Music and the iPad

One popular technology that is becoming more frequently used in classrooms is the iPad. At first, I thought giving students iPads was a little extreme and an expensive use of resources. However, as a recent iPad owner myself, I have come to see that this technology does have many valuable and educational uses, especially in my content area of music.

I personally use my iPad often at school in my musical studies, and I have come to see many opportunities for using it in the music classroom. One of the ways in which I use my iPad is during masterclasses. As I listen to each performance, I am able to quickly and easily look up the score on imslp.com for the piece that is being performed. I’ve found that having easy access to the score helps me to get so much more out of the masterclass, because I am able to follow along with the music and see exactly what the teacher is talking about.

I also use my iPad for my personal study of my repertoire. Using imslp.com, I can quickly look up different editions of a piece and compare them. Even though I don’t use the iPad in place of paper sheet music, it is a good way to carry around a library of music easily for travel. If I need to study my music and am not able to bring all my books, the iPad lets me carry around all my scores in one place.

I also use my iPad for some of my classes that require me to print sheet music every week. Instead of wasting paper and ink to print examples that I will only use once for the class, I pull up the PDF on my iPad and use that instead. With iBooks, I can easily store all the PDFs in a collection for a particular class.

With apps such as YouTube, Spotify, and iTunes, I can also look up and listen to many different recordings on my iPad and also pull up the music and follow along simultaneously as I study the score. I can also share music and recordings with others quickly and easily. Other apps such as metronome apps, tuning apps, and keyboard apps are also useful for practicing. Basically, you can carry around all the resources you need to study a piece of music in this one technology.

For schools that are fortunate enough to have the resources to use iPads in their classrooms, I think it is a great investment. Particularly for the music classroom, it provides many different features all in one technology. It saves on paper and ink, and can be useful for students to look at many different pieces of music and access recordings quickly, and store everything in one place.

Roland Fantom-X8 Keyboard

The Roland Fantom-X8 keyboard is more than just a keyboard. In fact, it is listed as not just a keyboard but a Workstation Keyboard, because of its vast capabilities that go beyond a regular electronic keyboard. I am fortunate enough to own one of these, and the technology available through it is amazing. Check it out here!

Just a few of the features listed on the website: 

• 128-voice workstations with an 88-note Progressive Hammer-Action Keyboard
• Seamless integration of audio and MIDI using gorgeous new ROM waves and sampling with realtime timestretch capability
• 8 stereo audio tracks integrated with internal MIDI sequencer
• Color LCD screen - a first in a workstation keyboard! 
• 3 MFX processors, plus dedicated reverb, chorus and mastering processor
• USB port 
• PC card slot for backing up samples and data with up to 1GB capacity
• 4 Line outputs (2 stereo or 4 mono), stereo Line input and 24-bit S/PDIF I/O

The Fantom-X8 offers many features of an electronic keyboard, such as weighted keys, input/output lines, a metronome, and recording capabilities. However, it goes far beyond this. The soundbank is the most extensive I have ever seen on a keyboard, and you can re-create the sounds of any instrument or sound effect imaginable. 

One of the most useful features of this workstation is its recording capabilities. You can record a song and play it back through the keyboard, but then you can edit it, layer it with other tracks, and save it, much like you would do through a computer program. 

The Fantom-X8 also features a color LCD screen, which makes navigating all of its many features a little easier. My personal favorite feature is the option to switch the keyboard to functioning as if it were a grand piano:

This feature allows you to choose from dozens of different piano sounds, but it also has the ability to lower or raise the lid of the piano on the screen, imitating the effect of closing or opening the lid on an actual piano. As a pianist, this option provides me with a great alternative to practicing when I don't have access to a piano. Although playing on a keyboard is never quite the same as playing on a real piano, this comes the closest! 

Even though I have had this keyboard for a few years now, I still feel as though I have barely scratched the surface of its capabilities. Every time I use it, I discover some new feature. If you look at the first picture, you can see that on the right there is also a drum pad (the orange square buttons). This is touch sensitive and can be programmed to record drum tracks, and is the next feature that I want to explore and become more familiar with on this workstation. 

This workstation keyboard is one of the most innovative and powerful keyboards available, and is a wonderful technology not just for pianists but for any musician interested in exploring music through audio and recording technologies. Although it is not quite the same as working on a computer, it provides many of the same capabilities along with something I thinks is very important - the ability to play along on the keyboard while working, allowing you to interact with the music on the instrument at the same as recording and editing. 

Music Notation Software

One of the most useful music technologies is music notation software. For centuries, composers had to write down all of their compositions by hand or with the use of a scribe. Music notation makes notating compositions much easier by allowing you to notate everything on a computer rather than by hand. You can also use an electronic keyboard and hook it up to your computer, and have the software notate what you are playing on the keyboard.

Two of the main leading notation softwares are Finale and Sibelius. Users are usually split between those who are devoted Finale users and those who are devoted Sibelius users. While both programs offer similar features, the layout is different and users may simply prefer one over the other. For me, it is simply a matter of which I used first and became used to, which was Finale. I think for many people it is simply a matter of which program they are more familiar with. I would encourage students and musicians to try out both for a little while before deciding which one they prefer.

Both Finale and Sibelius offer a free 30-day trial of the program, which can be quite useful in determining which software you prefer to use. The software can be downloaded from their websites:

Sibelius: http://www.sibelius.com/home/index_flash.html

Finale: http://www.finalemusic.com/

Because I am a Finale user, I will speak to some of that program’s features. However, many people I have talked to have said that Sibelius is easier to use and more intuitive. I have found that Finale can be sometimes time consuming when you need to select each tool before using it. However, this also gives you more freedom to place markings more specifically. So there are positive and negative aspects to both programs, and I know some people who actually use both. The main feature of the program is being able to enter in musical notation and markings for a score. The program has the option of adding in many details, such as dynamic markings, articulation markings, etc. You can also play back what you have entered in so you can hear how it sounds. I would encourage students to download the free trials of either program and play around with them. Sometimes it is easier to hear your composition if you can have the notes played back to you after you enter them in, and it is easy to change or delete notes. Finale and Sibelius are great tools for both amateur and professional musicians, and musical notation programs of some sort should definitely be something that students are introduced to.

Using Google for Music Students

One of the technologies that I discussed in my technology autobiography was Google. I still believe this is one of the most powerful tools of technology available to us, especially as educators, because it can lead to so many other useful resources and discoveries. Something that I have been discovering more as I teach in my private lessons is that because students have access to such personalized technologies like smartphones, iTouches, and laptops, they tend to want to explore things on their own and through technology. I try to incorporate this into my lessons by encouraging students to look up music on Google for themselves. Aside from watching Youtube clips of songs they are working on, which I also encourage, I want students to learn how to use Google for their own personal discovery and enjoyment of music.

I teach both piano and guitar, and for my guitar students, one of the biggest challenges I have faced is their lack of motivation. Of course, I experience this with my piano students as well, but it seems to be more from the guitar students, which caused me to try to figure out why this was the case. After talking with several of my students, I came to realize what one the problems was. Many of my students were being forced by the parents to learn an instrument, and so they chose guitar, wanting to learn all the pop and rock songs and play only chords. Many of them are not interested in learning music notation, theory, or more classically-oriented music that requires the technical skills of fingerwork and picking. But of course, for many of their parents, this is what they want their child to be learning – and then they can learn the chords. The even bigger challenge is that many of the guitar methods books have the same approach, introducing music reading, theory, and melodic material long before they touch on chords.

What I’ve found to be a good method in response to this issue is to teach chords to students along with the other material from the beginning. This keeps their interest and allows them to make connections between the chords in the pop songs they want to learn and music theory. When they learn chords, I also have them choose their own songs to learn along with their lesson material. I show them how if go to Google and type “-insert song title- guitar chords” they can find easy chords and tabs for almost any song, print it out, and try it on their own. It’s been very rewarding as a teacher to see how excited some students about this discovery. I had one student come to his next lesson with four or five songs printed out that he had found and started learning. I also encourage my piano students to look for familiar songs they are interested in learning, and I’ve found that taking advantage of technology to point students in the direction of learning and discovering on their own gives them some independence to make their own choices and have a say in their learning.

Two of the sites I often use for students:

http://www.makingmusicfun.net/

http://www.ultimate-guitar.com/

Collaboration Canvas

The canvas that I chose to remix was about the changing ideologies of race, culture, and demographics. For my content area, I added a specific element of culture, music-making, to this topic. I thought that this would be a good way to bridge these two different content areas by taking the broader topic of race and culture and choosing one aspect of that to focus on. The original canvas included some additional links about issues of discrimination, which I would explore through musical stereotypes and the political aspects of certain music. In the image gallery of the original canvas, there were several images of people from different cultures. When creating my image gallery, I used pictures of people from different cultures as well, but ones that included their instruments. The original canvas also focused on demographics, and I thought that a good way to explore this through music would be to talk about how the demographics of where you live and the cultures you are exposed to affect your musical choices and awareness. One of the images in my gallery shows the musical preferences of different demographics, which I thought would be an interesting study that combined elements of both units. Overall, my goal with this remixed canvas was to use my content area of music as a way to explore a more specific aspect of culture, race, and demographics, and to use the topic of race and culture to explore different music of the world and how it affects culture.

Link to canvas:
http://www.play.annenberginnovationlab.org/play2.0/challenge.php?idChallenge=2651&mode=view#network6

Teoria

As a teacher, there are many ways in which we can encourage students to expand their musical knowledge outside of the classroom. Particularly if you find yourself in a large classroom setting, or with a limited amount of time and/or resources, technology on the web is a great direction to point students in for extra help. I know that as a student myself I have sometimes utilized such resources in order to better understand something I was learning in class. 

One such resource is teoria.com, which is a music theory website. On this site, you can read about different tutorials to help explain music theory, as well as find exercises to help practice music theory and ear training skills. These exercises are one of the most helpful resources on this site, because they facilitate what often happens in class. However, what happens in class may leave many students feeling left behind or as though they still need more practice. By using the web exercises, students can move at their own pace and repeat something as many times as they need to.

For example, when I was first working on rhythmic dictation, I found it hard to do in class and would lose my place in the dictation and end up not being able to write down anything. Because the teacher didn’t have time to help everyone individually, she often didn’t check our work and just moved on to the next topic, not realizing that many of us weren’t able to do the exercise. So in order to help ourselves improve, my friend and I would sit down outside of class and practice doing the exercises on Teoria that were similar to the ones we did in class, and it helped us enormously. There are some skills that really do just require repetition and practice, and unfortunately class times and sizes do not always allow for this. Making students aware of outside resources like Teoria can be a great help for them to practice what was done in class and improve at their own pace.

Unit Plan Canvas

My unit plan is about barriers in communication, specifically explored through the arts. What I wanted to do was make connections between a similar theme in music, film, and literature. These arts are all connected - for instance, the lyrics in a song can be compared with the words of a poem and the dialogue of a film, or album artwork can be compared with the visual images of film - there are many possibilities. 
In creating my canvas, I wanted to show how the Pink Floyd's song "Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2)" was connected visually to their film "The Wall." I did this by including images from their album cover and film cover, as well as the music video for their song. I made two galleries, one for Pink Floyd and one for Robert Frost and "Mending Wall," because I wanted there to be some visual representations for both subjects. 
For additional reading, I included a link to an in-depth analysis of Pink Floyd’s “The Wall,” the full text of Frost’s poem “Mending Wall,” and some writings on “Mending Wall.” I also included the link to Pink Floyd’s film “The Wall” on IMDb.com because I thought it would be useful for students to read about the film in the same way they would for any other movie they were interested in. I included a link to The Beatles’ song “Eleanor Rigby” because this is an additional song that I would explore later on in the unit as a picture of isolation.


Link to canvas:
http://www.play.annenberginnovationlab.org/play2.0/challenge.php?idChallenge=2221&mode=view#network6