Oct 26 2008
How do you have fun with your teenage boys…? Check it out. We had a blast tonight playing Guitar Hero 4 with guitar, drums and vocals (not pictured here). We even had my wife singing at one point. More posts about this awesome game after Our World Tour. Don’t let my Rock n Roll expression fool you- I’m having fun.
Oct 23 2008
Playing one of Wii Music’s songs, you can look at a chart that shows you exactly how the tune is supposed to be played. But if you diverge from the pattern, adding or skipping notes, you aren’t penalized — in fact, you’re rewarded, as the game automatically fills in harmonious, pleasing notes anywhere in the piece. At the end of each song, you give yourself a score based on how much you liked your performance.
Berklee Shares is a wonderful educational resource filled with free music lessons based on Berklee’s curriculum. The lessons are in the form of videos, interactive PDFs, Flash activities, MP3s and more.
James’ essay is about the economics of creativity, specifically how the value of any creative endeavor changes according to a society’s perception of that value. He uses the history of musical performance to demonstrate his point, specifically how the value of live virtuoso performance dropped in status once recorded music emerges, at which point society rewarded the talent of recording music
This was a really invigorating event, with lots of nice, smart and open people that were really interested in what the future holds for the Arts, i.e. the creators, the creative industries and the organizations that want to serve them. My task was to address how the broadband-enabled, always-on world of digital natives equipped with 4.5 billion mobile devices impacts on emerging cultural practice.
Use this website to create a PDF file which can be printed and folded to create a paper CD case. For folding directions, see the about section. To add more tracks, a mailing address, or graphics to the case, use the advanced form. Mix CD cases created with the advanced form can be optionally added to our public mix CD database. To create a case for an existing CD, use our CD search engine to find the CD and it will fill in this form for you. Jewel case inserts can also be created.
Oct 20 2008
Basically, you upload a song of your choice (in MP3 format) and then add either “Cowbell” or “Christopher Walken” to it by means of the provided slide bars. When this has been dealt with, you hit the “Gimme more cowbell!” button and away you go (or away go Messrs. Walken and Ferell, that depends on the vantage point of the user).
Check out some Weezer with more cowbell I created:
| Make your own at MoreCowbell.dj | ||
Tomorrow, Lala Media Inc. will announce an interesting new approach to selling digital music. It’s based on a new type of license it secured with the four major labels and 170,000 indie labels, that lets consumers pay a dime to own a song that they can listen to whenever they want so long as it’s on the Web (Actually, the first listen is free; you pay your dime if you want to listen more than that). Then, if you decide you want to download the song to your hard drive or listen to it on your iPod or any other device, you can buy it for another $.79 (or $.89 if you haven’t taken that middle step of paying the dime). That gets you a DRM-free MP3 version of the song.
There is a lot of discussion these days about free music and the decline of the power and influence of the major record labels. However, I would argue that music has always been free in one form or another, throughout history and that the relationship between the artists and their fans – the artists and their patrons is what really matters.
Oct 12 2008
I am currently teaching a piano lab class with 7th and 8th grade students and we are starting to create Garageband projects using some of the songs we are learning out of our piano method. I am hoping to collaborate with another school using Garageband by posting finished projects on-line. This could be as simple as commenting on each others projects in an on-line gallery or providing tracks to exchange…I’m open to ideas and would welcome your feedback.
This could be for any age group. I’m just interested in sharing some web 2.0 goodness with some other music educators. Please contact me.
Oct 11 2008
This just cracked me up:
Do you have any forbidden music in your classroom? For me it’s “Heart and Soul”, “Chop Sticks” or that other song kids play on the black keys where they roll their knuckles along f#, g# and a# then twice on c# repeat; then in the other direction and twice on d#. I literally scream “STOP” when I hear these played.
And lately it has been the McDonald’s jingle…all it takes is one kid to discover it and the rest are playing it non-stop on the piano. I guess I should be happy the kids are learning and experimenting. But non-stop jingles can take its toll on the psyche.
Oct 10 2008
Have you ever had students say to you, “I don’t need math, I’m going to be a musician!” Why not introduce them to world-renowned drummer Ndugu Chancler, who explains why math is essential to music?
This is the synopsis of a great six minute video featuring professional drummer Ndugu Chancler over at The Futures Channel. This video is for kids of all ages narrated by a world class drummer who not only makes some connections to math and music, but gives you some resources for introducing basic rhythmic values to your students.
I showed this video to my piano lab students last week and I was able to teach a mini-lesson on rhythm. I simply notated the examples Ndugu showed on the video using drum set notation similar to the examples below (these were taken from Bill Powelson’s School of Drums website):
Then we played the rhythms on our imaginary drum set using our right foot for the quarter note, right hand for snare drum, left hand for the cymbal and engaged the students in creating rhythms that were fun. We became drummers dude! Much more exciting than rhythm cards to be sure.
In addition to showing the various rhythmic units as they relate to various styles (rock, reggae, samba, etc.), Ndugu shows how he uses a drum machine and computer to create tracks. It’s a great intro into multi-track recording and ends with this insightful quote-
Technology by itself is not creative. Technology gets creative based on the creativity of the musician behind the technology.
Oct 05 2008
As a new middle school teacher, I’m curious to know if your school or district uses an on-line grading system.
In Seattle we have a system called “The Source”. Parents can access The Source via a unique login for their student on the internet. Once logged in, parents can access teacher information for each class, including, announcements, files, and grades.
Most of our secondary teachers use The Source in conjunction with a grade book program called Easy Grade Pro and publish student assignments and grades online for parents to access.
As a new secondary teacher, I’m finding the traditional grade book with weighted categories and percentages not amenable to grading my music ensembles.
I hope to hear from some secondary teachers that are using an online grade book program. Here are my questions:
Does your school district have an on-line grading tool that allows you to post grades for parents and students accessed via the internet? (i.e. Easy Grade Pro or some other software program..)
If yes, do you use this sysstem?
Are you required by your school or district to post grades on-line daily/weekly/monthly for parents to access?
How do you weight your assignments for ensembles? (scale or playing tests; theory assignments; chair placement)
In general, how do you grade your students in ensembles? How do you grade your other music classes?
This may be too many questions…any comments you have about grading music classes in general would be helpful.
