The Importance of Using a Tuner: Finding Your Perfect Pitch
The Importance of Using a Tuner: Finding Your Perfect Pitch

Music is a beautiful language, but like any language, it relies on clear communication.  Just like people speaking the same language can do so with different accents to their voice so too can musicians play the same note but with slight changes in the way it sounds.  The pitch may be a bit high or a bit low, and over the centuries musicians have come up with ways to analyze these differences so that multiple musicians can better "play in tune."  Just as proper grammar and pronunciation are essential for understanding spoken words, playing in tune is paramount for creating harmonious music. This is where the tuner comes in.  For the beginner (or even the more advanced musician) it can be a vital tool for developing accuracy of pitch.

Low Cost MusicTechnology Options For The Music Education Classroom
Low Cost MusicTechnology Options For The Music Education Classroom

Finding ways to stretch your budget in a music classroom is always important and even more so when trying to purchase high tech electronics, software, and other materials.  This article provides an updated list of dozens of different low cost or free alternatives to expensive music education products.  It includes such categories as music notation software, drill design software, special needs hardware, and many more.

 

The Star Spangled Banner- Free Sheet Music For Band Inst.
The Star Spangled Banner- Free Sheet Music For Band Inst.

This document contains sheet music for all common instruments to play The Star Spangled Banner, also known as the sheet music to the National Anthem of the United States of America. You can view the sheet music online or download the individual parts arranged for all common concert band instruments.  If you do not see your instrument listed please scroll to the bottom of the page and try one of the the other instruments.  Most musicians will be able to find at least one instrumental part that matches their range and preferred key signature.  If you are seeking a simple piano version of the song please select from the voice, trumpet, or alto saxophone versions.

 

Using Plickers as an Assessment Tool in the Music Education Classroom
Using Plickers as an Assessment Tool in the Music Education Classroom

Music, band, choir, and orchestra classrooms can be huge and assessing the knowledge and retention of individual students in such a large class can be daunting.  Plickers are one of several solutions that can be adapted to work in large groups, making the act of assessing a student’s understanding a little easier and a whole lot faster.  

Is Marching Band A Sport? Pros, Cons, and a Reality Check
Is Marching Band A Sport? Pros, Cons, and a Reality Check

In recent years the question of whether or not marching band is a sport has been brought up time and time again for various reasons and by various groups.  On one side you have the YES crowd who says that marching band is competitive, physically demanding, and every bit as much a team event as any traditional sporting event.  On the other side of the coin are those who say no, that marching band is NOT a sport and it is a musical pursuit that happens to involve coordinated movements.  Both sides are right, but to make a final decision we need to look deeper into the facts.  Read on to find out what they are!

Portable Digital Audio Recorder Buying Guide With Reviews
Portable Digital Audio Recorder Buying Guide With Reviews

Scroll down to view the comparison chart of over a dozen different portable digital audio recorders.

Buying a portable digital audio recorder is a major decision.  The balance between price, features, and quality is a fine line that has many different options to choose from.  There are dozens of different models of portable digital audio recorders, some of which have drastically different sets of features yet sell for roughly the same price.  This easy to read head to head comparison chart and guide to many of the more popular portable digital audio recorders is intended to help potential buyers more easily see these differences and make an educated buying decision.

Apps and More for the Choral Classroom
Apps and More for the Choral Classroom

The number of apps, software, and gadgets available for use in the music classroom continues to grow each year but finding things that can actually be beneficial to your classes grows more and more difficult as well.  We spoke with Dr. Christopher Russell, Director of Choirs at Oltman Middle School in St. Paul Park, Minnesota to get his must-have list of apps.

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Song Surgeon LogoThere are literally dozens of audio editing products available on the market these days ranging from very expensive down to very free.  In that lineup of software one product seems to stand out not because of what it can or cannot do, but because of the fact that what it does it does better than any other piece of software that this reviewer has ever used.  The Song Surgeon audio editor is not a swiss army knife application.  The company has focused its attention on doing some very audio editing tasks, and doing them very, very well.

 

Extremely Good Speed and Pitch Shifting of Audio Recordings

Song Surgeon Screen Shot #1Slowing down a piece of music is something that almost every program out there can do these days.  Even free audio editors like Audacity can time shift, but the problem is that with many editors the more a piece of music is slowed down the more artifacts and distortions creep into the audio stream.  These artifacts, even on the best of recordings, still leave traces that make our minds realize that hey, something just isn’t right here.  Song Surgeon seems to have solved this problem, and in every one of my tests it was almost impossible for me to notice any obvious hints of distortion in musical passages slowed down even as low as 30-40% of their original speed.  The software does its best job, in my opinion, on instrumental pieces of music, especially electronic music.  Acoustic music is also pretty good, but the only files that seemed to suffer any quality loss when slowed down were those that included choral vocals.

At the same time Song Surgeon also allows the user to change the pitch of files independently of the speed shifting.  In other words, you can take a song down a few steps to make it easier to sing or play along with plus slow it down or speed it up at the same time, again with no noticeable distortion or audio artifacts.

Other Important Features of Song Surgeon

One of the more interesting and useful features of Song Surgeon is one that a user might not expect from an audio editing program.  The new 3.0 version of Song Surgeon includes a service they call an A/V sniffer that watches your web browser for audio or video files and allows you to download the audio from those files directly to your hard drive.  As a teacher I have had many problems finding reliable, high quality ways to use YouTube videos or other files due to unreliable Internet streaming connections and bandwidth issues.  Using the sniffer part of Song Surgeon now allows me to download the audio ahead of time so that when class comes in I never have to worry if the Internet is going to conk out in the middle of a lesson.  It found all of the YouTube videos I visited immedSong Surgeon Sniffer Window Screen Captureiately and offered to download and play the audio from them.  It wasn't so perfect on all of the sites I visited though.  I had hoped to be able to use it to grab useful snippets of songs my band is working on from places like JWPepper.com but the sniffer did not recognize the embedded player for them.  In general though the sniffer does pretty well, and the Song Surgeon web site claims that around 90% of sites work well with it.

Who Should Use Song Surgeon?

While this review was done from the perspective of a musician and professional music educator, Song Surgeon seems to be equally appropriate for almost anyone that needs a solid, easy to use audio editor.  Other products, although possibly cheaper, do not come close to the quality of sound that Song Surgeon provides when slowing music down or changing the pitch of the entire song.  Music teachers and musicians in general should definitely check it out for that feature alone.  The other added features like the previously mentioned audio sniffing feature are just icing on the cake.

Negative Aspects of Song Surgeon

In my testing of the product there were very few negatives that I feel need to be mentioned.  The first, and probably most important to me as a busy teacher is that at first the control interface was not as intuitive as I thought it should be.  I tend to be the type of person that launches into using something without reading the manual, and in doing so with Song Surgeon I found it difficult at first to move around the editor window, setting start and end points and adjusting the settings the way I intended.  Once I read the help files and watched the video tutorials things were much simpler, but some things that I had assumed (clicking and dragging to select start and end points for example) were not as simple as clicking and dragging.  Still, once I found out how to do these things the right way Song Surgeon did as it promised and provided me with some very nice practice recordings, slowed down perfectly for my students to use in their lessons.

Song Surgeon Pricing

At the time of the writing of this review the newest version (version 3) of Song Surgeon is being sold for the PC in two forms, standard ($50) and pro ($90).  The differences between the two versions are detailed in a chart on their web site but in general the standard version offers all of the time and pitch features but without the ability to cut/paste/edit the actual wave form.  For Mac users Song Surgeon is also available, but only in the standard version for $44.

Song Surgeon is one of the easiest and highest quality time shifting and pitch shifting applications available.  If you are still in doubt they do offer a free trial version on their web site and they also offer a 90 day money back guarantee after placing your order.  With the first file you slow down or edit you will see why Song Surgeon is worth every penny.

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