Keith Mason, of Belmont University in Nashville, TN, runs a great new website called Music Tech for ME - the ME being Music Education. On the site there are a number of informative podcasts on a wide variety of topics, including software reviews, interviews, relevant web links, methods for learning and implementing new technologies, and more! The podcasts are well produced and Keith does a great job of presenting information in a clear and easy to understand style. I strongly suggest bookmarking the site, listening to some of the podcasts and sending Keith a comment!

I welcome your comments and suggestions.

Last week I taught the first ever TI:ME Course in New Jersey at my middle school in Franklin Lakes.  Villanova University is offering the courses through their very popular Summer Music Studies Program.  The course went very well, and it felt great to be teaching in my own lab.  This week I begin teaching a TI:ME 1B Course at FAMS.  This week my students will be utilizing CAI software titles, creating podcasts, and creating multimedia presentations.  As a supplement to the Course Resources Page, the students will be blogging about thier work on our Course Blog.  I am looking forward to a great week.

Too often we think of music technology as a solo music making experience - one that never leaves the DAW environment.  At Montclair State University I was once faced with a strange situation that illustrates this point.  As part of my double major in composition, I needed to give a recital.  The problem was that all of my music was performed by my computer.  I thought that it would be unfair to ask an audience to sit there while I pressed the spacebar on my computer.  Aesthetically speaking, I couldn’t think of a way (aside from me playing one of the parts on a keyboard live) to make the performance exciting.  This experience shaped the way I thought of computers in performance until I saw PLOrk (Princeton Laptop Orchestra) two years ago.  I found that what was coming out of the speakers was so exciting, and that the stage looked pretty cool also.

Tonight there is a similar concert happening in Brooklyn called Tranzducer.  Each month, LEMUR (the League of Electronic Musical Urban Robots) hosts a concert called Tranzducer that features some of the hottest composers and performers in the music technology field.  Tonight at 8pm at the LemurPlex (461 3rd Ave., Brooklyn, NY) there are three fabulous artists performing: Timothy Nohe, Andy Hayleck, and Steve Bradley. Admission is $5.  I’m going to try to make it.  These concerts happen every month; so if you’re not able to attend I strongly suggest bookmarking one the sites and put the next concert on your calendar.   Hope to see you there!

I welcome your comments and suggestions.

Many know SoundTree as the leader in music technology systems. I have been a very happy SoundTree customer for over 10 years, and I am pleased to be a part of their consulting staff. Along with many other music educators, I have written lesson plans for the Teaching Resources portion of their website, and I strongly recommend checking it out. There are currently over 50 lesson plans covering all aspects of the K-12 music curriculum. The lessons are well constructed and utilize many different aspects of technology within them. They are all linked to the National Standards and come with downloadable materials to successfully implement them. The best part - they’re FREE! Check out the site today.

I welcome your comments and suggestions.

There might be hope for some of the thousands of people who are being sued by the RIAA every month.  Up to now the RIAA’s success record has been pretty staggering.  When you get a letter in the mail that says “you’ve been caught illegally downloading music - pay a fine or we’ll sue you for all you’re worth” - most people settle the suit out of court for a few thousand dollars.  Taking the RIAA on in court takes so much money, it is actually cheaper to settle than to fight.

A few years ago I saw a story on the today show about a woman who received one of those dreaded letters and decided to fight.  The story goes that the woman believed that a friend of her son actually did the downloading on a computer in their home without her knowledge.  I remember thinking that she was crazy for fighting and that she’d have to re-mortgage her house to pay the legal bills.  I was shocked to read about her case the other day on TechDirt.com.  It appears that the judge in the case not only dropped the “flimsy” charges brought against her, but also made the RIAA pay her legal bills!  This might be a very important case for future lawsuits brought against illegal downloaders.  While I am firmly against music piracy, I personally believe that the draconian tactics being utilized by the RIAA is like the story of the boy with his finger in the dyke.  They need to change their approach to stopping piracy.  Now with this story (and the many that are now sure to follow) their tactics are certainly failing.

I welcome your comments and suggestions.

Integrating Technology into Your Elementary General Music Classroom
A course for elementary teachers taught by an elementary teacher

The workshop: This hands-on course is aimed at elementary music teachers who are interested in integrating technology into the elementary general music curriculum. The course will include a survey of successful teaching strategies and lesson plans as well as an overview of hardware and software appropriate for the elementary level. The material covered in this course will be applicable to every teaching scenario - the teacher who teaches on a cart, the teacher with one computer in a classroom, and the teacher who either already has a classroom lab or who is interested in setting up a lab. Classroom-ready lesson plans, handouts, and software will be included.

Guest clinicians to be announced

Dates: Monday, July 30 – Friday, August 3
Hours: 9:00am - 4:00 pm
Credit: 30 NJ professional development hours
Cost: $300.00
Location: Far Hills Country Day School (http://www.fhcds.org). in Far Hills, NJ, located near Bernardsville and Morristown
Registration: Participants can register online through the following website: http://info.fhcds.org/~aburns.
Additional information: Questions about the course can be sent to awillis2@aol.com

As I was reading the blog of one of my favorite authors, Lawrence Lessig, I came across a website he mentioned in an Op-Ed piece he wrote for the Washington Post called Eyespot. This website allows users to create their own videos and publish them to their site. Users can either upload their own video and audio content and use the easy-to-use Eyespot video editor to mix, mash, trim, and splice their content. Users can also select videos from the Eyespot collection - including some segments from the Stephen Colbert Report, classic TV commercials, and Star Wars; and audio from their samples collection. When you’re finished you can decide whether to post your video publicly, or keep it private.

This site is great for use in the classroom. Teachers can post video segments for their students, who can then download them, edit them, remix them, and post them. It is a legal way to incorporate video and film scoring into the curriculum. Paired with a site like the Prelinger Archives (for awesome, legal video content) and a program like GarageBand (for scoring), students can get their videos online on a “hip” site that they’ll love sharing with their family and friends. I strongly suggest checking out the site today!

I welcome your comments and suggestions.

After nearly four weeks on the road (I’m currently teaching at the Shenandoah Conservatory in beautiful Winchester, VA) I’ll be heading home. I have two days off and then I’ll be teaching TI:ME courses through Villanova University for the next three weeks at the Franklin Avenue Middle School in Franklin Lakes, NJ. It’s been a fantastic summer so far, but I must admit, I really miss my family. It will be nice to be teaching close to home. I’ll be back blogging on Monday. Have a great weekend!

MIDI files are easy: .mid or .smf. Audio files, however, come in a dizzying array of formats. When you begin to utilize audio files in your music sequences, podcasts, movies, and websites, you’ll have to know the most common audio file formats and the advantages of choosing one format over the other. This post will hopefully provide you with some useful information on the various audio file formats out there and the compatibility issues that you might run into while using them.

First, it is important to know how computers capture audio. To simplify the operation, audio is captured using a process known as PCM: Pulse Code Modulation. This process takes many tiny samples of a sound wave (like pictures) which are then converted to a series of 1’s and 0’s - binary code. For a great diagram of this process, click HERE.

Second, there are two different formats of digital audio. The first, uncompressed, uses every single one of those samples and usually the files sizes are pretty large (10MB per recorded minute). There are two major uncompressed file formats: .WAV for Windows computers and .AIFF for Apple computers (although you can successfully play both files types on both platforms). Most sequencers and movie editing software can import .wav and .aiff file formats. The main thing to remember with them is that they are pretty large files. The second format is called compressed and here, there are two different types of compression: lossless and lossy.

Lossless compression means just that: the files are squashed so that they can reduce their file size, but the original audio data is still there. Lossy compression actually cuts out some of the audio data (most often silence or sounds out of hearing range). Lossless compression file formats are mostly proprietary, which means that you can only play them on a certain audio player: Windows Media Lossless, Apple Lossless: ALAC, or Real Audio: .ra. I usually avoid using these file types in my music projects because they are often unreadable by the software because of this proprietary aspect.

Lossy compression file formats are much more common. These formats include: .MP3, .AAC, .WMA, Ogg Vorbis, .M4A, and others. These audio files are compressed to 1/10th the size of the original uncompressed audio file with only a small difference in quality. These file formats are used quite often in a wide variety of software applications.  It is important to note that in addition to the lossy files formats, there are also protected audio file formats, including Apple’s .m4p and Protected WMA files.  These files are not usable in most sequencing programs.  In order to use them you’ll need to “crack the DRM” which is illegal - albeit possible.

Third, the type of audio file you use often depends on the computing platform you use: Mac or PC. Many of the files mentioned above can easily be played on either platform by downloading the respective player. All of these files can be burned onto a CD and played back on a standard CD player (one that is capable of playing digital audio files). As far as software is concerned, if you are on a Mac you can bet that the software will “get along” with Apple friendly formats and might have some problems with Windows formats, and vice versa. Every software program has a technical specifications sheet that will list the file formats it can utilize.

Hopefully this post has provided you with some insight into the world of audio file formats. There are scores of other formats that I didn’t mention. For a full listing of the available file formats, I have found that the Wikipedia entry is pretty accurate.

I welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions.

If you log on to my favorite Internet radio station Pandora today, you will hear something….music.  Thanks to the efforts of the SaveNetRadio campaign, thousands of concerned citizens who wrote letters and made phone calls, and the actions of Congress and SoundExchange - the company that collects royalties from radio stations - Internet radio has been issued temporary relief from the “ruinous royalty rates” that were set to go into effect yesterday.  Wired Magazine ran a great article on Friday that summarized the entire issue, and pointed out that the fight isn’t over.  The relief is only temporary while lawmakers and the CRB try to negotiate new royalty rates.  I urge you to get involved with this issue if you enjoy Internet radio stations.  They are one of the last outlets for free and legal music online.