing the job, and finally, making sure everybody is happy with the end result. Listen now:
Official transcript
