My smart speaker setup

I aspire to write more about my smart home setup here but doing so requires a style of writing that doesn’t always come easily for me. So I decided to podcast about it. Scroll below to hear my recent conversation with David MacDonald about how I set up my smart speakers. Click here to learn about my favorite smart home devices.

Episode Description:

Robby and David (music composition, theory, and technology teacher at the Wichita State University) compare smart speakers, their assistants, and their smart home ecosystems. This episode covers the HomePod, Google Nest, Amazon Echo, Siri, Alexa, Google Assistant, Sonos speakers, and the various quirks that result from trying to use them in combination.

Backstage Access Patreon supporters get extended conversation about Apple Notes, DEVONthink, Standard Music Font Layout compatibility, FileMaker databases, student motivation, grading (and ungrading), and sticker charts.

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Show Notes:

App of the Week:
Robby – HomeRun 2
David MacDonald – Letterpress

Album of the Week:
Robby – Hiatus Kaiyote – Mood Valiant
David MacDonald – Frederic Rzewski: The People United Will Never Be Defeated – Ursula Oppens | The People United Will Never Be Defeated – Kaj Schumacher | Winnsboro Cotton Mill Blues

Tech Tip of the Week:
Robby – Use a clipboard manager
David MacDonald – New stream deck store!

Where to Find Us:
Robby – Twitter | Blog | Book
David MacDonald – Twitter | Website

Please don’t forget to rate the show and share it with others!

MusGlyphs is a useful font for typing music symbols into a word procesor

Check out the update to MusGlyphs, a font for typing music symbols into a word processor. Scoring Notes has the details. Click to read their writeup below.

MusGlyphs updated to 2.1; text version added – Scoring Notes:

MusGlyphs has been updated to version 2.1. MusGlyphs is the font by Dan Kreider that makes it easier to type a wide variety of musical symbols directly into a word processor, combined with text fonts, without needing to adjust baselines or point sizes.

Among the notable improvements in this version is the addition of MusGlyphs Text, a version of MusGlyphs with regular and bold variants that allows the user to type ordinary text and musical symbols without needing to switch between two different fonts.

This isn’t something I have used a ton but I am excited to check this version out in more detail. It could be really useful for making music worksheets in a word processor like Pages or Word. Unfortunately, Google Docs (to my knowledge) still has terrible support for third party fonts.

Creating Rehearsal Automations and Workflows with iPadOS 15

Apple’s forthcoming fall operating system updates became available in a public beta on Wednesday. I like to stay up to date on what I will do with my computers each fall and these new updates feature a ton of productivity boosts. Naturally, I chose to dive in.

For now, I have installed just the iOS 15 beta on my iPad. It is a low-stakes device for me, and I am most dependent on it for using forScore in rehearsal and concerts (the official releases will have shipped by my next concerts). I have also read that these betas are relatively stable, but anything is possible, so if you do this (which I don’t recommend), make sure you backup your data!

There are a few productivity features I immediately began experimenting with.

Widgets on the Home Screen

The iPad now allows you to put widgets anywhere on the home screen. I am trying an experiment that strips most of the apps off the main page and instead makes a productivity dashboard. It’s pretty nice!

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Focus Modes

You can design your own contextual Do Not Disturb modes on iOS 15. Each focus allows you to decide…

  1. Which apps can be used

  2. Which contacts can notify you

  3. What your home screen looks like

  4. And more

I set up the default Personal and Work focus modes that come built into the OS. My thinking for these is that Personal focus will be similar to regular Do Not Disturb but will only allow close family to text me. Work focus I set up to only allow notifications from email and Slack and limited it to only apps I use for doing logistic desk work and advancing projects.

Here is where things get fun. I created a Rehearsal Focus mode that shuts off access to all apps except the ones I use in rehearsal. It only allows members of my music team to reach me. It is designed to help me stay focused while teaching.

I haven’t done much with customizing the home screen in these various modes of focus yet, but I imagine the automation potential to be huge.

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New Shortcuts Actions

A TON of new Shortcuts actions are available to all operating systems (and the Mac is getting the Shortcuts app in this update!)

Shortcuts isn’t as powerful in my work life as it is in my personal life because most of my music and education apps have insufficient (or no) Shortcuts support. But that doesn’t mean I can’t trim tons of time eliminating the friction of iPad multitasking.

In most rehearsals, I open the same apps and files on screen. Now, with a one-tap Shortcut, I can have my iPad go into the new Rehearsal Focus mode, open forScore on the left, GoodNotes on the right (with a blank new note I can use as a digital white board), and a Tonal Energy Tuner app in Slide-Over. Now, if only forScore would add Shortcuts support so I can program it to open a specific score!

See it in action below. Then imagine how long it would take you to set up manually while you have 60-100 band kids entering the room and demanding your attention.

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Here is a link to a copy of this Shortcut that you can tweak to your own liking.