Last Spring I created a website called the Wiki Collaborative Composition Project. The intention of the site was to create two compositions (one for middle school band, the other for chorus) using the wiki environment. For those of you who are new to the wiki concept, wikis are documents or websites that can be edited by anyone. I created the site because I was interested to see what would happen if a large group of people collaborated one one piece - each with the ability to edit anything that is already written or add measures to the piece. The end result of each composition would be a piece that would be free to anyone who wanted to perform it with a large by-line.

Although th site generated quite a bit of interest at first, it has sadly slowed down to a snail’s pace. I would really like to get this project started again, so I am calling all composers - amateur, students, professionals, or hacks like myself to visit the site, download the files (they are Sibelius files), and add some music, and see what happens. Please pass this on to anyone who you think might be interested in joining the project. I am hoping to get something finished by the end of the year.

I welcome your comments and suggestions.

Last night I was watching the Rockefeller Christmas Tree Lighting on NBC with my daughter. When the young lady who she was waiting to hear began singing her song, I instantly heard the unmistakable sound of an auto-tuner correcting her voice. While I would not want to get up and sing in front of millions of viewers on live television, I can’t accept hearing a voice that is processed through an auto-tuner. It drives me crazy. I would much prefer to watch the person lip sync. Here is my question, why do artists use auto-tuners? If they can’t sing in tune, why are they a singer? Does anyone remember the embarrassing video of Enrique Iglesias where his voice is heard “pre-auto-tuner”? It pretty much ended his career. Why do we put up with artists now who are clearly doing the same thing?

I know this may seem harsh, but I have noticed that much of the music my 7 year-old listens to uses auto-tuners. Nearly every show on the Disney channel and Nickelodeon have theme songs where you can clearly hear the voices being corrected. Much of the pop music she now loves is riddled with auto-tuners. I am sure that auto-tuners have their place, and the technology behind them is wonderful, but why use them when it is so obvious that you are? Tweaking is one thing, completely relying on it is another. While there have been some articles written about this topic, I think that there need to be more.

The young lady who was singing last night was so out of tune at times that the auto-tuner actually made her voice sound like a computer when it corrected her pitch. Even my daughter asked why her voice sounded funny. I know this might seem naive, but is the music business more about looks than talent? I hope not.

What do you think about auto-tuners? How do you use them? Do you think that they are helpful? Would you use it with students? How?

I welcome your comments and suggestions.

With all of the talk (largely from the media) about “Black Friday” and “Cyber Monday” - two days that mean nothing to me personally - I’d like to introduce you to a website that you should keep in mind during this holiday season. DonorsChoose.org is a fantastic site where teachers post requests for equipment for use in their classrooms. Donors can contribute whatever amount they would like towards a project or proposal of their choosing. I searched for “music technology” on the site this morning and found 241 proposals from teachers. Requests range from computer upgrades (some are still using computers with 256MB of RAM!) to an LCD Projector. Each proposal has a detailed description written by the teacher and a graphic display of the amount of funds received for the project. You can literally donate $1 or fund the entire project.

Funding is the main obstacle for most music teachers when it comes to implementing technology in their classrooms. I urge you to take a few minutes and a few dollars and help a teacher acquire the tools that they need to make music come to life in their classrooms. If you need technology in your classroom and don’t have the funds, take a moment to write up a proposal, post it on the site, and hope that donors fund your project.

This Thursday, November 29th, I will be presenting a podcasting workshop at the beautiful Morris Museum in Morristown, NJ from 4:30 - 7:30pm.  The workshop is open to all educators.  The workshop will include an in-depth tutorial on how to use GarageBand to create podcasts for any subject, how to include visual images or video in a podcast, how to set up your own podcasting website, and how to submit podcasts for inclusion in the iTunes Music Store.  While I do not actually have the details on how to register, I know that there are still a few spaces open.  For more information, call 973.971.3700 or email Karen Kwarciak, Museum Educator at the Morris Museum, at kkwarciak@morrismuseum.org. 

I hope to see you there!

In the August 2007 edition of the TI:ME Email Newsletter, I wrote about a great new website called Indaba Music. The site is a great place for musicians to connect on a number of different levels. While MySpace is certainly a major source of free publicity for independent bands, Indaba Music has some other features that make it a bit more exciting in terms of the music making process. Here is the entry for the newsletter that explains everything (written by an Indaba Music representative):

Indaba Music is a community of musicians and music professionals exploring the possibilities of making music with people in different places, from new collaborators to old band mates. Indaba Music has created an online market for music creation and collaboration. For fans, Indaba provides unprecedented access to artists and to the creative process. In the past, music creation was bounded by geography and online opportunities were scarce. With Indaba Music, a singer in L.A. can find a guitarist in Seattle to record a track for a new song, the same singer can pay to have her album mixed and mastered by a professional engineer in Tokyo, or a rapper in Miami can find a New York producer to make a beat, and a DJ in Sweden can remix their collaboration. At just over 3 months old, the Indaba community is both broad and deep. The heart of Indaba collaboration is the Session. In a Session, the creator describes the project, uploads master recording tracks for reference, and invites others to collaborate in Indaba’s robust Session Console. Indaba recommends other members to work with by matching profile information with the needs and genres of the session. Sessions can be public and openly searchable or private and visible only to invited members. Members can establish terms and payment for work and rate the experience of collaborating with session members, enabling collaborators to build reputations for their work. Indaba Music does not claim any ownership rights to music created by members.

I strongly recommend visiting the site, creating a free account, and checking it out for yourself today.

I have been a public school music teacher for the past 15 years. It has been a career that has provided me with the opportunity to teach children about the thing that matters most to me - music. Over that time I have utilized my other passion - technology - to make music come to life for my students. I have spent nearly every waking hour outside of my public school duties writing articles, creating projects, teaching graduate courses, and traveling around the country presenting workshops and sessions for educators sharing my enthusiasm for technology and the many ways it can be integrated into any music curriculum. Keeping these two aspects of my career in balance has become more and more complicated in the last five years - especially since earning my doctorate in music education. There are so many conferences to present at and I frequently get requests to provide professional development workshops. The problem is trying to do as many as I can without missing too many school days - not always easy to do. I have had opportunities to interview for a number of higher education positions and some public school positions, but none seemed to be able to provide me with the same opportunities that I have now. While my public school career has been quite rewarding and I have been fortunate to have an extremely supportive administration throughout, I have long felt that I would be more effective if I could share what I feel I do best - integrating technology into music education - on a full-time basis.

Last month, I was offered a position that does just that. On January 1st 2008 I leave public education and take over as the new Managing Director of SoundTree - the leader in music technology systems and solutions for music educators. I am extremely excited about this new career, and I believe that I have found the perfect opportunity to share my passion with my fellow music educators. I started as a SoundTree customer in 1995 when they were first getting started. Lee Whitmore was my technology teacher at Teachers College. I loved what he did in class and ordered a lab for my school in Saddle River, NJ the following semester. Soon thereafter I was installing labs for Lee as a summer job. That soon grew to include training the teachers on the gear and software as well. Since then I have presented countless workshops, trainings, and sessions for SoundTree. Lee left SoundTree this Fall to become the Director of Education and Sales for Sibelius. I have some pretty large shoes to fill. Lee’s passion for technology and his strong leadership at SoundTree has made it the company that it is. Now I have the opportunity to run the company that I believe so strongly in. It is a dream come true.

While I am not sure how this new position will impact this blog and some of the other sites that I run, I am hoping to continue them as I long as I can. I hope that you will continue reading and commenting.

If you’ve read my blog over the past year or attended one of my workshops, you know that the Vermont MIDI Project is my single favorite application of technology in music education. Formed in 1995, the Vermont MIDI Project pairs young composers with mentors through an incredible online mentoring process. If you have never visited the site, I would strongly recommend checking out the discussion threads and tracing the evolution of a young composers work. It is aan exemplary model for an educator looking to infuse composition into their music curriculum.

Next Tuesday, November 27th, the Vermont MIDI Project will be hosting their 15th Opus Concert; and event where a number of composers have their work performed by professional musicians from Vermont. What makes the Vermont MIDI Project so special to me is that they have always intended the student work to be performed by live musicians. At the Opus Concerts the students rehearse with the musicians to bring their notation files (VT MIDI uses Sibelius exclusively) to life. There are DVDs available of he process. I always get the chills when I see the interaction between students and live musicians. On Tuesday, November 27th, 10 new works will be performed written by students in 6th through 12th grade. To get a preview of their works, simply visit the Opus 15 page and you’ll be able to see and hear the compositions through the Scorch plug-in. Each of the works shows remarkable complexity and skill, due in large part to the incredible mentoring process that nurtures each piece to it’s final form.

The concert will take place at the Elley-Long Music Center at Saint Michael’s College in Colchester, VT. The concert begins at 6:30 PM, but you can watch the rehearsals begin at 12 noon. Admission is open to the public - $5.00 adults, $3.00 students, $16 for immediate family ticket. Although I won’t be able to make it, I urge you to go if you are in the area. It is one of the advocates for music technology in the classroom.

I welcome your comments and suggestions.

At the recent ATMI conference, David B. Williams and Peter Webster mentioned a great site that I hadn’t heard of called SlideShare.net.  The site is set up for users to post their PowerPoint presentations online so that others (most importantly their students) can view them.  What a great idea, and the best part -it’s FREE!  Aside from posting your own PowerPoints, you can search through the many presentations that are already online.  It is a wonderful way to share your work with others.

There is a searchable database on the site for quick browsing.  After entering music technology I found well over 12,000 related presentations.  I created an account in a few seconds and uploaded one of my recent presentations quite easily.  To view the presentation that I did at RCMEA a few weeks ago, click HERE.

There are only a few restrictions on what you upload to your account:

1. Only .ppt, .pps, .pdf or .odp are compatible (Keynote users can export their presentations as PDF files)
2. There is a 30MB size limit for each presentation

I can envision teachers using a site like this to post their presentations and then create either a link from their class websites or by simply pointing students directly to the site itself.  For those teachers who are not familiar with converting and posting PowerPoints so that they can be viewed online, SlideShare is a perfect solution.  For those teachers who are comfortable with the process, SlideShare is a great site for free hosting.  I strongly recommend checking it out.

I welcome your comments and suggestions.

This past weekend I attended the Association of Technology in Music Instruction (ATMI) Conference in association with the College Music Society in Salt Lake City, UT. It was the first time I’ve attended/presented at an ATMI Conference, and it won’t be the last. What a FANTASTIC event!

If you’ve never attended an ATMI conference, I urge you to plan on it. The conference was well planned and run by Dan Hosken. There was a Technology Boot Camp on Wednesday that focused on Social Computing and Learning Management Systems. There were many excellent sessions from Thursday through Saturday focusing on a wide variety of topics. Friday’s Plenary Address by Gil Weinberg from Georgia Southern University was a highlight for me, especially with his latest invention (which I ca’t wait to hit the market). Other highlights include David B. Williams and Peter Webster’s tour of Web 2.0 & Social Computing; Sandi MacLeod’s presentation on the online mentoring done by collegiate students in the Vermont MIDI Project; Tom Rudolph’s session on Virtual Instruments; Gina Greher’s presentation discussing the amazing work a few of her students are doing with students from a local alternative high school; Scott Lipscomb’s presentation about his latest work with students who are writing their own operas; all of the sessions run by Charles Menoche about music technology lab management; and the wonderful podcasting session by Raymond Riley. I presented a session titled Extending the Classroom: Utilizing Blogs to Promote Discourse With Music Education Students. The presentation is available on my website, and a podcast of the session is available HERE.

It was a great conference. Hats off to all who made it happen, especially Cory and Matt at SoundTree who ran the hands-on technology lab.

I welcome your comments and suggestions.

I have blogged about the One Laptop Per Child Project in the past. The program was designed to create a $100 laptop that would be widely distributed to children in developing countries around the world, hoping to bridge their world to the online community. While their have been quite a few setbacks for the project, One Laptop Per Child is now providing laptops (now $200) with a built-in wireless capabilities to children around the world.

Right now the OLPC Project is offering a tremendous deal that will put a laptop in the hands of two people - a child from the developing world and you.  For the next 11 days, you can participate in the Get One Give One program.  Here are the details:

Between November 12 and November 26, OLPC is offering a Give One Get One program in the United States and Canada. This is the first time the revolutionary XO laptop has been made available to the general public. For a donation of $399, one XO laptop will be sent to empower a child in a developing nation and one will be sent to the child in your life in recognition of your contribution. $200 of your donation is tax-deductible (your $399 donation minus the fair market value of the XO laptop you will be receiving).

To donate/order an XO Laptop, click HERE and then click on Order Now.  I urge you to donate today.  I am.

I welcome your comments and suggestions.