I love collecting intriguing images and videos – things that stop me in my tracks and pique my curiosity. I always figure that if it fascinates me, students would probably be interested also. Often, these visuals work as wonderful hooks for a lesson you need to teach.
In that vein, here’s OK Go’s music video, The Writing’s On The Wall (YouTube link in case you don’t see it below)
Published on Jan 24, 2015 Imitone is new software, introduced at NAMM 2015, which turns vocal hums into computer generated instruments. The $25 program for Mac and Windows is previewed at NAMM.
For another innovation involving music, seeOpen Orchestra
Music IO: MIDI Over USB by Secret Base Design is the second app released this weekend that allows for MIDI to be sent over the charging cable of your iPad when connected to your Mac! Such an amazing new possibility! Actually , this is how things should have worked from the start!
Resources that private music teachers love — from musicteachershelper.com 305 music teachers shared their favorite music games and apps, method books, where they buy sheet music, and more!
Kurt Nemes’ Classical Music Almanac — from musicalalmanac.wordpress.com ( A love affair with music)
Beethoven
Bach
Ravel
Mozart
Rossini
Brahms
Debussy
Stravinsky
Tchaikovsky
Rachmaninov
Russell can send students audio recordings that they can play along with as they practice. His students can use a music-writing app such as Notion to make their own practice tracks and compose their own songs. “That is a complete redefinition of what you do with students,” he said. “It was inconceivable before they had these devices.”
Russell said he is also excited about a relatively new app called NotateMe, which allows him to write musical notation and convert it to digital notation. The app also allows you to take a picture of a score and convert it to digital music.
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But now with tools such as NoteFlight, second- and third-graders can create wonderful melodic compositions and play them on their recorder,” she said.
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Pirzer now uses her Epson BrightLink interactive projector in conjunction with Smart Notebook collaborative learning software and apps such as TonalEnergy Tuner, which lets users understand and improve every aspect of their sound.
How to find free music for videos— from mccoyproductions.net by Jason McCoy <– Jason’s posting includes 31 Amazing Sites With Free Creative Commons Music
Excerpt:
If you’re embarking on a video project, perhaps an explainer video, podcast, school project or video presentation, using the right production music can be the key to successfully drawing your viewers in; but finding the perfect song can seem a daunting task.
Of course you could commission a track to be composed especially for you, but that can run into tens of thousands of dollars.
Luckily, there are plenty of places available for you to find free music for your video project, but where can you get it from and how do you know if you have the legal right to use it for your project?
London-based JukeDeck has received a small seed funding round for its platform which literally composes original music based on a user’s settings, giving video creators, games developers and other users a simple way of sourcing music. This might be based on the actions inside a video or a game, without any human intervention. The idea is that it’s “responsive music software”. It doesn’t use loops, but writes the music note by note, as a composer would.
This means it can, say its makers, create an unlimited amount of unique, copyright-free music, and users can choose the music’s style and what should happen in the music at various points. The first market will be for user-generated videos. The idea here is not to compete with human composers but to produce machine-made music that is listenable and eventually malleable by real musicians.
From DSC: Then there’s an idea I had about being able to hear whichever parts you want to hear as you practice a piece of music. Don’t have a piano? No problem. You can’t play the piano even if you do have access to one? No problem. Want to hear just the tenor and alto parts? No problem. Want to hear just your bass part? No problem. Want to hear all parts together? No problem. Jump to measure 121? No problem. Publishers of music could provide music recorded in parts and let you select which part(s) you want to play and hear.
As I’ve attended music teacher workshops and conferences over the years, one of the highlights has always been attending master classes. I love watching other teachers interact with students and gleaning insights that I can utilize in my own teaching. Musaic – an initiative of New World Symphony – seeks to bring masterclasses and dozens of other videos from professional musicians right to your fingertips!In addition to masterclasses, you can view a growing collection of performances, tips, and how-to videos that will prove beneficial to music teachers and students alike. What a great project!
These are some of the links I saved from the webinar, which were shared by participants. This was an excellent session and I learned about several new resources I’m anxious to try with my own students in digital storytelling projects!
Creative storytelling with Storehouse — from blogs.elon.edu by Analise Godfrey (Storehouse was created by former Apple User Experience Evangelist, Mark Kawano)
Theia Introducing a new and exciting world view, Theia smart glasses naturally integrate augmented reality together with your reality using unique technology and seamless design.
The platforms that businesses most commonly use to communicate with both colleagues and clients — phone, email, face-to-face meetings and video chat — are typically only used one at a time. If it’s just a quick chat, you pick up the phone, if you need to send a document you send an email. But is there a way to make multimedia collaboration more seamless through a single platform? We recently wrote about Talko, which aims to make voice calls more like emails. Now a similar service, Blrt, is offering both real-time and anytime sharing of documents, with integrated drawing and voice commenting tools.
30 Ways Google Glass Works in Classrooms [#Infographic] — from edtechmagazine.com by D. Frank Smith From allowing student to connect virtually with peers and teachers to helping identify learning difficulties, the wearable tech has clear potential as an aid.
Regardless of whether you agree with their criteria or the general practice of creating rankings, their newest initiative is undoubtedly an impressive leveraging of Big Data, applying complex algorithms to LinkedIn’s vast database of 313 million users to derive interesting conclusions for both students and those marketing higher education.
Microsoft is rebranding it’s unified communication platform Microsoft Lync. Microsoft plans to retool their approach to unified communications, and launch under the name “Skype for Business” in 2015. Microsoft originally acquired Skype for $8.5 billion in 2011.
The Redmond, WA based software giant made significant strides into the Unified Communications space, offering a cost-competitive unified communications platform which included Telephony, Chat, Collaboration and Video Conferencing all from the desktop, laptop or tablet.
Over recent years, many great drawing and painting apps have become available for tablets and smart phones. Here’s our pick of the most comprehensive packages on the market.
While it seems likely that most will use PhotoMath to sidestep actual learning, PhotoMath includes a “Steps” button that cleverly walks you through the steps from the original equation to the final answer.
Addendum on 11/2014 — some music-related apps from the November 2014 edition of The Journal:
[On July 28, 2014], we are pleased to announce a new product – Field of Study Explorer– designed to help students like Candice explore the wide range of careers LinkedIn members have pursued based on what they studied in school.
So let’s explore the validity of this assumption: studying fine art = unemployment by looking at the careers of members who studied Fine & Studio Arts at Universities around the world. Are they all starving artists who live in their parents’ basements?
Who majored in Slovak language and literature? At least 14 IBM employees, according to LinkedIn.
Late last month LinkedIn unveiled a “field of study explorer.” Enter a field of study – even one as obscure in the U.S. as Slovak – and you’ll see which companies Slovak majors on LinkedIn work for, which fields they work in and where they went to college. You can also search by college, by industry and by location. You can winnow down, if you desire, to find the employee who majored in Slovak at the Open University and worked in Britain after graduation.
From DSC: Thanks Jennifer for posting the above item! What a wonderful video! I loved watching it. Congratulations and thanks go out to MIT, David Moinina Sengeh (see here and here) and Kelvin Coe for maximizing the gifts that they’ve been given! They are changing the world!
An incredible example of heutagogy at work! In Kelvin’s story, you see passion, self-directed learning, and intrinsic motivation to make a difference — to help his community and to positively change his world.
15-Year-Oid Kelvin Doe is an engineering whiz living in Sierra Leone who scours the trash bins for spare parts, which he uses to build batteries, generators and transmitters. Completely self-taught, Kelvin has created his own radio station where he broadcasts news and plays music under the moniker, OJ Focus. Kelvin became the youngest person in history to be invited to the ‘V isiting Practitione(s Program” at MIT. THNKR had exclusive access to Kelvin and his life-changing journey – experiencing the US for the first t ime, exploring incredible opportunities, contending
with homesickness, and mapping out his future.
I can’t even clap in time but that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t love the ability to make music. A couple of these apps – Soundrop and Beatwave were two of my earliest apps and I often return to them to ‘play’. Children, even very small children also have the ability to create really interesting music with these apps. I love the fact that they often get lost in these apps for long periods of time just sorting out something that sounds right to them.
Also, per Lynn Marentette (@lynnmarentette) two other good music apps are:
From DSC:
Then, as they get older and a bit more experienced, perhaps they might enjoy Garageband for iOS.
Make tracks. Up to 32 of them.
Capture an astounding 32 tracks with your iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch.
Need even more? You can merge tracks to make room and keep going.
From DSC: ConsiderNoisetrade.com (a resource graciously relayed to me by Mr. Michael Haan at Calvin College)
Using this site/service, people can download music for free and donate to the artists if they want to (and I think they should). The WIN for the artist is more visibility and the ability to create/expand a fan base.
This site/service is another example of people representing themselves…of selling what they have to offer…of people representing their own brands.
As work becomes more flexible and communication more mobile, the office is turning into an increasingly complex and even abstract concept. As we look to the future, we have to ask: Will the workplace be on-site at our employer’s property, or on-demand at a collaborative space? Or will work simply be a mindset independent of place or time of day?
On Thursday, at the stroke of midnight, pop impresario Pharrell Williams debuted the video for his new single, “Happy.” It’s 24 hours long.
The video, available for streaming on 24hoursofhappy.com, features various dancers lip-synching to Williams’ single throughout the course of a day in Los Angeles. The four-minute, upbeat song is played on loop, with each cycle introducing a new dancer (or dancers) at a different location. Viewers can fast-forward or move backward using a clock interface that hovers over the display, and share specific moments on Twitter or Facebook. The dancers, meanwhile, include both anonymous extras and celebrities like Magic Johnson, Steve Carrell, and of course, Williams himself.
Also see:
From DSC: How might this relate to educationally-related videos?
And for those of you in marketing and retail out there, could be some sharp/beneficial applications for you all here.
Berklee College of Music announced Wednesday that it will begin offering bachelor’s degrees online in fall 2014 that will cost less than half of what students pay to take courses on its Boston campus.
The college said it will become the first nonprofit music institution to offer accredited bachelor’s degrees online. The degrees include professional studies in music business and music production.
“This is all about expanding access,” said Debbie Cavalier, vice president of online learning and continuing education for Berklee Online. “This is a way to provide access to people across the world who want to learn from Berklee faculty, but aren’t able to study here on our campus in Boston.”
From DSC: This is yet another example of The Walmart of Education trend that continues to develop.
From DSC: If you watch this ~8 min clip, I guarantee that you will smile — and, if it hits you like it hit me, you will even cry. But you will be touched. It’s music and life at the level of the soul.
I’d like to thank Joe and Kate Byerwalter for this excellent and fun find.
Rarely do I want to go out an immediately purchase a tune that I’ve just heard.
But that’s what happened when I heard the tune that Tommy Franklin danced to: Shooting Stars from The Bag Raiders
