Creating Original Music (and Dance?)

Reflections for Week 3... The readings and videos for this week got me fired up to find new ways to involve composition in my band program! The uniqueness of my teaching situation often makes projects and assignments difficult due to time constraints. I only have a rehearsal with my band once each week, so we’ve got a long list of things to accomplish at each rehearsal and I often feel that it will be difficult to be ready for our performances if we take time to do things other than working on our pieces. The other aspect of my program is a 20 minute private lesson for each student every week. That allows me to do some things with students one-on-one, which is great, but I often feel pressured to make sure we get through what they practiced at home that week so they aren’t “stuck” with the same assignment for another week. Neither side of the program allows for time in a computer lab where we can all work on projects at the same time. In the past I’ve included some small arranging and composition exercises. Each fall I would have my beginning band write a piece that would be performed at our first concert. It was always a short 8 measure piece that only used the first five notes, but we composed it together. I projected a blank Finale document on the screen and we voted on pitches and rhythms, usually only half and whole notes for that first concert. I could play it back for them immediately, and often times they would hear things they didn’t like and we would fix them. Once in awhile I had to guide them to the correct note at the end, but most of the time they could figure out what sounded right and what didn’t. I would take title suggestions and they would vote on that as well. This way, each group of beginners had a piece they could call their own. In the spring, we wrote a series of variations together on that original theme and performed it with those added variations at our final concert. I also gave those same students a copy of Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star or Mary Had a Little Lamb, already transposed for them, with enough blank measures to write a variation to it. I would then pick a few of the more original ones and put that together as a theme and variations that featured some of our individual young composers. Everyone played all of it in unison, so there wasn’t a lot of depth to what we did, but it gave the students an opportunity to exercise their own creativity, within certain parameters to give them a better chance for success. Four years ago I moved to a different area and here I have a coworker who runs the beginner band. I still teach all levels of students from grades five through eight, so I do still have the younger ones for individual lessons. There are some neat exercises in our method book, Tradition of Excellence, but I would like to do more. There are so many neat apps out there, some of which I already have on my iPad, but I just haven’t taken the time to explore them enough to see what we could do with them. Just searching a bit today I found I have Loopseque, Looptastic, and Beatwave, all of which look like they have some great possibilities. Maybe I could take one lesson each quarter or semester to have each student use one of these apps to create something original. During my work with Soundation this week, I was reminded of an app called QDancer, which is included with the Quaver Music Online Curriculum and is available as a standalone app. With QDancer, you are able to create your own dance routine to different pre-recorded music tracks. You can set up a ballet routine or a hip-hop routine. There are over 50 stationary and travelling moves to choose from, and you compile the dance by dragging and dropping the actions onto a timeline. There are different backgrounds to choose from and lighting commands you can set up to enhance the performance. When you’re finished, you can watch the routine and save it to share with others. The video below shows QDancer in action.

There are a lot of great possibilities in the area of composition and I hope to explore those more in an effort to include more of this important aspect of musicianship with my students. If you have any favorite activities, projects, or apps you use, please let me know!

Reflections on NoteFlight

Finale has been my only method of music notation for over 20 years. During that time, I’ve suggested Finale Notepad to my lesson students whenever they’ve asked about a music notation program or when they start working on transposing hymns or other music to play for church services, etc. The assignment for this week was the first time I’ve encountered NoteFlight. While my brain is currently wired to work in Finale, I found NoteFlight quite easy to use. I really like that it is web based and that students can use it for free, with an option to upgrade if they would like. There are many online tutorials to help first time users get started, which means students can explore the possibilities on their own. The sharing capabilities are very nice as well. I love that students are be able to share their creations and get feedback from others. I think NoteFlight has become my new suggestion for students looking for a way to create professional looking printouts of their own creations and arrangements.

Here is a link to my NoteFlight assignment.

Composition and Technology

Reflections for Week 2...

There were so many possibilities for my official blog post for class this week! The lecture, the readings in the text, and the assignments provided a lot of information about composition, notation software, and improvisation.

I appreciated the explanations of MIDI in Chapter 2, especially in regard to MIDI In, MIDI Out, and MIDI Thru. I now use a MacBook and haven’t had nearly as much trouble, but I remember trying to get Finale to play nice with my Windows machine about 10 years ago and spending hours trying to get my keyboard, my computer, and Finale to work with each other. It took lots of time (and frustration) to figure it out each time I wanted to do some work on replacing missing parts or creating parts for non-traditional instruments for my jazz band. The book did a good job of explaining that communication process.

My main focus for this post is a reflection back on a unique concert experience I put together for my band and our audience a couple of years ago. As a 5th through 12th grade music department, we decided that we were going to have a composition focus for our December concert. Our high school director had the students in his groups write their own compositions for the concert. Some wrote solo pieces while others wrote ensembles. The director in charge of the fifth and sixth grade bands did some group composition with her groups. I decided to go for broke and involve the audience. I wasn’t sure how I was going to do that, but after some internet searching and a little experimentation, I found a way…

I gave my band students an assignment where I asked them to compose a short piece of music. I gave them 5 rules:

• Start with the clef needed for your instrument.
• Put any sharps or flats you need in order to write in the key of Concert B-flat for your instrument.
• Put the time signature needed in order to play four beats in each measure.
• Write an eight measure piece using any of the notes from the Concert B-flat scale.
• Feel free to use any musical symbols you normally have in your music (slurs and other articulation markings, dynamics, etc.).

I collected the compositions a couple weeks later, selected four that would work in any order, and transposed parts for everyone using Finale. We spent some rehearsal time playing them in different orders and experimenting with a website called polleverywhere.com. I set up a poll that assigned a letter (A-D) to each of the four student compositions. I had the students use their phones and other devices to vote for which piece we would play first, second, and third, which would also automatically decide which one was the final piece. We worked out the kinks in rehearsal, which led to a great concert experience.

For the concert, I set up a PowerPoint presentation with the four compositions in concert pitch and the texting information required to participate in the voting. The band and the audience could actually watch the results live on the screen, so there were interesting reactions in real time to which piece was “winning.” The audience chose which piece was first, which was second, and which was third. The band then played a song that had been written collectively by some of the members of the band and arranged by the audience. It was a great way to combine composition and technology, as well as the band and the audience, all together.

What Technology?!

Reflections for Week 1...

I’ve always enjoyed learning about and using new technologies. As far back as I can remember, we had a computer in our house since my dad was a computer science major in college, back in the days of punch cards and computers that filled entire rooms. I loved early basic programming and figuring out how to make my computer do things. As I got more into music, I enjoyed listening to the warm sound of vinyl records (those of my parents and eventually my own). As I became more aware of what else was out there by listening to the radio, I wanted to be able to capture those sounds to listen to them whenever I wanted. I used to hold my little Fisher Price tape recorder up to my radio during Dick Clark’s weekly American Top 40 program so I could “save” my favorite songs. Over time, those records and tapes were replaced by CDs and eventually MP3s. Music and computers have come a long way in the last 30 years.

Getting older and having a family, my budget is tighter and I rarely have the latest and greatest technology. I’ve been blessed to have a MacBook Pro and an iPad for school use the last four years and honestly don’t think I could go back to teaching without them. Between SmartMusic, Finale, Dropbox, and Audacity on my MacBook and SmartMusic, Dropbox, Noteshelf, TinyScan, WavePad, any many other apps including metronomes and tuners, all in one device in my iPad, I don’t think I’d want to go back to teaching without them!

We started a 1-to-1 “bring your own device” program at our high school this year. While I don’t think there are any Luddites on our faculty, there were a lot of people concerned about going this direction. Some were worried about our network and facilities being able to handle the load. Others were concerned about how to incorporate technology (whatever that meant to them) into their current teaching style and subject matter. Within our music department we had some concerns, especially in regard to our new music technology class. The school qualifications for a device are open enough to include Chromebooks, Macs, and Windows computers. We purchased USB keyboards, but later found out Chromebooks don’t play nice with them. We also had access to an iPad cart with enough devices for the class to use, but ran into other issues with getting those set up. There are so many great possibilities out there and there are often obstacles to overcome to get to where we want to be. But it is often in getting through those obstacles that we learn and grow the most. For me personally, troubleshooting technology gives me great personal satisfaction and often leads to a better understanding of how it all works.

As Bauer stated in the opening chapter of our textbook, the definition of technology can include everything from pencils to automobiles to food processors. I’m looking forward to learning more about the computers and digital tools discussed in the text and in our projects and discussions over the next seven weeks. I’m excited about the possibilities for my personal learning and growing, as well as for my students.

Welcome!

The following posts will be my musings on the world of technology and how it relates to music education...