This morning I am in Boston, MA for the Massachusetts Music Educators Association Conference with SoundTree where we are sponsoring the hands-on music technology lab. This conference is held in conjunction with the Northeast TI:ME Regional Conference run by Mike Moniz. As always, I have created a special landing page for the event where I will be posting all of the session materials for the 4 sessions we are presenting. I will also be Tweeting live from some of the sessions - subscribe to our feed on Twitter to get in on the news. Podcasts of the sessions will be available by Sunday.
This conference is a special one for SoundTree as we are featuring the SoundBeam device - an incredible product that makes music making possible for everyone. We have it set up in the lab if you’d like to come by for a demonstration. The SoundBeam will also be featured in a session by Mike Moniz on Saturday afternoon.
If you are up in Boston over the next three days, please register for the conference and catch our sessions. We are in Waterfront 1C in the Seaport World Trade Center Hotel. Hope to see you there!
Author and fellow tweeter Siva Vaidhyanathan posted a link to an incredible music video produced by the Media Education Lab at Temple University that gives an overview of Fair Use. It is a really great way to explain copyright and Fair Use to those who don’t really understand all the aspects of it. I recommend checking it out and decide whether it would be a good thing to show to your students - I certainly think it would be!
I was recently interviewed by my good friend Scott Watson on his excellent podcasting site which is titled: What Music Means To Me about my book, The Teachers Guide to Music, Media & Copyright Law. The interview is broken into two parts, and Scott posted Part 2 yesterday on the site. Topics covered include the paying royalties for recordings, copyright issues related to recording, media on the Internet, and the ethical dilemmas before each of us working with students in this digital age. I urge you to check out his site and have a listen.
If you have any questions about copyright law, please feel free to visit the companion site to my book and post your question on the Q&A section. I’ll be happy to answer whatever questions you might have about specific situations in your teaching.
And if you are interested in purchasing a copy of the book, use coupon code spring09 when checking out from the SoundTree Online Store to get 10% off and free shipping through March 31st!
That’s right. SoundTree now has its own group on Facebook and a feed on Twitter. They have been created as a way to connect with customers on these incredible social networking sites, and also provide them with the latest news, information about upcoming events, and more. If you are a member of Facebook or Twitter, please subscribe or join today!
I am a member of Indaba Music - a really interesting site that encourages musical collaboration between its members. Yesterday the site sent out the following message and I wanted to pass it along to you:
Indaba Music is happy to announce a special collaboration contest with the Alkaline Trio!
The Alkaline Trio are masters on the punk-rock scene with over 1 million albums sold worldwide. Known for their earnest lyrics about regret, despair, and heartbreak, their featured song on Indaba is no different. “I Found Away,” off their their highest charting album, Agony and Irony, was inspired by Matt Skiba’s discovery of Transcendental Meditation - the same form of tranquil reflection The Beatles discovered in the 1960’s.
The Alkaline Trio and the Indaba community wanna hear what you’ve got. Rework the track stems, add new instruments, or strip it bare and spill your guts.
The grand prize winner will have their song available for sale in the iTunes Music Store and will gain exposure from the song.
Submissions are Due by April 14, 2009 at 5:00 PM EDT
Voting Starts April 14, 2009 at 5:00 PM EDT
Similar to what Radiohead did with Reckoner (although in this contest you don’t have to purchase the stems from iTunes) - Indaba and the Alkaline Trio are actively encouraging music fans to remix their work in a contest form where the winner gets their remix sold on the iTunes Music Store. I look forward to hearing the results.
Why not try this contest with your students? What a great incentive to inspire their creativity!
Today I am presenting a session titled The Music Educators Guide to Copyright Law at the MENC Eastern Regional Conference in Providence, RI. Today is a special occasion for me, as my father is in attendance - the first time he has seen me do my thing. As always, I will be podcasting today’s session. The podcast should appear before tomorrow afternoon on my podcasting site. In addition to the podcast, you can check out all of the session materials which are located on a special SoundTree landing page created for the session. Also, if you haven’t done so already, visit the companion website to my copyright book or order your own copy today on the SoundTree Educational Store.
I found this clip on Twitter last week, and I have to say, it is the single best example of a mashup that I have ever seen. This clip (along with eight others that were posted on a site called Thru-You) includes short audio samples from dozens of videos on YouTube that someone named Kutiman found, cut up, twisted, and manipulated to create an entirely new piece of music - which he calls The Mother of All Funk Chords. I have viewed it dozens of times, and I am still amazed by what he has accomplished - a brand new genre of music/video/mashup. The amount of time necessary to create this work is tremendous and the amount of creativity is even greater.
I attended a lecture at the New York Public Library with Lawrence Lessig, Shepard Fairey and Stephen Johnson a week ago, and one of the points that Prof. Lessig made was from a quote by Aldus Huxley about technology creating a culture of passivity. This YouTube clip, along with the other titles from his collection (including I Am New, and Someday), is the ultimate example of how Huxley was wrong. Here, Kutiman has been anything but passive in his use of this technology. Instead of simply viewing the clips, he has created something entirely new. While it should be noted that it is likely he did not receive permission from any of the people in the clips to use their work in his (and thus a copyright infringement) I believe that this is a strong reason for why quoting music should be as legal as quoting authors.
What do you think? Would you ever teach your students how to create a similar mashup? Is this a new art form or an example of piracy (or both)? I urge you to try doing something similar with software such as GarageBand, iMovie, ProTools, Ableton LIVE, Media Composer, Logic, Pinnacle, or other similar products. I’m getting started right now!
I logged onto the YouTube Symphony Channel this evening and noticed that they had posted the results of the auditions for the incredible YouTube Symphony project coming to Carnegie Hall on April 15th 2009. I have scanned through many of the sections of the orchestra (the interface is really user friendly) and I’ve played many of the videos from the successful musicians who will make up this unique orchestra. I urge you to check out the site and see for yourself. You can click on the section of the orchestra that you’d like to listen to (and see) and you’ll be able to play all of the videos.
I must admit that I was pleasantly surprised by both the quality of the audio in the recordings and also the level of musicianship. I know that many might think of this whole project as a shameless publicity stunt, but I am really convinced that this is a wonderful example of crowdsourcing, and that the orchestra will be very strong - even though they have never played together before. I can’t tell you how excited I am to have tickets to this event.
So - what do you think? After taking a look at the videos what do you feel about YouTube as a tool for auditioning? Is this something that should be replicated at the district level for music festivals? What do you think of the videos? I’d love to hear from you.
My good friend Tom Rudolph and I are working on a project that focuses on the different ways that music educators are using YouTube to teach music. Are there some great videos that you use to teach certain musical concepts? Do you post student videos to the service? Do you create videos for your students to learn from? If you have a use of YouTube that you would like us to include in our project, please email me directly at jtfrankel@hotmail.com and we will consider them.
In addition to the uses of YouTube content in the classroom, we’d like to know about whether your school district allows you to access the service in your classroom. If they don’t, how do you get around it? Do you use proxy servers or do you use some type of software that allows you to download the videos to your hard drive? We’d like to know how music educators are dealing with any roadblocks that their districts might have in place. We are fully aware that there are legal issues surrounding this, we are just interested in how people are dealing with firewalls.
I look forward to hearing from you. If you know someone else who uses YouTube in the classroom, please pass this post on.
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