Are you in the market for a small, easily portable but great sounding microphone to use for podcasting or for recording vocal or instrumental performances? I got my hands on one of the new Raspberry Studio USB/iOS Microphones by Blue Microphones and took it for a test drive. Using it both to record a podcast and to take around to record live music. At around $200 is the rather miniscule looking Raspberry worth the price? Read on to find out.
With each new school year comes a variety of new organizational and logistical challenges. Those that lack effective organizational supports can quickly find their optimism and energy that comes with the new year sapped away. But there are ways to turn clutter and confusion into streamlined organization if only you know how to make use of various app based tools. We spoke with two noted music technology gurus (including one who literally wrote the book on the subject) and got their ideas on the best ways to make common organizational tasks less of a hassle.
Read more: Organizational Tools and Tricks To Start The School Year Off Right
Teaching woodwind players about how to clean and maintain their instruments is one topic that is incredibly important but also one that is often overlooked or given only a token mention during the first few lessons. Dr. Bret Pimentel, Associate Professor of Music at Delta State University in Cleveland, MS is the author of the new book, Woodwind Basics: Core concepts for playing and teaching flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, and saxophone. Says Pimentel, “Woodwind instruments get damp inside from your breath when you play. That moisture can cause a variety of problems. For one thing, it gets very germy in there, and after a while it can start to smell bad or even make you sick. But the moisture can also damage your instrument. A little effort keeping the instrument clean and dry lets it play its best and saves money on trips to the repair shop.”
Read more: Teaching Woodwind Beginners To Clean Their Instruments
Despite the best intentions of many band directors the practice of sharing mouthpieces on school owned brass or woodwind instruments continues in many schools. As we move forward into yet another flu season it is wise to take a moment to consider the health based consequences of sharing mouthpieces between students and what we can all do to stop the spread of illness throughout our ensembles.
Various studies over the last fifty years have shown that an instrument’s mouthpiece can harbor germs on it for 48 hours or more while the instrument is in it’s case. This in turn can lead not only to cross contamination by passing germs on to the next user of the instrument but also potentially reinfecting the original student, sometimes days after the initial illness. This was the case with
Read more: Sanitizing Mouthpieces- Cleaning and Disinfecting Instruments
One of the keys to having a good brass sound is to also have a good air stream. We spoke with Dr. Ramon Vasquez, assistant band director at Lopez High School in Brownsville, Texas to get some tips on encouraging proper breath support in young musicians. As one would expect diagnosing the problem is his first step. Says Vasquez, “I begin by listening for the quality of the sound. If it is small and not as resonant as it could be, I look into how much of their capacity they are really using. I then start some exercises
Read more: Breathing Exercises to Build Endurance In Brass Players
If there is one thing that every musician needs more of it’s practice time. In the first years of a musician’s training getting the student used to a regular, effective practice routine is essential to long term success. Technology has come a long way in recent years toward helping us achieve this goal by providing us with a large number of useful software titles and mobile apps that can help us practice in a variety of different ways. Whether you are looking for an app that actively listens to and assesses a student’s performance or a simple app to track a student’s practice time you will find many different options both for desktop computers and for mobile devices.
Including students with disabilities into a traditional music education classroom may seem like a challenge, especially when the class is very performance oriented such as in a band, orchestra, or general music setting. With the effective and well planned use of technology, a motivated teacher can help any student at any functional level become a part of the music making process.
NAfME has made an effort to emphasize this fact through the new national standards, writing them with universal design for learning in mind. Adapting to almost any disability is often as simple as finding the right tools to meet the needs of the specific student, and such accommodations need not be incredibly expensive or complicated to use.
The explosive growth of the use of video in the classroom has changed the way many of us could teach our lessons, but when using YouTube or other online instructional video sources the information usually flows in only one direction. Videoconferencing opens up the opportunity for teachers to have truly interactive conversations and lessons with their students by connecting their classroom with other students, other teachers, and professional performers from all over the world in real time. We spoke with NAfME members Heather Mandujano, Distance Learning Education Coordinator at the Cleveland Institute of Music in Cleveland, OH, and Dr. Fred Rees, Professor of Music in the Department of Music and Arts Technology at Purdue University in Indianapolis, IN, to discover what the current best practices and opportunities are for connecting our classrooms to a wide variety of musical opportunities.
Read more: Music Education At A Distance- Videoconferencing Technologies In The Music Classroom
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!
Read more: Is Marching Band A Sport? Pros, Cons, and a Reality Check
Last week I had the opportunity to present a session for the Heartland AEA's monthly Technology in the Classroom program. While the room was rather slim for music teachers in particular (the mornings sessions were dedicated to fine arts and PE in general) I still got a bit of a laugh when people realized what the title of the presentation meant. I called it "No! You Can't Call It A #Hashtag!" If you don't get the joke just think about it for a bit. :)
Read more: The Best Tech Tools That I Use In My Music Education Classroom
As anyone who reads my blog knows I am an avid fan of the StaffWars note ID training software products made by TMI MEdia LLC. I’ve used their PC/Mac versions for years, and was happy when a few years ago they came out with an iOS version of Staff Wars. I was always hoping that they would also come out with a new version of StaffWars 2 which added the ability to have the student actually play the note on their instrument rather than just touching the answer on the screen. Now they have released StaffWars Live which brings this live performance oriented feature onto the iPad and iPhone. Mostly... Why do I say mostly? Read the rest of this review of StaffWars Live to find out.
In StaffWars Live a whole note floats across a staff from right to left, heading for the clef sign at the other end. If it hits the clef sign before the student plays the correct note on their instrument then the player loses a life. If they play the right note however the note explodes in a fireball and they are presented with another one. The speed of the movement of the note increases as the player gets farther and farther into the game to the point that eventually it becomes quite challenging, especially for beginners.
Before starting the game the user selects a key signature, an instrument, and a range of notes anywhere up to two ledger lines above or below the staff. The range is set by two sliders, and can be customized to work with almost any instrument. The scale can be set to include major scale notes, major blues, minor blues, or chromatic. This is a nice improvement from the old PC version, but the range still bugs me in that by stopping at two ledger lines for instruments like the tuba means that we can’t get down to the low A or the clarinet can’t get to the low E which are necessities for all new players to learn.
It includes the ability for people to select treble, alto, or bass clef, opening up practice opportunities for almost every common instrument plus several more. In the settings there are even selections for vibraphone, xylo, recorder, bassoon, english horn, and piccolo, as well as all of the primary beginning concert band and orchestra instruments that you would expect.
I tested the app with all of the instruments in my band, having students compete against each other to see who could get the farthest. It works great for that, but my students who had also played the PC version were kind of let down (as I was) that they did not seem to import any sound effects of any kind into the app. Even the explosions are silent which is kind of a let down and no cool sound track like in the other StaffWars app. After speaking with the developer about this he said that they did plan to add the sounds back in in the future, but due to performance conflicts with the pitch detection part of the program they had to leave them out for now in favor of getting the app released.
In terms of note accuracy and utility though StaffWars Live does really well, 95% of the time. I say that because at the beginning of the year my clarinet players and a few brass players always have troubles getting notes to pop because they don’t have their embouchure developed enough to bring the pitch up to where it needs to be. On the PC version I can tweak that a bit by adjusting the tuning in the software, allowing even horribly flat clarinets to still feel like they are accomplishing something. In the iOS version though you can’t tweak it, and if they can’t get the note up to pitch they are going to lose regardless of whether they are playing the right fingering or not.
StaffWars Live also includes a high score board where you can see what your previous bests are. It's great for an individual to keep track of their personal performance but isn’t incredibly useful from a teacher perspective unless the same student is the only one that uses the device each time. It would be nice (and a nice upgrade for a future version, hint hint!) if they added in the ability to put in a student’s name and then export the list as a CSV via email.
As it is now, for 99 cents StaffWars is a great deal and very useful for any new student to help them learn their fingerings. It’s cheap enough that a music teacher can suggest to all of their students that they add it to their phone or iPad to use at home. At this time there is no Android version but since they have already ported the original StaffWars app to Android I have to assume they will eventually do the same for Live. If the makers continue to develop the app and add in planned improvements like the sound effects, intonation controls, and a better score keeping system then it will soon be my go-to app at the beginning of the school year with my new students.
StaffWars Live is now available in version 1.0 for 99 cents on the App Store. The next version (1.0.1) is planned to be released in the next few weeks and the developer hopes to be able to include some of the features that were mentioned above. In other words, there is no good reason not to give StaffWars Live a try right now.
Page 2 of 28