You might find this somewhat surprising, but for my birthday recently I received two of the best presents I’ve ever received: an iPod Touch, and Guitar Hero III for the Wii. I have not been able to put either down. In fact, as I write this post, it is nearly 1am. I just finished a 2 hour marathon with Guitar Hero. I am about to tour Japan with my band. I’m on the medium level and I’ve beaten Tom Morello and Slash at a guitar battle. In short, I’m kicking you know what and taking names - and it’s only day 3 of my new obsession. It is a highly addictive game. You simply can’t put it down once you start playing.
On my first try, I found the game very difficult. While “playing” along to Slow Ride by Foghat, I had trouble playing the guitar when I was supposed to. I tried to play it at the exact moment that the colored circle hit the button, but it didn’t work. Frustrated, I was soon booed off of the stage. The next time I tried it, I just tried to play on the beat and it worked. I listened to the song and the guitar part and it was quite natural. I scored a 97% on my second try. Not bad. I quickly learned that this game teaches four very important musical skills: rhythm, listening, sight reading, and the benefits of practice. When you get to the higher levels you’ll need all three to be successful. I have heard many different opinions on whether Guitar Hero (and RockBand) are good for music education ranging from loving it to passionately hating it. I fall firmly into the “loving it” category. I also believe that it has tremendous implications for music education. With so many kids playing the game that focuses on real musical skills, music educators must find ways to incorporate the game into their teaching. We must connect the craze over this game with real music making experiences. In the meantime, I’m going back to play some more.
What do you think? Is Guitar Hero be a good thing in the music classroom? Is it bad? Do you have ideas for incorporating the game into your music curriculum? Should we even be discussing this?
This morning, composer Pauline Oliveros gave the plenary session at the ATMI Conference in Atlanta, GA where I have been all week representing SoundTree. Ms. Oliveros discussed the use of technology in her recent compositions, and covered topics such as telematics which is the transmission of data (specifically musical data) over the internet. She showed a number of videos of her collaborations with other composers using iChat. She also described a recent collaboration with a choreographer in Philadelphia where she used a method of composition she calls distributive composition where the performers (in this specific case the dancers and a choir) are actively improvising and creating their own music based on the physical environment around them. She also described some recent activity with her students using Second Life where she is exploring the performance opportunities of the virtual world. Finally, she gave the audience a virtual tour of an amazing new performance space at the Rensselear Polytechnical Institute in upstate New York, called EMPAC. It opens next weekend and is sure to be a vital performance venue for new music and art. She is an amazing woman. At the age of 75 she is right on the cutting edge of technology and it’s use in music.
It was a wonderful experience to listen to Ms. Oliveros speak, and my favorite moment came right at the end when an audience member asked her why she uses technology and what value it added to her music. She responded by describing her online collaborations with other composers and students and then added a quote that I will remember for quite some time: “Technology is used for making war. I would rather use it to make music.” Well said Ms. Oliveros.
I am sitting in a fascinating session right now at the ATMI Conference in Atlanta, GA. The presenter is Dr. Christopher Ariza, who teaches at Towson University, and his presentation is titled “Pedagogical Applications of Web-Based Generative Music Systems: A comparison of Envl.net and Related Tools”. He is showing an online music making site that he has created called Envl.net and demonstrating some of the many free applications that he has created that allows users to make some very creative musical compositions, using only HTML and a programming language that he has created called athenaCL. You mustvisit the site and check out what he has done. I am currently playing with an application called Poly Pulse Plus which is an Algorithmic Pulse-Based Polyrhythm Generator. By selecting from a variety of easy-to-use drop down menus users can create MIDI files of polyrhythmic patterns. Once downloaded, the files can be imported into any application (notation or sequencing) to manipulate in any way the user wants to. He is demonstrating another application called TuneTile that allows users to layer musical phrases to create canons and other forms of musical compositions. I am very impressed with Dr. Ariza’s work and believe that his software has tremendous potential for providing students of any age with the ability to create music with a free application that can then be brought to school for use with software based sequencers and notation programs.
I found this video on the Trading Fours Wiki, run by a good friend of mine - Jessica Slotwinski. I am sure that many of you may have seen this, but for those of you who have not, it provides a wonderful insight into the lives of our students and shows how incredibly prevalent the Web 2.0 culture is in their lives.
Yesterday I spent the entire day at the ATMI Pre Conference which focused on Web 2.0 technologies in the music curriculum and this video is the perfect encapsulation for providing a rationale for why we need to embrace this paradigm in our teaching.
What do you think of the information presented in this video. Does it ring true with your experiences with your students? What impact do you think Web 2.0 is going to have on education 5 years from now? I welcome your comments and questions.
This morning I am in Atlanta, GA for the CMS/ATMI Conference. SoundTree is a sponsor for the event and is providing a hands-on technology lab for the conference. Today is the ATMI Pre-Conference which focuses on Delivering Music Instruction with Web 2.0 Social Computing Tools. The schedule is filled with some of the leading experts on the topic. Everything from Ning to Wikis will be discussed and I am very much looking forward to presenting my work with blogs in the middle school music classroom as well as my graduate students at Teachers College.
For those of you who won’t be here today, perhaps you’d like to share some of the strategies that you use with your students, incorporating blogs, podcasts, wikis, nings, and more. I’d love to open a dialogue here about how you are implementing these powerful tools for learning in your classroom. What grade levels are you using these tools with? Is there an appropriate age to start using them? Does your music program have a MySpace page? Facebook page?
Leave it to Radiohead to once again blaze a trail in the new digital music revolution. I just bought what could be the first commercially available song that has been broken down into individual tracks - Reckoner from the new Radiohead album In Rainbows. The group is encouraging their fans to download all of the tracks (sold as an iTunes Plus Album for 99 cents) and then creating their own remixes and mash ups using sequencing software such as Logic, ProTools, Sonar, GarageBand and others. You can then upload your remix to a special website that the band created just for this song. The only restriction is that you can’t commercially release your remix without the permission of the band.
I am heading down to the ATMI Conference in Atlanta this afternoon and I am looking forward to remixing the tracks in Logic on the plane. I feel sorry for the person sitting next to me as I will probably be tapping my feet and bopping my head. Look for my remix in the next week or so.
This is an incredible tool for middle school/high school music programs that have a music technology component. Students will love everything about this project. They probably like the band already and they will love that they can legally remix and mash up the song and then post their work on the band’s website where others can listen to it and comment on it. This is a real life situation that teachers should most certainly take advantage of. I know that if I was still in the classroom this would be my very next lesson plan!
While I have seen many new music applications for the iPhone over the past few months (even though I still don’t own one), I have just come across one that seems like an incredibly interesting one. While reading the Wired Music Blog recently, I read about an application called RjDj which is a program that interacts not only with the user manipulation of the iPhone, but with the acoustic environment around the user - pretty mind-blowing if you ask me. Check out this YouTube video of how the application works. There is another video that highlights several of the features being used by various individuals that is also really cool. While it is not currently available on the iTunes Applications Store, you can download a beta version to get a hands-on test drive. I tell you, this makes me want to get an iPod Touch just to play with these innovative personal music making software applications. I just might have to go to the Apple Store on my way home….
What is your favorite iPhone application? What does it do? I’d love to hear from you.
I have posted some podcasts that I recorded last night during the first week of my A&HM 4029 - Intro to New Technologies in Music Education course at Teachers College. The presentation revolves around my philosophy of technology in music education.
Tonight I begin my teaching duties at Teachers College Columbia University where I am teaching two sections of Introduction to New Technologies in Music Education. Because of my new position at SoundTree, this is the only actual teaching that I still do and I am thrilled that I am able to do so. The course provides students with a very broad overview of music technology and its integration into the music curriculum. There are five projects that cover various aspects of music technology - everything from word processing to GarageBand. Although I am always exhausted by the end of the night, it is a truly rewarding experience to spend time with the students at TC. It is a vibrant learning community and I am proud to be a faculty member.
Take a look at the course syllabus and the project guidelines. They are based on my good friend Tom Rudolph’s book: Teaching Music With Technology 2nd Ed. I welcome your questions and comments. Have a great semester!
Today marks the first time in 34 years that I am not heading back to school. For some reason, the first day of school was always a very exciting day for me and I always wore a new outfit to mark the occasion - something that stuck with me since I was four years old. I must admit that it feels quite strange to be headed to the airport this morning instead of school, but leaving the classroom for my position at SoundTree has been everything I hoped for and more. I have learned a few things about teaching now that I’ve been on the corporate side for a while. Here they are in no particular order:
Teaching is hard work. Being “on stage” for 5-6 periods a day is exhausting.
Summer vacation for teachers isn’t a perk - it is a necessity.
Teaching kids is wonderful preparation for managing an organization. Keeping 30 14-years olds in line for 42 minutes teaches you patience, mediation skills, and thinking on your feet.
Working 12 months a year instead of 10 is fine. It is very different when you aren’t teaching.
I miss my friends and I miss my commute, but I am very happy with the move I’ve made because it let’s me focus 100% on what I love most. So, to all of my friends, former colleagues, and teachers everywhere - have a great school year. Your work is noble work and you should never let anyone tell you that teaching is anything less than that.
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