Elementary Music/Music Technology Blog

MENC annually celebrates September 14th as National Anthem Day because it is the day that Francis Scott Key penned the lyrics to “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Though he originally wrote it as a poem inspired by seeing the American flag still flying at Fort McHenry, it later became our country’s national anthem in 1931.

This year, I was thinking about downloading one of recordings from MENC’s site and splicing it using Audacity or GarageBand. My students (grade 3 and up) would then have to put the song back together in the proper order. This could be done as a class project with the Audacity or GarageBand file being projected onto one screen, or in a computer lab where each student would work individually to edit the piece back together. Either way, it will be an excellent way to assess the students’ knowledge of the lyrics of the song.

Do you celebrate this day in your classes? If so, what do you do with your students?

Next week, I will be heading to Central Connecticut State University (CCSU) to teach the course “Integrating Technology into the Elementary Music Classroom.” I am excited to teach this course because I am very passionate about the subject, I have a full class, and I am teaching at the university that I earned my Masters of Science in Music Education.

We will be keeping a blog and wikispace to track our progress and to post our works. Please take a look at it during next week and feel free to leave us some comments.

During the winter trimester, the first graders at FHCDS studied Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf. They learned about the characters of the story and how the instruments of the orchestra represented each character.

At the end of the trimester, they (with my assistance) created these podcasts. For this project, they composed new rhythms for each character, performed the rhythms (as well as they could) using classroom instruments, told me the story so that I could narrate it, and they drew all of the pictures.

I hope that you enjoy their renditions of Peter and the Wolf.

Click here to listen to three different versions from the first grade classes.

My students in second grade learned about the life and music of Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827). We read a book titled Ludwig van Beethoven by Louis Sabin. We then listened and moved to his music. Finally, we watched Beethoven Lives Upstairs, a movie about a nine-year old who comes to adore Beethoven and realizes that Beethoven is a musical genius. We then wrote facts about Beethoven’s life and music, recorded ourselves speaking about Beethoven’s life, and picked the music to accompany our podcast. My students hope that you will enjoy their podcasts!

As I finish up my spring break, I thought that I would finish my re-posting of my blog posts with this one below. I chose this one for a few reasons:

1. Apple’s GarageBand is an excellent tool for the elementary music students, as well as middle school and high school music students. I have used this with my third graders, and it literally took me 5 minutes to teach them how to use it before they were off and running. If you do not have a MAC, check below as I have updated the PC alternatives.
2. This post received numerous responses.
3. I wrote this post on May 1, 2008. My baby is slated to be due on May 1, 2009. So this day is special to me. Plus, it is also my father’s birthday.
4. I updated some of this post to include the most current version of GarageBand (’09), which came out earlier this year.
5. My current 3rd graders are in the middle of this lesson about composing songs about the states that they are studying in their classrooms. It is a nice integration project.

I hope that you enjoy!

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Before I begin this post about how Apple’s GarageBand can be utilized in an elementary music classroom, I feel it necessary to discuss why you would use this application in your elementary music classroom. I tend to use GarageBand with grades 3 and up because there are more suitable ways for younger students (PreK-grade 2) to create music, like playing Orff instruments, recorders, classroom instruments, or using Sibelius’s Groovy Shapes. However, I have had wonderful success with grades 3 and up using GarageBand in the elementary music classroom to create music. Some might state that using a loop-based program to create music by just having the students click and drag loops to form a song, is not creating music. Well, at least not in the traditional sense where we (as music teachers) learned the basics of music to compose. However, I tend to use GarageBand as a tool to assist students in creating accompaniments to the songs that they compose. That way, I still have the students utilizing the basic music and composition skills that I have taught them, but they think that it is fun or “a blast!” as they wrote in their reflections.Apple’s GaragBand 1 came out in 2004 for MAC. Apple is currently in its 5th version titled, “GarageBand ‘09.” Apple markets it as “your own personal recording studio — where it’s easy to make a song whether you’re a first-time musician or a seasoned pro.” There are many functions to GarageBand from creating a song, to scoring a movie, to creating a podcast that can be published to your website, to performing with a “Magic GarageBand,” to learning how to play the guitar or piano. The lesson I share is one I did successfully with my 3rd graders in 2008 and I am currently doing now in 2009:

Lesson: My 3rd graders study the 50 states every winter, which culminates with a”50 State Fair” at the end of the winter term. During this fair, each student presents various facts about the state that he/she was assigned. To integrate music into this fair, without just singing the Ray Charles’s tune “Fifty Nifty,” we compose our own state songs. Each student composes an 8-measure song using the notes and rhythms that they can play on the recorder. This particular 3rd grade was able to play and read the notes G A B C and D on the recorder. After they composed their song using the freeware Finale Notepad (unfortunately as of 09/2008, this software is no longer free), they then created an accompaniment to their song using GarageBand ‘08. We saved their compositions as MIDI files and clicked and dragged them into GarageBand ‘o8 (Finale Notepad allows you to save the music as midi files). Once their songs were in GarageBand, they arranged an accompaniment that consisted of bass loops, drum loops, guitar loops, and piano loops. I taught them about the various musical styles and how just throwing any loops on the screen would not always produce a favorable, musical product. After they completed their accompaniments, they played their recorders along with their GarageBand accompaniments. To see and listen to their works, please click here (this might take a minute to load). If you click on the 1st and 2nd grade pages, you will hear their podcasts on Peter and the Wolf and Beethoven, both were created in GarageBand.

When I had the 3rd graders reflect on this project, many of them commented on how fun it was to write a song. Some examples of my 3rd graders’ reflections (they were not edited):

“I think I rote a good song.” “I thought it was fun because I got to compose and I like to compose.” “I love music! I am so happy we get to use grage band in music. It was realy nice to learn how to make a song.” “I think that it was so cool that social studies was in music.”

GarageBand is for MAC only. What do I do if I work on a PC? Music teachers with a PC tell me about Sony Acid Music Studio, is comparable to GarageBand. In addition, James Frankel blogged about Mixcraft from Acoustica, which has an interface very similar to GarageBand. He also wrote an article about how to use mixcraft.  Super Duper Music Looper has been another product that teachers have stated that has been similar to GarageBand and successful in their elementary music classrooms. Finally, try TrakAx, a free video and music software program that is very similar to GarageBand.

GarageBand can do so much more in the classroom. I just gave a snippet of some things that it can do. At NJMEA in 2008, TI:ME member Christine DeSimone from Edgar Middle School in Metuchen, NJ, did an excellent session on “GarageBand in The World Music Classroom” where she demonstrated her middle schoolers’ works with World Music. At the 2008 TI:ME national conference in Michigan (and the 2008 MENC national conference), Carol Broos presented about “Flash, GarageBand, and Movie Scoring” to a room of 100+ music educators. Over the years, James Frankel has presented several excellent sessions on how to utilize GarageBand in the classroom.

My questions to you are:

1. Have you used any music software to enhance your curriculum?
2. If so, which applications have you used?

3. If not, do you think that you might try to use music software to enhance your music lessons in the future?

If you get a chance, please respond.

Today, my 3rd graders were composing an 8-measure song using Finale Notepad ‘08 as a part of their 50 States unit. In their social studies unit, each student is assigned a state that they research and present facts about during the April “50 States Fair”. In music class, they use Finale Notepad ‘08, the notes that they study and perform on the recorder (BAG, whole notes, half notes, and quarter notes), compose an 8-measure melody, and then create an accompaniment to their melodies using Apple’s Garageband. They finish the song by writing lyrics to their state song melodies using the facts that they learned and researched about their states. This lesson is done in five groups of 4-5 students. Therefore, they work together to compose the melody and the accompaniment. When I print out their melodies, each student will individually write in their own lyrics. You can see some of the students works from last year by clicking here.

Today, I decided to give one of the larger groups a Korg Nano Keyboard to use to play the notes into the score instead of clicking and dragging the notes. The larger group tends to take a longer time, so I was hoping that by playing the keyboard, they would save some time and keep up with the rest of the class. This worked very well and the students loved playing the notes on the Korg Nano Keyboard.

A few items that I noticed that benefitted the students greatly:

1. When they played a G on the keyboard, they stopped to look at the note on screen to see if it matched what they just played. This was a great way for them to assess themselves.
2. Some of my 3rd graders have issues with their fine coordination skills. The keyboard’s keys are nice and large so all of my students achieve success when playing on them.
3. Easy to set up: Just plug it into the USB drive and the computer recognizes it immediately. In Finale Notepad ‘08, just go to the MIDI setup and click on nano keyboard. It immediately works.
4. Inexpensive: Priced at $49.99, it easily fits into an elementary general music budget.

Korg also makes a USB drum pad and a USB controller. If you would like to learn more about these products, please check out SoundTree’s website.

Last month, I blogged about a lesson I performed with my 3rd graders using Sibelius’s Groovy Jungle, which integrated music and science. Today, SoundTree published the lesson in their February 2009 monthly newsletter SoundWaves. You can find and download the lesson here. If you do not know about SoundTree, I highly suggest you check them out. “SoundTree specializes in turn-key learning systems for education integrating electronic music instruments, audio components, video production tools, computers and software; SoundTree provides advice, planning, complete installation services, staff training and after-purchase support.” In addition, they provide free ground shipping. My school has been SoundTree customers for over 10 years and have been very happy with their service and support. To join their monthly newsletter SoundWaves, click here.

I hope that you enjoy the lesson and find it useful in your classroom.

This trimester, my 3rd graders learned about the rainforest in their Science classes. To integrate what they learned in science with music, the students created a song to go with the facts that they learned about the rainforest. The students used Sibelius’s Groovy Jungle to create their music. I divided them into five groups of 3-4 students. They each launched Groovy Jungle from one of the five computers in the music classroom. Together, they decided on and typed in facts about the rainforest. They used melody butterflies, bass line bushes, chord cobwebs, arpeggio flies, rhythm trees, and bonus animals to create wonderful musical works. When they were finished, they presented their works to the rest of the class. They recited their facts and explained why they used the musical elements of melody, rhythm, chords, arpeggios, bass lines, and especially the bonus animals in certain places of the songs. When you view and listen to the pieces, you will see that many of the students coordinated their music with their facts. I hope that you enjoy their wonderful musical creations!

To view and listen to their music, please click here. Please note that the page might take a few minutes to load. In addition, your browser will need to be able to play m4p video files. If it cannot, you can easily download Quicktime for free. The screen videos were recorded with Jing Pro.

Please leave a comment. The students would love to know what you thought of their songs.

If you teach in a school that has a grade that celebrates the 100th day of school, then you know how important the number 100 is. As my school will be approaching the 100th day of school in the next month or so, I have already seen the projects begin. In all of the Primary grades, the students begin each day by placing the number of the day onto the number corner calendar. When the 100th day of school occurs, my 1st graders will make visors with 100 stickers on them and wear them for the entire day. In addition, they all bring in a 100 pieces of snack (i.e. 100 M&Ms, 100 pretzels, 100 pieces of granola, etc) and the teachers mix it in a huge bowl and distribute the trail mix as snack for that day.

In music class, my 1st graders and I make a list of our 100 favorite songs (with the limitations of no “bad” words–you would not believe what some 1st graders listen to because they have older siblings, etc) and I post the list outside my classroom. Then, I see the middle schoolers come by and read the list. They will stop and tell me that they love some of the songs the 1st graders picked and they remembered when they did this in music when they were in first grade. I share their comments with the 1st graders, who beam with pride.

We also learn some vocal and rhythm skills from singing songs from Music K-8 such as “The 100th Day of School” and “One Zero Zero.” We will perform them on a community meeting close to the 100th day of school.

Finally, 100 means a lot to me because I have just reached my 100th post of my blog! Thank you for reading and sending me a comments. It makes my day!

What do you do in music class to celebrate the 100th day of school?

Click to hear the song: jam-the-fore.mid

Today, I integrated what the 3rd graders were studying in science class into our music class. For the past month, the students have been learning about the Rainforest. Today, I divided the students into 5 groups. Each group launched Sibelius’s Groovy Jungle, used the text tool to type three facts about the Rainforest into the create mode, and created a song that emphasized their facts. The students used musical elements such as melody butterflies, rhythm trees, chord webs, arpeggio flies, bass line bushes, and bonus animals. At the end of the project, they titled their Rainforest and presented their song to the class. They described why they used melodies in some measures, why they chose certain bonus animals to emphasize words, and why they chose the musical elements that they did. Afterward, I saved the Groovy file as a MIDI file. If need be, I could convert the MIDI file to an mp3 using iTunes.

The students loved this project. Once all of the 3rd graders are finished, I will post them on my website: http://www.amymburns.com.

For now, please enjoy this example from a group of three third graders, who titled their song/Rainforest “Jam the Fore.” If it is difficult to see the pictures, then click on the picture and a bigger version of the picture will appear. I hope that you enjoy it!