The Journey of a Score: From Idea to Your Music Stand

As the owner of MyMusicScores, I'm often asked about the journey a piece of sheet music takes, from the initial spark of an idea to its final publication. It's a process I genuinely love, and I'm always striving to create scores that are not only practical but also beautifully presented, helping you do what you do best: make music!

Finding the Perfect Piece: Customer Requests & Dedicated Research

My journey to finding the next ideal score takes two main paths, each with its unique rewards.

Your Requests Matter: My absolute favourite way to discover a new arrangement is through a customer request. It's always a privilege to work directly with fellow musicians. When you reach out looking for a specific arrangement you can't find elsewhere, it's a clear sign there's a demand. If one musician is searching, chances are others are too, making it a smart investment of my time. These commissions are a unique learning experience, allowing me to create something specifically tailored to a musician's needs. What's more, these collaborations often lead to fantastic relationships – sometimes even friendships! I don't charge for the commission itself; you simply purchase the finished score at my usual fee, which typically ranges from £20 to £30, depending on its size.

Digging for Gems: The other way I find scores is through dedicated research. This often involves delving into what musicians are searching for online, exploring the vast archives of IMSLP (International Music Score Library Project), or occasionally, I just stumble upon something a little unusual that I personally adore and feel is worth the effort to arrange.

My Toolkit: Crafting Quality Scores with Precision

Once a score is chosen, the real work begins. Over the years, I've refined my toolkit to ensure efficiency and a high-quality end product for every musician.

Sibelius: My Notation Partner: For music notation, I'm a dedicated Sibelius user. I've been with it since version 1.1 – it feels like a lifetime ago! While I've dabbled with other software, I know Sibelius inside out. Having had my "Stringtastic" series published by Faber Music and a collection of violin arrangements by Trinity College London, all of whom requested Sibelius files, I've never needed to learn other notation software extensively.

Notation Central: Polishing the Presentation: After the score is meticulously prepared and exported, I often use BatchPDF from Notation Central if I need to adjust the page size. Notation Central offers a fantastic suite of tools for music preparers. Beyond BatchPDF (which is incredibly useful for quickly scaling multiple PDFs to any desired size), they also provide other invaluable utilities like PDF-BatchStitch, seamlessly combining multiple PDFs into a single file – perfect for collating a full score and individual parts. Their Music Type Foundry (MTF) fonts are also worth a mention; they're meticulously designed to emulate the elegance of hand-engraved scores, adding a professional and beautiful aesthetic to any project. These are just a few examples of their high-quality products that help musicians and engravers achieve truly professional results.

Creative Touches: For eye-catching page covers, I turn to Canva. Any intricate image work is handled in Gimp, and I rely on Adobe Express for creating compelling YouTube thumbnails.

Behind the Scenes: From Website to Workflow Management

Beyond the music itself, a robust digital infrastructure ensures MyMusicScores runs smoothly and securely.

Bigcommerce: Our Secure Online Home: My website is hosted on Bigcommerce. It's a very robust platform that provides a secure payment system, which is paramount for my customers. One of the key benefits of Bigcommerce is its ability to handle a large catalogue of products without performance issues, making it scalable for my growing collection of scores. While I do wish there was more flexibility in page design and blog functions, its overall reliability and powerful built-in features, such as SEO tools and multi-channel selling capabilities, have been invaluable. I appreciate that it offers unlimited products, storage, and bandwidth across all plans, and importantly, no transaction fees on leading payment gateways. This allows me to focus on creating and selling without worrying about hidden costs.

HubSpot & Notion: Organising the Orchestra: To keep track of all my wonderful customers, I use HubSpot. I'm still exploring the best ways to leverage its full potential. For managing my entire workflow – all my thoughts, hopes, and aspirations – I use Notion. Notion is an incredibly versatile all-in-one workspace that allows you to take notes, manage tasks, create databases, and build custom systems for practically anything. This flexibility means I can tailor it precisely to my needs, whether it's tracking progress on an arrangement, organising research for a new score, or simply brainstorming ideas. It helps me to centralise all my information, reduce distractions from switching between multiple apps, and focus on what truly needs doing. I've customised a fantastic template by Better Creating – Simon truly is a Notion ninja master, and his templates are brilliant for creating highly organised and aesthetically pleasing workspaces!

Loupedeck CT: My Creative Console: Finally, to streamline my work and save precious time, I have the Loupedeck CT (Creative Tool). This is their top-of-the-range console, and it's a game-changer for creative professionals. Its premium build quality, featuring an aluminium cover, tactile dials, LED-backlit buttons, and responsive touchscreens, provides an incredibly satisfying user experience. The true power of the Loupedeck CT lies in its unlimited customisation. I can create custom workspaces for different tasks, assigning shortcuts, macros, and complex multi-actions to the physical buttons and dials. This allows for incredibly precise control over parameters, giving a hands-on, intuitive feel that a mouse and keyboard simply can't replicate. It significantly speeds up my workflow by automating repetitive tasks and providing immediate access to the tools I need most, reducing mental fatigue and keeping me in the creative flow.

Your Music, Our Mission

Ultimately, every tool and every step in my process is geared towards one goal: to provide musicians like you with useful, beautifully engraved, and thoughtfully arranged scores that help you do what you do best – make music.

What piece are you hoping to find an arrangement for? Let me know in the comments below!