Home Practice Online is a fantastic resource for any band or orchestra director looking for supplemental materials for their instrumental music students. Created by Dr. Scott Watson, Home Practice Online contains a variety of different types of materials including: Instrument Care Videos, Warm Up Exercises and Scales, Note Naming Flash Cards, a collection of sheet music from the public domain, online musical term dictionary, fingering charts, MIDI files of the arrangements that Dr. Watson’s performing ensembles are performing on their upcoming concerts, and a great links page to other relevant websites.

I strongly recommend you include Dr. Watson’s Home Practice Online website with your instructional materials for your program. It’s a great way to reinforce musical concepts while the students are at home.

I welcome your comments and ssuggestions.

Music Education Technology Magazine printed an aricle of mine titled Scoring With Standard MIDI Files in the September 2006 issue.  If you have not already heard about MET Magazine, it is a terrific free publication filled with great articles and lesson plans for the technology-minded music educator.  Published by the same folks that bring you Electronic Musician Magazine, subscritions are available by clicking HERE.  I hope you enjoy the article.

I welcome your comments and suggestions.

With the release of GarageBand 3, Apple integrated video into the software making it possible for users to easily score their video creations with GarageBand. But where to get the video? You can either import video through iMovie and the Media Browser, or you can rip chapters off of store-bought DVDs. When I recently went to an Apple event and they promoted a software title called HandBrake which can rip chapters for educators to use with their students for film scoring. As long as you are not letting the movie leave the class room and use less than 30 seconds of it, you can rip anything you’d like for the students to use. I ripped a chapter from Star Wars III and had my 7th graders rescore a short scene and they had a terrific time doing it. I highly recommend download the application and trying it out for yourself. Just load the DVD, select the chapter, and click “Rip” and you get the selected chapter. It’s easy - and it’s legal!

I welcome your comments and suggestions.

Well, I have been blogging for about two weeks now and I have to say that I am truly enjoying it.  Thinking about issues concerning music technology in its relation to music education has been really healthy for my teaching.  While blogging has been around for some time now, it was not until I visited www.musiced.net that I thought about doing it myself.  Evan Tobias started MusicEd.net a number of years ago, and his Catalysts & Connections blog is truly outstanding.

Tobias has added an amazing feature to his website that allows other music educators to create their own blogs free of charge.  While I highly recommend becoming a member of the Music Educators Network, as a service to music education, Tobias is making it a free service - providing the server space at no charge.

If you are reading this blog, you must be interested in music technology and consequently blogging.  There is not a lot of blogging going on out there about music education currently - although the blogs that are out there are outstanding.  Check out some of the other blogs on MusicEd.net to get an idea of the discourse that is going on.  Very relevant issues and complex questions are being put forth asking for comments from anyone.

To start blogging today, visit http://musiced.net/wp-newblog.php and start blogging today!

I welcome your comments and suggestions.

Over my entire teaching career I have used synthesizer players in my performing ensembles to fill various instrumentation needs.  Primarily I use piano players - who rarely get opportunities to perform in traditional instrumental ensembles - to play tuba parts and any other instrument whose absence is detrimental to the successful performance of a given score.

I remember at a session I was presenting about 10 years ago a music teacher took great exception to this and I have always thought about his comments.  His point was that by having a synthesizer in the ensemble I was ultimately responsible for technology taking over the role of professional musicians in terms of live music - specifically the Broadway pit community where synthesizer often play up to 6 different parts.  While I mean no disrespect to that notion, I completely disagree with it.

My synthesizer players are given an opportunity to perform live music on stage at our Winter and Spring Concerts, an opportunity long denied these often talented musicians.  While only playing one note at a time, my synthesizer players love being a part of the music program and I believe that this ultimately contributes to the live performance genre.  As a tuba player, I cannot listen to a band perform an arrangement without the bottom end.  If I don’t have a tuba player in the band, I need to hear it and I do so by adding a synthesizer player.  I have never had a bassoon player in any of my instrumental ensembles, but adding a bassoon sound to the performance truly fills out the orchestration that the composer/arranger intended.
While some would argue that it should be my job to recruit and train a bassoon player, middle school music is a bit more tricky than that.  If I can’t find and recruit a player (or a music store that rents bassoons) I am out of luck.

I agree that acoustic instruments sound better and it would be better to have “real” players in the band.  Until that time I will still keep using my synthesizer players to fill those parts.  I believe that my performances and students are ultimately better for it.

I welcome your comments and suggestions.

I had the pleasure of attending a concert by Béla Fleck and the Flecktones at the McCarter Theatre in Princeton, NJ on Saturday night. As a longtime fan, this was the first time I have ever seen them live. Aside from the concert being absolutely stellar musically - with each musician a true virtuoso - I noticed that there was a ton of technology on the stage and the musicians were using it seemlessly.

The concert opened with a version of Frontiers off of the Flecktones first album. The very first thing that happened was that Béla stepped on a foot controller that triggered a synth pad playing a thick chord. Béla then started noodling around on banjo above the chord. He also used a volume control pedal to have that pad fade out when the rest of the band hit the head of the tune. Béla also used a MIDI pickup on his banjo to come up with some great effects. Victor Wooten - the Flecktones amazing bass player - used many pedal effects - including a digital delay and pitch shifter. He was equally talented with the effects as with his playing - jamming with himself (by looping fragments with the delay pedal). Wooten’s foot was moving as fast as his hands. Of course, you can’t mention technology without a nod to Futureman - the amazing unconventional Flecktones drummer who mixes acoustic drums with his famous Drumitar - a modified drum trigger pad in the shape of a guitar. It was truly amazing watching Futureman perform. While I am not a fan of synthesized drums and often think negatively of people who use them extensively, Futureman is an incredible musician. Finally, windman Jeff Coffin also got into the act with technology by putting his horn through a pitch shifet and a MIDI pickup - creating some really interesting tone colors.

I came away from the concert thinking about how well the Flecktones used the technology. It never got in the way of the “live music” experience. It made me realize that the two can exist peacefully and that when placed in the hands of musicians who know how to use it, can make some beautiful music.

I welcome your comments and suggestions.

If you check out this months issue of Wired Magazine you’ll see that the entire center of the issue is dedicated to the future of music - focusing on the new direction that artists are heading in terms of alternative licensing agreements through CreativeCommons.org, distributing their own music through their websites with mp3 downloads, and even starting their own record labels - eliminating the big corporate interests - and their profit-taking ways.

As a huge jazz fan, it’s been very interesting seeing some of my favorite musicians and bands taking charge of the distribution of their music. Two come to mind immediately - Charlie Hunter and Dave Douglas. Both have started their own record labels that sell their latest albums directly from their websites - Hunter with Ropeadope Records and Douglas with Greenleaf Music. It’s wonderful to see these musicians taking their careers into their own hands and I hope that more join them. There are already a ton of artists signed to each of these record labels, and the list is growing.

The driving force behind this change of direction is technology. As digital audio workstations get better and better - and cheaper - even artists just starting out now have an outlet for their music and do not need the big record label deal to get their music to the masses. Getting their albums on iTunes and CD Baby is relatively easy, and if there is good word of mouth, they can get thir music out there on a more widespread basis. Many now also have websites complete with their own stores selling merchandise like T-Shirts and hats - the traditional money-maker for many bands.

So what does all of this mean? More music from more artists at affordable prices. Bring it on.

I welcome your comments and suggestions.

For the past week I have been teaching my 8th grade general music students about Gregorian Chant, and neumatic notation. They have been creating their own chants and they have done a truly magnificent job with them. I teach the students about neumes with a fantastic website that converts neumes to their modern notation equivalents. To view this website, click HERE. I only teach my students six of the neumes: the punctum, clivis, podatus, climicus, porrectus and torrculus. They first notate Row, Row, Row Your Boat with neumes and then move to learning about modes and how to compose within those modes. To download the Gregorian Chant PowerPoint Presentation I use with the students, click HERE. The Modes PowerPoint Presentation can be downloaded by clicking HERE. The other materials for the lesson, including the scoring rubric and a collection of funny Latin phrases, are available by emailing me at jtfrankel@hotmail.com.

If you use this lesson with your students, let me know how it turns out.

I welcome your comments and suggestions.

Like many other Apple users, I had adrenaline pumping through my veins yesterday when I logged onto the iTunes Store and saw the “It’s Showtime” message. Although everyone knew that a new version of iTunes was on it’s way complete with full-length feature films, it was still exciting. I upgraded to iTunes 7 last night and I have to say, it’s pretty slick. Aside from the new blue icon, the folks at Apple have revamped the entire store and application to accommodate two new features, movies and games for your iPod. I’m not sure how the movie section of the store will fare in the future - especially at the outrageous price of $12.99 per title (just buy the DVD). Formatted for the tiny iPod Video Screen, I would imagine that the movies would pixelate quite a bit when viewed on my 15″ PowerBook Screen as the TV episodes I’ve already downloaded do. The video games - while cool - will have to wait for me as my 3rd Generation iPod can’t support them - but again at $4.99 per title, it’s a bit steep.

The coolest features of iTunes 7 in my opinion are the graphical changes that are in place that give a sense of the new Leopard OS coming in 2007. Apple has now made 3 options for users when viewing your music library - the current list format, the album art format, and a very cool CD flip format that is awesome.

The Music Store has also had a makeover with users now choosing which store they want to enter when they log on - Music, Movies, TV Shows, Movie Trailers, Podcasts, or iPod Games. Apple knows that they will be having some serious competition in the near future from services like SpiralFrog and NetFlix, so it’s clear that they are planning ahead.

One major annoyance of iTunes 7 is the need to upgrade to QuickTime 7. For long time Apple users, you know what this means. You’ll have to shell out another $29.95 to upgrade to QuickTime Pro yet again!!! How many times are they going to punish us?

Overall, I give iTunes 7 a 7 out of 10 - purely from a cost perspective. Great interface, great innovations, but you really pay for them. Perhaps when iTunes gets some real competition we’ll see prices come down, but until then, prepare to pay.

I welcome your comments and suggestions.

The TI:ME New Jersey Technology In-Service Conference will take place on Thursday, October 26th 2006 from 9:00am - 3:00pm at the Franklin Avenue Middle School in Franklin Lakes, NJ. Conference highlights include a Keynote Address by TI:ME President Dr. Thomas E. Rudolph. Dr. Rudolph is one the most renowned experts in the field of music technology and is the author of many books and publications, including Teaching Music With Technology. There will also be a Hands-On Technology Lab run by SoundTree where conference attendees can preview many software titles; technology sessions by NJ music educators Amy Burns - 2005 TI:ME Teacher Of The Year, Joe Cantaffa, James Frankel; workshops presented by Sibelius and SoundTree; and lunch!

The cost to register for the conference is $25.00 for Current TI:ME Members and $40.00 for Non-TI:ME Members. ALL ARE WELCOME! To become a member of TI:ME, visit: www.ti-me.org.