I am thrilled to announce that we have been working very hard over the past few months at SoundTree to create a unique new education online store that offers educators the absolute BEST prices on all aspects of music technology. The SoundTree Online Store has over 200 “Classroom Tested, Teacher Approved” products that have been hand-selected with the educator in mind. Aside from our guaranteed lowest prices, we are also the only online store to offer free shipping on all orders (except outside of the continental US). No minimum purchase required!

I know that this seems like a shameless commercial, but I can’t tell you how happy I am with this new resource for educators. I urge you to log on to the store today to check it out. Everything is in stock and ready to be shipped - including Kaossilators! If you would like to subscribe to SoundWAVES - the free email newsletter from SoundTree - click HERE and you’ll receive monthly notices about product specials. We’ve got a wonderful podcasting bundle for Mac & PC users!

Start shopping today!

Looking for some new loops for your loop-based sequencing software?  Tired of the  loops that come with GarageBand?  There are a number of really good sites out there for finding free samples on the Internet, but my personal favorite is The Freesound Project.  Here’s why…

The Creative Commons website is a great place to find resources about alternative licensing and copyright.  Founded by Lawrence Lessig, it is a fantastic new way of dealing with the corporate lock-down of creativity.  The Freesound Project collaborates with Creative Commons by sharing their sounds and loops.  Unlike ccMixter - another Creative Commons site - The Freesound Project only deals with sounds - not songs.  Additionally, all of the sounds and loops on the site are copyright and royalty free - through a Creative Commons License that allows users to freely use the samples they find on the site, but that they attribute them correctly in return.  There are over 28,000 samples on the site as of today, and the database is growing.

To access the samples, simply click on the Search tab from the menu on the left hand side of the screen.  Next, put in a search term such as bass or drums or brass and you’ll get a series of samples - some better than others - to choose from.  You can download whatever you like and then import those loops directly into a program like GarageBand by either copying them into the sample library folder, or by dragging the sample over the loop browser.  It’s really quite simple.  Check out the site for yourself and listen to some of the loops.  Perhaps have students create their own loops by using a program like Reason and post your own loops and sound on the site to add to the collection.  Your students will be thrilled seeing their loops being used by other musicians around the world.

I welcome your comments and suggestions.

Gerd Leonhard, author of The Future of Music, runs a terrific blog by the same name. On one of his recent posts he highlighted a website called Musicovery that has a fantastic interface - a brand new way to think about music. Users are presented with what looks like a remote control. In the center of the remote is a coordinate axis with four adjectives: Energetic, Positive, Calm, and Dark. There is also a blinking dot placed in the axis. At the bottom of the remote is a list of 18 genres of music. Users can first select a genre and then place the dot anywhere on the axis. Musicovery then uses an algorithm to play a composition that relates to the location on the axis. In a manner similar to the Pandora Web Radio site, Musicovery plays actual tracks in their entirety - and it’s perfectly legal. The graphical interface is very slick, and there are connections to related artists and works based on your placement of the dot in the axis.

This might sound a bit confusing, so the easiest way to understand it is to check it out for yourself. The first time I visited the site I spent a great deal of time playing in the Jazz genre and found the selections in relation to my placement of the dot on the axis to be very interesting. I think that the site has some pretty interesting possibilities for the classroom, especially in terms of critical listening skills, discussions about music in relation to emotions, and more.

I welcome your comments and suggestions.