I’m always looking for new ways to connect with students during online music lessons! After putting it through its paces, I’ve come to find that MuseScore, a free music notation software, is a great tool to have in your arsenal!

I’ve written before about FiftyThree’s Paper.app for iPad and how it’s proven to be a great way to notate pitches, rhythms, and more during in-person music lessons. MuseScore allows me to do these same things — and more! — during online lessons.

Though it may not be as feature-filled as heavyweight music notation software like Sibelius or Finale, if you’re looking for software that allows you to:

• Show your online student a rhythm or series of rhythms;
• Modify existing music quickly, either to fix a mistake or change the level of difficulty; or
• Notate a rhythm or melodic line that was composed during the lesson,

I think you’ll find that MuseScore gets the job done just fine!

Of course, in order to use MuseScore effectively with my student, I need to be using video chatting software that allows for screensharing. This way, I can have MuseScore open on my computer and my student sees what I see during the video chat, in real-time. I prefer Skype or Google Hangouts over Apple’s FaceTime because of this; FaceTime lacks a screenshare feature.

I like to use MuseScore during the beginning of the lesson, when working on sight-reading warm-ups. Because I create my students’ sheet music in it, too, I can just pull up the editable file during their lesson to highlight key passages or make needed modifications. It’s an easy way to guarantee that my student and I are looking at the same portion of the music.

Do you use a notation software during your online music lessons? What uses have you found for it? Let me know by leaving a comment! Or if you’d like to get started on music lessons, I’d love to hear from you too!