Elementary Music/Music Technology Blog

 Congratulations to Dr. Rick Dammers (president of TI:ME NJ), Marjorie LoPresti (Secretary/Treasurer), and Joe Cantaffa (Vice President) for a wonderful conference! It was an honor to present a podcasting session for the elementary music teachers that attended.

The day began enthusiastically as Dr. James Frankel (past TI:ME NJ President, current TI:ME Vice President, and Managaing Director of SoundTree) presented the keynote address on New Tends in Music Technology. I adored the new keyboard controller, the Korg Nano, because it opens up numerous possibilities for economically adding keyboards to your school’s computer lab. I also loved seeing the newest addition to Morton’s Subotnick’s software line titled World of Music. I cannot wait to use this with my elementary students because it allows them to create music by drawing with a pencil and then changing the instrumentation to match the instruments found in various countries. Jim is one of those rare treasures: he can show you all of the tools you need to reach various students in your class because he now works in the corporate world so he has access to the newest items, however he has taught for the past 15+ years in music education so he can easily show and explain to you how these new tools will enhance your classroom.

I also enjoyed seeing Robin Hodson’s presentations on Groovy Music, Sibelius, and ProTools. Sibelius is now a part of the Avid family, which aso includes M-Audio, Avid, Pinnacle, and Digidesign.  It was great to see him score a movie in ProTools and to realize that a teacher could use this or a high school student could use this well in music class. It opens up numerous possiblities for high school music appreciation classes.

Rick ended the day with a roundtable discussion about music technology, which was inspiring. He put out some great ideas about TI:ME including the IT staff that are in schools and discussing data that collected from NJ music teachers about music technology.

There were some excellent presentations at this conference and again, I compliment Rick, Marjorie, and Joe for planning and setting up the day. I also thank Sibelius and SoundTree for sponsoring the conference.

For the handout and pdf of the powerpoint used in my session, please visit my website. For the podcast, and unfortunately my MicroTrack II only recorded 35 minutes of it because I might have bumped it and turned it off, you can go to my podcast site.