Elementary Music/Music Technology Blog

I was reading Jim Frankel’s blog yesterday and he wrote about the newest version of Band-in-a-Box for MAC. The latest version sounds wonderful with its most recent improvements. Check out his blog here.

Last night I was able to try for the first time, Wii Music. I have read many blogs and posts from music teachers about whether Wii Music is appropriate for the music classroom or how they have used Wii Music in the music classroom. I have to admit that it is addicting and fun to play. I began by creating my Mii musician character. I then began to play the instruments, such as the piano, guitar, trumpet, and violin, using the Wii controllers. I continued by playing  Twinkle Twinkle Little Star as a jam session with other Wii musicians. Afterward, I played the Wii Music games that included handbells, conducting, and pitch. As I discovered what Wii Music could do, I approached my session with how it could be used to enhance a music classroom. Here are some of my pros and cons for using it in a classroom.

Pros:

• The handbell game is a wonderful way to enhance any handbell program at school. The students can use the game to practice playing their bells at the proper times in the music. I feel that the students would love this addition to the program and it would increase their practice.
• Jam Session: Though playing the instruments requires no technique (see cons), the jam session would make younger students feel very musically successful. As I played a Twinkle jam session last night, my friends who own the Wii program were so excited that they too could move the controller and jam with other musicians, even though they have no musical background. The program definitely would help students feel musically successful.
• Pitch game (Pitch Perfect): The pitch game has students using their listening skills to match the same phrases, to experience high and low sounds, and more. These games reminded me of Morton Subotnick’s Making Music Series.
• Conducting game (Mii Maestro): It requires the students to conduct a steady beat to the music. It also encourages them to be musical by slowing or increasing the tempo and making expressive movements. The musicians also appropriately respond to the conductor’s movements.
• Scoring: The games score how well the student conducts, match pitch, and play the handbells at the appropriate times. When done well, the student achieves a high score. The immediate feedback encourages the student to keep trying. Since students are very used to being assessed by video games, they will feel the immediate desire to continue and try to achieve a higher score.

Cons:

• Technique: Playing the instruments, whether it be handbells, piano, trumpet, or violin, does not require the proper technique that a student would use to master the instrument when studying it privately or in a band program.
• I could not find a way to import a handbell piece. For example, if your students are slated to perform Ode To Joy at a concert on their handbells, it would be great to be able to import the music to the handbell game so that the students have another way to practice the song.
• Pitch Game: Some of the concepts in the pitch games are advanced for younger students, such as 2-part harmony. As I watched my friends play this game, and my friends have no musical background, they had a difficult time with this game when the game expected them to know such concepts as harmony and more. However, you can turn this into a pro if you are working with older students and are studying these specific musical concepts.
• Conducting game: This game wants the student to conduct the steady beat, not a conducting pattern.
• Scoring: There were times last night that I was playing the handbells for what I believed to be at the correct times. Then I would score a zero and my Mii musician would cry. I can see some students becoming frustrated with the scoring process.

My final assessment of this product is that I could see myself using this as an end-of-the-year or before-a-break activity. I would lean towards not using this numerous times in my classroom because there are programs like Subotnick’s series, Sibelius’s Groovy Music Series, Music Ace, and others that could serve the same purpose and would be considered more musically educational than Wii Music. In addition, with the cost of Wii Music and the Wii System, I could not allow myself to use my music budget on these items when I could use the budget to purchase another Orff instrument, or replace an old and broken sound system, or purchase recorders for the entire 3rd grade, and so on.

I am aware that MENC partnered with Nintendo to place Wii Music and Wii systems in schools to enhance their music programs and for the teachers to write lesson plans using the system. I would like to read how this turns out.

Have you used Wii Music in your music classroom? If so, how? Or, would you use Wii Music in your classroom? I would love to hear from you!

If you have been keeping up with many of the music technology blogs, then you are probably aware that yesterday Avid released Sibelius 6. There are some excellent additions and updates to this newest version.

1. Magnetic Layout: This tool will save lots of time when editing a score. In the previous versions, you would have to spend time alligning dynamics, slurs, and other phrasing tools. Now, Sibelius does this automatically from the first note inputted onto the screen.
2. Versions and Classroom Control: These two new features are wonderful for music educators. Versions enables educators to efficiently track student progress, spot plagiarism and promote collaboration. Classroom Control allows the teacher to leave messages for the student right on the composition and allows the student to respond. It reminds me of Microsoft Word’s track changes.
3. Keyboard and Fretboard Windows: Adds another way to input notes. It also allows a visual approach to composing.
4. ReWire Support: As stated in the press release: “simplifies the once challenging process of incorporating audio tracks into notation-focused projects, making it an ideal tool to facilitate a film’s orchestral session.  By synchronizing Sibelius software with Pro Tools software (or other DAWs running on the same computer,) customers can start real-time playback in Sibelius and the DAW will follow, or vice versa.  Further, composers or orchestrators can easily add a vocal to a song created with Sibelius or augment an existing recording for enhanced creative options.”

I am excited about these new additions and updates to Sibelius and look forward to trying Sibelius 6!

One of my administrators sent me this site today and I really enjoy their premise. This website assists teachers and students in creating and publishing books for free to a class of 10 or more. As the creators of the wesbite state:

“StudentPublishing.com is a new division of Creations by You that is dedicated to providing special publishing opportunities to students and schools. Our mission is to support teachers with special projects that help inspire the writer in all students. We believe that everyone has a story to tell and can learn the skills to tell it well. We also believe in the motivational power of teachers and will strive to assist you in your endeavor to develop students to find their creative and expressive selves.

We wanted you to know that Creations by You recently launched StudentPublishing.com. This site is for your student’s teacher to make the same type of storybooks, or a classbook, with her or his own class [as IlluStory does]. In fact, several of our programs allow for making books at no cost to the school or the parents. We just simply require that teachers give parents the option of purchasing extra books, which as you know, make terrific gifts. Most of our programs offer books in 3 styles to meet any budget - hardcover, soft-cover or paperback - and with a variety of page layouts to accommodate most types of class projects.”
This site could be used to create a publish music books, musical stories, and more. Check it out when you get the chance!

I am curious to know which software you have used in your elementary general music classroom? Either using it with the students or you using it as an enhancement tool to your lesson.

I have used the following:

• Harmonic Vision’s Music Ace (1&2): I have had students use the lessons and games to assess musical concepts being taught in class. For example steady beat, lines and spaces on the staff, steps and skips on the staff, and more.
• Sibelius’s Groovy Music (Shapes and Jungle): I have had the students use this program to create songs that integrate their science unit on the rainforest or songs with guided forms.
• Apple’s GarageBand: I have had the students use this program to create accompaniments to melodies that they have composed with Finale Notepad.
• Finale NotePad: I have had students use this program to compose melodies to state songs or melodies that use certain notes and rhythms.
  • Side note: Disappointed that Finale NotePad is no longer free? Try Noteflight! You can do many of same things that you could do in NotePad, but for free!
• Morton Subotnick’s World of Music: Great application that I use with the students when we are studying music and instruments from various countries.
• Skype: A great way to communicate with other elementary music classrooms.
• Audacity: A freeware I use to record my students singing and performing, edit tempo and keys to certain cd tracks, and more. I have also used Apple’s GarageBand and MOTU’s Digital Performer to do this as well, though Audacity does change the tempo and keys easily and succesfully over GarageBand.

Many of the projects that I listed above can be seen and heard on my website.

Those are just some of the programs that I use with my students. What are some of the programs that you use?

Recently, I received an eblast from MENC about schooltube, “the leading media-sharing website for the entire K-12 school community and is exclusively endorsed by major educational associations, including the National Association of Elementary School Principals (NAESP) and the National Association of Secondary School Principals (NASSP).”

As I checked out some of the videos that were in MENC’s eblast and then checked out the elementary general music videos, I liked the aspect of sharing what we are doing in our classrooms with each other. I also liked hearing repertoire performed by other students, though I question the copyright aspect of that. One aspect that I did not like was the rating scale. Anyone can anonymously rate your video with predetermined remarks like “Not so good,” “I would give it a C,” or “That was sad.” Your students can easily access this website and read those disparaging remarks. That concerns me a lot.

Though I encourage schools sharing their ideas and music from the classroom and I am a big advocate of technology achieving this goal, I hesitate using a website like this because of the rating scale.

I would love to hear from you if you have used this website.

If you have not already checked it out, I highly encourage you to read the May Music Education Blog Carnival being hosted by Natalie Wickham of Music Matters Blog. I like the way she breaks down the carnival into categories such as Music Technology, Music Performance, Music Pedagogy, Tip, and Other. I took great interest in reading David French’s post titled Computer Singing posted at Tanbur Music Education Blogspot. It relates “using the computer to promote singing activities in the music classroom” especially the secondary school music classroom.

I hope that if you get the chance, you will read the blog for this month!

I will be off from blogging this week to enjoy my new baby daughter who delighted her dad and I by joining us this past weekend!

Have a wonderful week!