What's on my desk?

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Earlier this year, I wrote a guest post for the Club MacStories newsletter showing off all the technology on my desk. With permission from the editors, I am cross-posting that below.

This desk is in my home music studio in Maryland. I run a private percussion teaching studio out of this space and produce my blog/podcast Music Ed Tech Talk.

My 14" MacBook Pro is the core of my computing life. It goes with me everywhere, from this desk to my day job as a middle school band director. I teach out of four different classrooms. USB-C hubs at all of my desks allow me to have distinctive hardware setups specific to each room while maintaining continuity through the consistency of my macOS settings and apps.

My secondary monitor is an LG Ultra Wide. I don't love it. I originally got it as a cheap way to interact with my Mac mini (dominantly used to serve up Plex content and run a Homebridge server.) I have phased out the Mac mini and hope to one day replace this monitor with something nicer now that it is used with the MacBook.

When my school district moved to virtual learning last year, I wanted to upgrade my webcam. The Logitech C920 was one of the most popular options I was coming across, and it hasn't let me down yet. I have a snake arm from Amazon (link) that allows me to easily adjust the angle of the camera and the ring light behind it. The arm can bend the camera down to face the surface of my desk and show what my hands are doing during virtual classes, presentations, and live streams.

These M-Audio BX5a monitors were on sale ten years ago, presumably because red is a less popular color than black. I actually kind of like having an accent color. They sound balanced enough to reference the diverse musical projects I edit. They produce enough output for my students to jam along to recordings on drum set.

Because the studio monitors are my primary sound output, the HomePod mini is used mainly for controlling Siri. I often ask it to turn on the baseboard heaters (with the Mysa HomeKit thermostat), the lights, and a red light outside the door to let my family know if I'm recording.

The Focusrite Scarlet 6i6 is my current audio interface. It has just enough ins and outs to plug my MIDI and audio input devices into my computer while outputting sound to the studio monitors. I don't currently do any fancy recording down here beyond my podcast and student audition tapes (which only require stereo recording).

The AKG P420 is my favorite mic for generalized recording in its price range. It's a resonant and balanced condenser microphone. I honestly think it compares to some microphones up to double the price. I use it primarily for virtual class, presentations, podcasting, and in a pair to record student audition tapes in stereo.

My Audio Technica headphones are pretty old and junky (I couldn't even find a link to this model online), but their long life speaks to the quality of AT's gear. I sometimes plug my AirPods Max into the Scarlet if I am already wearing them.

My Lamy Safari Fountain Pen and Rhodia notebook are my entry point into the world of better-than-average writing tools, and I am open to learning more!

I love the feel and simplicity of Apple's Magic Keyboard, Trackpad, and Mouse. It took some time to learn to use the trackpad on the left. Still, it gives me a powerful workflow where I can quickly make refined edits in audio software by zooming in and out of the project with my left hand while precisely manipulating content with the mouse.

I love my 12.9" iPad Pro! Sometimes I use it as a laptop at home and work. In my studio, I usually rip off the tablet and read full-sized sheet music on it using the forScore app. I also depend on the Tonal Energy Tuner, which is the most powerful app of its kind on the App Store and does not currently have a Mac version.

My Ableton Push 2 works primarily as a control surface for Ableton Live. It is a new addition, and I am overwhelmed by its potential. Ableton Live is a very advanced application, and the Push allows you to control almost all of its features with tactile, performable knobs and buttons. It makes the software feel like an instrument. You can use it to record note input, manage the tempo, trigger loops, edit samples, and more!

I play with music production for fun, but I also use the Push as a supercharged metronome when teaching private students. It allows me to get my eyes off the computer screen and focus more on the teaching because all the buttons can manipulate the app even when it isn't in the foreground.

I use a Stream Deck for all the same reasons MacStories readers might find it useful- live streaming, Shortcuts, and other automation. I also use it to navigate the deep menus and feature sets of Dorico, a music notation application.

Notation Central has pre-built Stream Deck profiles for major music notation apps available on their website (link).

The MicroKorg is a fun little synth that can be highly programmed to produce absolutely otherworldly audio. I also use it for MIDI note entry in digital audio workstations and music notation apps.

My electronic reference piano is a Korg Concert C-150, which I also use for MIDI note input. It's an electric upright piano from the 80s with the legs chopped off. A high school was going to throw it away in the early 2000s before I asked if I could have it instead. I like it because it has a flat surface for putting stuff on (like other keyboards).

On top of the Korg is a Roland Octopad SPD-30. This is a great electronic drum sampler. It has an excellent library of its sounds and can trigger note input in music software using my most comfortable input method (drum sticks).

Next to the Octopad is my Yamaha Harmony Director. It's a keyboard that plays sustained tuning drones and can easily switch between different tuning systems. The drones can be played through speakers, or in my case, be used to create play-along practice material for students (link).

Apple TV. I wish I could say I use this for something other than playing Sonic the Hedgehog while my kid naps.

Instruments! The desk is a fun command station, but it's really only the hub of my digital productivity and creativity. The real bread and butter of my professional life are the instruments I play and teach. Depicted here are my vibraphone, marimba, timpani, drum sets, snare drum, wind instruments, and other fun!

Always Start from the Beginning: Developing Tone Quality, Intonation, Concert Repertoire, and Classroom Management through Unison Playing in Performing Ensembles

This post first appeared on the NAfME Blog on December 7, 2021. You can read it there by clicking here.

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Always Start from the Beginning

Every year I teach band, I start from the beginning. I find that if I rebuild the ensemble, focusing on fundamentals, it is impossible to fail.

This is especially true after many programs have lost over a year of in-person instruction. Even if students' skills have been sustained or improved, they are likely returning to the classroom with less handle on things that they can only learn in a group: intonation, balance, blend, and even basic rehearsal expectations.

They will have to relearn how to listen outside their comfortable bubble of one.

Caption: A mixer at the front of the room allows me to pump my voice, computer, and phone through a stereo and mix them to taste.

I want to describe some of the teaching strategies that have been most helpful this fall (and long since before COVID) while also sharing some technological tips I have taken from virtual learning into this year. I will explain how I am implementing them in my beginning band class to ensure that they develop great ears, strong ensemble sound, musicianship, and all while preparing concert music.

Developing the Ear

All excellent music-making starts with the ear. In Musical Performance: Learning Theory and Pedagogy, Daniel Kohut claims that students need a “superior concept” of the sound they wish to make. I believe this is much easier to achieve while playing in unison. Young musicians often learn this way by nature of beginning method books focusing on familiar, unison melodies, which elementary school teachers teach in instrument-specific sectionals. But when students first join a large ensemble, they can lose their independent sense of tone, intonation, and balance if too many separate voices start happening in their concert literature too soon.

Caption: The Tonal Energy Tuner app is only a few dollars, and it play justly in-tune polyphonic drones and a metronome simultaneously.

My Concert Band class has 50 6th and 7th-grade students. Many of these students are first-year players. This year, most of them had only experienced a half year of in-person band before walking into my classroom.

I decided to keep them playing in unison for as long as I could keep them interested. I wanted to emphasize tone quality, intonation, balance, and bend, while somehow managing the classroom and preparing them for a December concert. And I wanted to keep things fun. Was it possible to do all of this? Yes!

Caption: Dorico’s popovers, like this one for dynamics, allow you to enter notation naturally and quickly. Adding solfege with the Lyrics popover was equally easy.

Transforming Concert Literature into Unison Melodies

I started by ensuring that I centered instruction around accessible melodic material from the method book rather than technical exercises and drills. Additionally, I took the pieces I was planning for our winter concert and wrote out every person's part for every instrument using Dorico. Dorico’s keyboard shortcuts and flow-based composing make it easy to design supplemental resources as quickly as you can think.

Caption: Last school year, my team purchased some equipment to support hybrid teaching. This year, we have repurposed that gear to integrate audio technology into traditional rehearsals seamlessly.

The guides are organized by rehearsal marking. For example, Part 1 has everyone in the band playing the bass line of measures 1-8. By playing each part of the music sequentially, students get more practice sight-reading while learning who in the band plays which notes. By playing in unison, they leverage their strength in numbers to develop firmer and more stable tone quality while learning to hear what an ensemble blend should sound like for the first time.

Caption: This is what an individual part looks like in Dorico once completed. Instead of isolating sections of the band during rehearsal, I can have everyone playing at all times. For example, if I want to work with the tuba part in measure one, I can tell the entire band to play “Part 1. Lower Voice” and keep everyone engaged.

I write solfege into these practice guides and alternate between the students singing and playing. In a year without any COVID concerns, I would also encourage the brass to buzz these melodies on mouthpieces to develop their inner ear and flexibility.

Play-Along Resources Help Model Tone, Intonation, and Tempo

There is always a drone prominently playing through our sound system using the Tonal Energy Tuner app. The polyphonic drones can model justly in-tune intervals. Students can subtly adjust their pitch by making the “beats” that result between two out-of-tune pitches slow down and eventually dissolve.

Caption: One of the easiest and most engaging ways to encourage metronome practice is to play along to the Drummer Tracks in GarageBand. There are numerous styles, beats, and editing tools at your disposal. Beats are way more fun to play with and provide more musical feeling than a metronome.

I have created play-along tracks that combine trap beats with tuning drones. I like to pump them through the speakers during warm-ups and throughout rehearsal. You can make these too using the free GarageBand app on iOS.

Sometimes, I will have Tonal Energy coming through my phone and the beats coming through my Mac. This allows me to mix the drone and the metronome independently, as they are plugged into two separate channels of my mixer.

Speaking Calmly, Being Everywhere

A Shure wireless microphone goes into a third channel of the mixer, allowing me to speak in a comfortable room voice and be heard over the sound of loud drones, beats, and a full band of 50-65 students playing.

Caption: This Shure wireless headset microphone has been a game-changer this year. I don’t ever have to raise my voice to be understood. I can speak comfortably and be heard over the sound of a pumping drone and 60 students playing.

This technique works wonders for classroom management. Flowing from one part of our daily agenda to the next is nearly seamless because of how easy it is to keep everyone playing most of the rehearsal. With these persistent play-alongs underlying most of the rehearsal, my role could be described less like a traditional director and more like a spin instructor.

This might sound ridiculous at first, but it is true. A spin instructor curates music, keeps the beat moving you forward and paces instruction, all while making you sweat. This is precisely how I want my role to feel in the band room. I like to think of myself as a “coach” who directs students towards the goal while they work for it, rather than a “director” who beats the music into them.

Caption: My colleague, Ben Denne, teaches from our “command station” at the front of the room.

The wireless mic allows me to step off the podium and be heard from anywhere in the room. While the band is playing, I can be high-fiving students, sizing a student for concert attire, helping percussionists find their place, encouraging good trombone posture, or any other need. I can be everywhere and still keep the flow of rehearsal moving even when I’m off the podium.

Caption: Farrago is a useful app for queuing play-along material in a soundboard-style audio launcher. I keep my scale tracks organized and color-coded by key and rhythmic patterns to find them more easily.

Taking the Slow Road Gets Maximum Results

Once it is time to hand out concert music, I'm delighted to hear students say things like, "wait, we know this!." By this point, they can sing every part, play every part, and can now split into three or four unique voices because they are more confident in their melody from having practiced it with the strength of 60 musicians in unison.

Caption: AnyTune is another excellent app that can change the speed and pitch of a play-along track independently.

The results are clear. I have never had a more engaging, fun, and tightly managed beginning band experience. Students are developing fundamentals at a pace consistent, if not better, than a typical year, and we are stronger for it.

Connecting the Strands: Teaching Melody and Harmony Writing with Ukulele, Noteflight, and Soundtrap

The post below first appeared on the Noteflight blog on November 11th, 2021. You can read it there by clicking here or continue on below.

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Two important parts of teaching include:

1. Sequencing learning so that students how to go from point A to point B.
2. Doing it in a way that they understand how new skills fit into broader musical contexts.

As a band director who also teaches general music, I have always been confident in my ability to connect these dots in performing ensembles, and less so in general music classes. This year, I am determined to rectify that using new technologies in combination with traditional instruments.

Historically, my school district's general music curriculum has been categorized into four “strands:”

1. Drumming
2. Piano performance
3. Guitar performance
4. Technology

Last year, we began using Noteflight and Soundtrap to engage students with virtual music making. This year, we returned to in-person instruction and replaced our guitars with ukuleles, making chord strumming (and therefore an understanding of harmonic accompaniment) accessible earlier on in the learning sequence.

Moving into this year, I knew it was important that I leverage new technology in combination with traditional instrumental performance skills to create bigger musical connections.

My General Music II class, made up of 8th graders, is currently working on an assignment that leverages composition, recording, producing, ukulele performance, and harmonic understanding.

We start in Noteflight by composing an eight measure melody in C major. This is their first notation project of the year so directions and restrictions are fairly loose. Students are limited to certain rhythmic durations that I have taught them on drums but are otherwise free to experiment with their melody.

A blank eight measure Noteflight score is set as a template and linked to an assignment in my district’s Learning Management System, Canvas. Once students launch Noteflight as an external tool, they are taken immediately to the score depicted above, where they can begin editing, and submit their work in one click. In an LMS like Canvas, I am able to see the final submission in the Noteflight web app itself, where I can easily see the student’s work, demonstrate alterations for them, and provide other feedback directly.

After writing the melody, I had them write a chord progression in the key of C using our most familiar chords on the ukulele (C, F, G, Am). Pressing the letter K quickly allows for chord entry above the current selection.

Exporting the melody to Soundtrap is as easy as one click. Go to the Score Menu-->Export and then select "Open In Soundtrap." The notes of the melody will be brought in as a MIDI track.

From here, students can...

1. Change the sound of the melody using a different software instrument.
2. Record themselves strumming the ukulele part into an audio track.
3. Edit the ukulele with effects if wanted.
4. Add supplemental bass and drum parts from the loop library.

In no time, they have written their own melody, recorded their own accompaniment, and used pre-existing samples to create the effect of an entire band playing their music.

I modeled a final project for my students in class. See a video below of the demo I showed.

Once we have moved on to some piano reading and performing, I plan to teach the students the notes of the chords as they relate to their melody. We can then iterate on this project, by composing melodies that make appropriate use of chord tones. We will even be able to use our understanding of the keyboard layout to input notes into Noteflight through the piano itself, via MIDI cables which conect our classroom pianos to our Chromebooks.

Once we have studied more forms and musical styles, am confident that we can be writing and performing out own songs.

Guest Post on Scoring Notes: Use Shortcuts to quickly create score templates on macOS and iOS

I wrote a post for the Scoring Notes blog, published today. The post is all about using the Shortcuts app on iOS (and now the Mac) to create custom templates in music notation software.

I did my best to provide basic context for the Shortcuts app so that this post can be accessible by any teacher, musician, or composer. The post includes a link to download both the shortcut and an example score template so you can tweak it to your heart’s content. Here is an excerpt:

Use Shortcuts to quickly create score templates on macOS and iOS — Robby Burns | Scoring Notes:

Even though apps like Sibelius, Finale, and Dorico don’t come with their own built-in Shortcuts actions, the addition of several new file-based actions from the Automator makes creating templates possible.

The shortcut below is three simple steps. I searched for each action in the right sidebar and dragged them in the order I wanted them to occur. Here’s what each step does:

1. Looks for a score I made in Dorico that is set up in 4/4, in concert B♭ major, and with all of the instruments common to a middle school bands.
2. Saves a copy of that file to the Desktop.
3. Opens it in Dorico.

Click here to keep reading on Scoring Notes.

Take, Leave, Transform! What Do We Keep From Last School Year?

As we venture into the following school year, it is impossible to ignore all of the ways our teaching careers have changed over the past 16 months.

I've been reflecting on my current teaching practices, many of which have included new technologies and were inspired by virtual and hybrid teaching. It's essential to think about which methods are worth taking into the future, which should be left behind, and which can potentially transform the future of teaching.

Let's explore some practices to "take," "leave," and "transform" our teaching next year, in the context of five areas:

1. Students and technology
2. Teachers and technology
3. Communication
4. Hardware
5. Assessment

Before we get started, here are a few things to take note of.

1. This blog post originally appeared on the NAfME blog. If you would like, you can read it there._

2. This post was based on my presentation at the Music Ed Tech Conference last month, hosted by MusicFirst. Click here for the session notes, which include links and resources related to this post.

3. There is a podcast version of this post, which includes numerous student example recordings of the projects and assignments outlined below. Check it out below. I hope you will subscribe to the show!

Subscribe to the Podcast in: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | RSS

Ok, let's get on to TAKE, LEAVE, TRANSFORM!

Students and tech

TAKE: Software that empowers student creativity

Many school districts prioritized web-based creative tools like Soundtrap, Noteflight, Flat, and BandLab last year as they empowered students to make meaningful, project-based assignments from a distance.

Now that students have access to a digital audio workstation and notation editor, I cannot imagine teaching without them. In my general music classes, Soundtrap became a tool for producing our music. In-band, it became an opportunity to record student performance, collaborate on chamber music, and compose band music for the first time.

Alex Shapiro's Putting the E in Ensemble curriculum made it possible to compose and record original band music collaboratively. My students wrote original melodies for their instruments in Noteflight, recorded them in Soundtrap, and then I shared the resulting recordings back with the class in a Dropbox folder, where they then used them as the basis for their own original band compositions in Soundtrap.

LEAVE: Virtual performances

I am proud of my students for making virtual performances like the one above. They were great representations of our student's resilience and effort, awesome for the community, and I liked editing them. But I think we can all agree that performing in the same space as one another is something we can't wait to get back to.

TRANSFORM: Combining new tools and methods with traditional curriculum and skill development

I'm thrilled to combine these projects with the things we missed last year. For example, combining the guitar and piano aspects of my general music curriculum will more fully round out our skills. Guitars and ukeleles will become the basis of better understanding the harmonic structures underneath the music we create in Soundtrap. We can also learn to record ukulele into audio tracks in our music projects using a microphone.

Piano skills can now transcend traditional notation as our keyboards become MIDI controllers, used to create original content in our projects, rather than depending on the loop library.

Teacher facing technology

TAKE: Software that empowers efficiency and teacher creativity

If technology had you down last year, I recommend finding the point of diminishing return at which you don't feel like technology is getting more benefit for you or your students, and then stop there. For me, this sometimes means sidestepping school software and turning to more intuitive apps that make me more efficient and better organized. Here are a few:

• Evernote: note app for clipping text, documents, website content, emails, and more. Everything is text searchable and can be organized by tag or project.
• Spark Mail: email app that allows you to snooze messages out of your inbox to days where they are more relevant. It can also remind you when someone doesn't respond and can even schedule emails to send at a future time.
• Todoist: Everyone needs a task manager! Todoist is cross-platform and has most of the features of all the major task apps. It even supports collaborative project lists you can share with your music team.

LEAVE: Software that gets in the way

Did you spend your waking life inside learning management software last year? Please accept my invitation to take a deep breath and discard anything that didn't help your students learn last year.

TRANSFORM: New ways of creating engaging resources

I have shared some of the tools that make me productive. Now let's explore the tools that help me develop resources. Many of the resources I had to make for virtual classes will enhance in-person teaching dramatically. Here are my favorite tools for making digital resources:

• Neural Mix Pro: Takes an audio file and allows you to separate the vocals, drums, and other accompaniment and then export the resulting track. I used this to take vocals out of pop songs and then use them as the basis for scale play-along tracks last year. I also used it to separate vocals from pop songs for making remix projects in general music.

• AnyTune: slowdown app that can take a song and change the speed and pitch independently. I use this to slow down recordings for students to practice along to (or to change it to a comfortable key). It is also capable of looping short sections of music for repetitive practice or improvisation.
• Downie, iCab Mobile, and YouTubeDL: These tools are all capable of downloading a video or audio file from a website to your hard drive. Note: There are numerous educational reasons to use this kind of tool that fall under fair use. Make sure you investigate relevant copyright law before publicly repurposing someone else's work.
• Logic and ScreenFlow: Any audio and video editor will do, but for me, these applications balance ease with power. They can manipulate audio and video in nearly any way, and I don't feel like I need another degree to use them.

Communication

TAKE: Digital communication

I am also reflecting on every way that in-person collaboration can be made more efficient by going digital. I am mostly Zoom-ed out for the year, but when it comes to many of my music team's interactions, sometimes something "could have been an email." Digital communication helps us stay focused on our current tasks and address other's concerns when we have the capacity, rather than being constantly interrupted.

LEAVE: Lengthy and verbose documents

The requirement of communicating through an LMS over the past year has made me realize that I can probably get away with shorter letters getting sent home in future years. Many families, especially students, responded well to concise and more frequent communication than the long-form alternative.

TRANSFORM: New models for non-musical logistics and collaboration

You can elevate your digital communication by trying the following strategies:

• *Slack or Microsoft Teams (your district might already pay for the latter.) Both of these tools are similar. My music team uses Slack for all of our communication because it removes the cruft and formality of email while maintaining more structure than text messaging. Using this tool, my team has created a space where we can separate different topics by channel (examples include #concerts, #fieldtrips, #fundraisers,* and more). All conversation stays organized in a chat thread within these areas. Apps like Google Drive can be linked to your Slack so that you can manage the sharing settings of documents and even see them in-line, right from within Slack.
• Google Calendar: By creating a Google account for our team and logging into it on all our devices, we have made a workflow where we can share our schedule for rehearsals, sectionals, concerts, and events, with one another, all from within the calendar app on our computers. The neat part is that because Google Calendars are web-first experiences, we can easily embed the HTML in a password-protected page of our music program website so that families always know where they need to be and when.

Hardware

TAKE: Microphones, interfaces, other pro audio hardware

My team purchased some microphones, audio interfaces, and MIDI keyboards last year to enhance the quality of our virtual classrooms. Here are some of my favorite devices:

• Audio Technica AT2020: This isn't the cheapest microphone out there, but it's reasonable, and you get so much more from it than an entry-level product.
• Scarlet Solo: This is the most straightforward and reliable tool for getting third-party devices like microphones, keyboards, and speakers to route in and out of a computer.
• Amazon Essentials MIDI Keyboard I use a full-sized keyboard as a MIDI controller in most cases, but for basic note entry in a notation editor, MIDI controllers are one place to cut costs. I have a set of these for my general music class, and they have lasted many years so far.

LEAVE: The need to be tethered to a computer

Need I say more? It is exhausting to need a computer, especially when it limits us. I can't wait to talk directly to students, hear them play in real-time, and give them the quick, authentic feedback characteristic of vital music-making.

TRANSFORM: Proven models of teaching with the computer as an extension of the self

I am not ready to write off the computer, though. The hardware we bought last year can be repurposed. The MIDI controllers can trigger justly in-tune chords and intervals from the Tonal Energy Tuner app from the front of the band room. The microphone and interface can allow me to quickly record the band and play it back for them, in higher fidelity than the voice memos app on my phone.

Furthermore, apps I used to engage students with visual and auditory experiences can elevate what would otherwise be a traditional band rehearsal. Here are some examples of such software, which can be shared through a screen and speaker system:

• Farrago: Digital soundboard app that allows you to drag in mp3 files into a grid of squares where they can easily be triggered during rehearsal (or a school musical if you run one of those). It works for everything from play-along tracks (I have made some here, to fun sound effects. There is a sequential mode in which you can play them in a specified order automatically. I have used this feature to pre-record my entire warm-up for class. When I return to in-person instruction, I can use this warm-up approach to create two of "me" in the classroom. While students follow the recorded "me," I have the freedom to work the room, connect with students, fix trombone posture, assist with music, and more.

• Classroom Maestro: This desktop application displays a piano on-screen that highlights the keys of the keyboard you are playing on your MIDI controller in blue while also showing the notes on a staff.

• forScore, GoodNotes, Tonal Energy, and Shortcuts: These are the apps I usually have on the screen of my iPad when I am on the podium. forScore shows my music, GoodNotes shows my documents (and acts as a digital whiteboard), and Tonal Energy is used for tuning drones. By streaming these applications to my projector (directly or via a program like AirServer), I can now invite students into my world, displaying contextual information and enriching their musical experience.

Bonus tip! In an iPad software update coming this fall, you can automate the opening of all your materials using the Shortcuts app. See it in action below and download this example shortcut here.

To wrangle all of the new tech I want to use during rehearsal, I am investigating the modular Flex® Conductor's System from Wenger. It is an investment, but it will hopefully allow me to have keyboards and computers positioned more accessibly during rehearsal.

Assessment

TAKE: Assessment transparency

One thing I did enjoy about all assessments moving online was how they added transparency to all stakeholders. Every assignment, expectation, and instruction was in the same place, detailed in a web-accessible location for parents. Student progress was visible since things that were usually assessed informally needed to be online. I want to investigate how to keep some of this transparency moving forward.

LEAVE: Grades

I am doing some soul searching on the topic of grades and assessments this summer. If I thought grades bordered on meaningless before the pandemic, this problem has really been brought to light by a year of an ever increased achievement gap due to numerous inequities in our system.

Grades often inhibit the kind of curiosity and natural learning essential for students who are performing and creating.

TRANSFORM: New ways to foster student curiosity and reflection

I have been reading Ungrading (edited by Susan Blum), and it has caused me to ask some questions about where grades are really necessary. The book doesn't challenge teachers to eliminate grades cold-turkey but instead offers lots of practical ways to reimagine the assessment process, making it feedback-centered and student-led.

Next year I am considering:

1. Student self-grading
2. Student-created rubrics
3. Grading process-oriented practices and putting skill-based objectives (like instrumental performance) in a separate part of my grade book that doesn't touch the overall student average.
4. Eliminating processes that cause students and me to do less busy work.

Conclusion

As we prepare for the next year, I challenge you to ask yourself where the status quo wasn't good enough and think about transforming your old teaching methods by adapting what we have learned this year.

➡️ Develop Performance Skills With Cloud Software

*The following post first appeared on the NAfME Blog on April 19th, 2021.

Over the past year of remote and hybrid instruction, teachers have reimagined the tools, assignments, and methods that best engage their students. The need to engage my band students from a distance has challenged me to depend on cloud-based tools that still foster the development of their performance skills. The features of these cloud tools allow me to engage students in new ways by introducing interactive projects, collaboration with peers, and automated grading.

The ideas below will be featured in my presentation at the NAfME Eastern Division Conference this weekend. Register here to join me and the many exceptional presenters who will be sharing their ideas.

What is Cloud Software

Cloud software is a buzzword in the technology industry that is used to describe apps that run in a web browser. Examples of cloud-based music software include BandLab, Soundtrap, Noteflight, MusicFirst, and Flat for Education, to name a few. Because these offerings are web-based, they can run on nearly any computer with a web browser, as long as you have an internet connection. For this reason, they are more widely accessible to all students and can be integrated into an LMS (learning management software) like Canvas, Blackboard, and Google Classroom.

Here are some practical ideas for assignments in a performing ensemble using cloud software.

Noteflight

Noteflight is a music notation tool that runs on the web. In recent years, Noteflight has expanded to offer Noteflight Learn, which allows teachers to take Noteflight content and assign it to students in their class, much like an LMS. In the past year, Noteflight has added a feature called SoundCheck which can take these assigned Noteflight scores, and assess student performance for note/rhythm/pitch accuracy.

Students can play these scores, practice to them at any speed, and loop tricky sections. When they are done recording themselves, Noteflight provides an accuracy score and a line beneath the notes which indicates pitch and note inaccuracies by the counter and color of the line.

You can make any Noteflight score into a Soundcheck-enabled assignment. If the score is linked to an assignment in your LMS, the student score will automatically go into your grade book. Because computers are not perfect, I prefer to go back and listen to my students who don't receive good scores on assignments, to make sure I agree with the automatic grade.

Generally, is better at assessing note accuracy than pitch, so I tend to use SoundCheck as a first step to ensuring students are prepared for their music. Finer qualities in the music like tone and articulation are best left to video assessments with more comprehensive rubrics.

Getting Existing Music Into Soundcheck

If you have music that outside of Noteflight that you want to turn into an assessment, some apps can help. I use an app called Sheet Music Scanner on my iPad to take pictures of paper sheet music and turn them into XML files. XML is a file format that can pass notation projects from one notation editor to another. Once the XML version is saved to my device, I can import it into Noteflight and then assign it to my students.

Notation editors like Sibelius and Dorico can export to XML. If you have already created a score in a professional editor, it is easy to turn into an assignment.

Flipgrid

If your LMS does not have a video recording feature built-in, you might want to check out Flipgrid. My LMS has a video feature, and I still use Flipgrid because it makes video recording whimsical and fun. The Flipgrid interface puts an active circle around your face when you have submitted a recent video (like an Instagram story). Students can add filters, emoji, text, and other effects to their final videos. Students can watch each other's videos, and leave video responses. It is like a mini social network for your class, with lots of control over the privacy settings.

Flipgrid also integrates into LMS software, so you can use it as an alternative to the basic video recorder if you wish.

Soundtrap

Soundtrap is a web-based DAW (digital audio workstation). I have heard it described as "if Google Docs and GarageBand had a baby." This is because it looks and functions like GarageBand, but runs on the web. Like Google's apps, it is also collaborative. This means that you can have two or more students editing the same project at the same time while discussing their progress in a chat.

Soundtrap is great for producing beats, songwriting, and all of the things you would expect to do with access to limitless software instruments, samples, and pre-made loops. But what I use it for in the band room is to teach chamber music.

If I have a flute trio, for example, I can provide the music to my students and then invite them all to a Soundtrap project. Each student can create their audio track and record their part to the metronome. They can all be doing this simultaneously. Once they click save, they can play it back and hear what they sound like alongside one another in a somewhat real-time experience.

A fun alternative to this is to give a small ensemble piece to a single student and have them overdub themselves playing each part. This can help them to better understand how the varying parts fit together and complement one another. In cases like this, I have reached out to the local high school and asked for student volunteers to play all of the parts to a metronome. I then take all of the high schooler's recordings and add them as tracks in a Soundtrap template so that my students can toggle each part on and off for reference while they are recording.

You can see an example of this around the 20-minute mark in the video below.

Conclusion

These cloud-based assignments empower all students to participate in engaged music-making, alone and in groups. Nailing down the accuracy with a metronome will do wonders for their sense of timing and internal pulse. With recording assignments in Noteflight and Soundtrap, my students will do numerous takes until they get it just right! I cannot speak highly enough of these tools, and I certainly plan to use the assignment ideas above even when we return to a fully in-person learning environment.

If a video of this process is more your speed, you can watch how some of it works below. I also have a podcast version of this post available here.

➡️ Apps to Help with Time Management and Planning (NAfME Blog)

This blog post originally appeared on the blog for the National Association for Music Educators (nafme.org) on April 6, 2021.

In "Digital Organization Tools for Music Educators," I detailed apps that can help you plan large goals, turn them into actionable projects, and reflect on your progress.

Next, I'd like to talk about apps to help you manage your time and save your ideas digitally.

Put Only Hard Commitments in Your Calendar

Managing your time is a key part of being a music educator. Sometimes it feels like we have more responsibilities than there is actually time in the day to complete.

In "Digital Organization Tools for Music Educators," I recommend apps to help you wrangle your to-do list. Now I would like to recommend some apps and tips for managing the events on your calendar.

If your calendar needs are simple, I recommend you go no further than Google. It runs entirely in a web browser but can also be used in combination with your calendar app of choice. My music team uses a Google Calendar to publish all of our classes, sectionals, concerts, and events. This allows us to edit this data right from our calendar apps on our phones and computers, while also publishing them to a website for parents to view.

Google Calendar works perfectly fine for most needs. It is available to anyone for free on the web and has a functional mobile app on most smartphone platforms.

Microsoft Outlook and the Apple Calendars, despite being created by big tech companies, are actually capable of showing you a calendar from any service (Google included). My personal calendars are in iCloud, and our school uses Exchange. I can log into my iCloud, Google, and Exchange calendars all from within the same app to see everything I am committed to.

Apple Calendar and Microsoft Outlook are two of the most widely used calendar apps on desktop and mobile operating systems. Either of them can handle calendars from Google, iCloud, or Exchange accounts and show them all alongside one another.

Tip!—Avoid putting tasks in your calendar. Tasks have due dates, but they rarely need to be worked on at a specific time. I find that putting tasks in my calendar adds lots of noise and I eventually just end up ignoring all of it. If you want to stay sane, put only time-based appointments on your calendar. You can make an appointment with yourself to tackle a big task, but try to avoid putting things like "print concert programs" and "design seating chart" alongside events with concrete start and end times.

If you want more power out of your calendars, I recommend you check out Fantastical. (Currently iOS and Mac only. Android users can check out SolCalendar). Here are my favorite features:

Natural language input is not only fast, but you can set a keyboard shortcut on your computer to invoke a mini-calendar for quickly adding events.

• Natural language input: Typing "Choir Rehearsal tomorrow at 7 pm @2032 Beaverton Road /Work" will add an event called Choir Rehearsal to your calendar at the designated time and location. The "/Work" will put on the "Work" calendar.
• Calendar Sets: I subscribe to my school and school district's master calendar to better plan after-school rehearsals, concerts, and space use. I subscribe to these calendars in Fantastical, but I have them toggled off by default. I created a Calendar Set called "All" that turns on the chaos and shows me every single calendar I have at once. Many things overlap, but it enables me to be informed as I plan without needing to visit my district's website.
• Conference Call Detection: Fantastical also has built-in Zoom and Google Meet integration. If it detects a meeting URL in the calendar event, it adds a one-touch button to the event which will launch you right into the meeting. This event was shared with me and has a Zoom call URL associated with it. Fantastical automatically added the Zoom icon so that I can click on it to immediately enter the call. Fantastical integrates with all of these services.

A handful of Fantastical's features are free, and some of the more advanced features are paid.

Other great calendar apps:

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Quickly Clip Ideas from Everywhere

There is much to say about note apps. The one feature I see least utilized by busy teachers is the clipper. A clipper is a tool that runs in the Share Sheet of your phone or as a web extension. Clippers are perfect for "saving it for later." A good one can handle mixed media including photos, websites, emails, text notes, files, and more. Here are my favorite apps that have easy ways to capture data for later:

• Evernote: Known for being cross-platform and having a free tier. Its web extension can grab almost anything from the web and clip it to your notebook in a neatly formatted article view that is text searchable. The Evernote web clipper can be installed as an extension or from the share-sheet on mobile devices. You can choose how it will save the content, and even categorize it with tags and a memo before clipping.

• Microsoft OneNote: Similar features to Evernote. It's free if your district has Office 365. Plays nice with the rest of the Office Suite.

• Apple Notes: Apple Notes has caught up with most of the major features of competing note apps. From almost anywhere on an iOS or Mac device, press the Share button to save something to Apple Notes. Almost any type of media can be clipped.
• Drafts: Drafts is text-only, but I prefer it for my note-taking because I can capture quickly and then easily send the text out to other apps once I have decided where it belongs.

• Google Keep: Leverages all smart AI features and integration with Google Services that you would expect. Google Keep is simple, but it provides plenty of features. Notes can be turned into reminders, Google Docs, or shared with others.

• Instapaper: Primarily for saving web content like news articles. It strips out the ads, buttons, and other chrome, so you get an experience less like reading a website and more like reading a newspaper.

Of these apps, Evernote is most able to handle whatever kind of data you throw at it. Because it's available on the web, it's easy to share your data with others and even get your data out and into another app, if you choose to.

Before and after a website has been parsed by Instapaper's clipper.

Tip!—In the same way I try to avoid putting tasks on my calendar, I also try to avoid clipping things I want to check out later to my to-do list. It clutters things up. I put only actionable tasks on my task list. If it doesn't have a verb ("email Jacklyn choir rosters for 2021–22," "tune the bass drum," "draft grant proposal"), save it to a note instead.

➡️Digital Organization Tools for Music Educators - Apps to Help You Organize and Plan (NAfME Blog)

This blog post originally appeared on the blog for the National Association for Music Educators (nafme.org) on January 20, 2021.

Digital Organization Tools for Music Educators - Apps to Help You Organize and Plan:

What are your teaching goals for 2021? These apps will help you organize your plan and your time.

Every January, we reflect on our dreams for the coming year. For many, this might include some personal goals like spending more time reading or exercising. For others, it may take the form of professional and instructional goals.

There are innumerable tech tools that can help you with this process, whether it includes brainstorming your big ideas, reflecting on your progress, managing your time, or breaking big ideas into smaller and more actionable tasks.

Look at the Big Picture, Make a Plan

Whether you are the kind of person who likes to do a big brain dump at the beginning of a new year or someone who wants to reflect in a journal, check out these essentials.

MindNode

The user interface of MindNode.

MindNode is a mind mapping application for iOS and macOS. It allows you to create charts that start with a central theme, or "node," and then branch out into other nodes in a hierarchical fashion that is non-linear enough to support the flow of the human mind.

It's easy to think that drawing out a map like this is easier with paper and pen. MindNode makes the process easier than paper, whether your preferred input is by touch, keyboard, mouse, or trackpad. The benefit of making one of these maps on a computer is that you can quickly draw connections from one node to the next, and the software understands these connections. If I drag one of my nodes from one side of the map to the other, all of the other nodes will smartly adjust themselves, so the map looks balanced.

Dragging around nodes is buttery smooth.

Nodes can also contain various themes, styles, and graphics. You can tag nodes with a keyword and also edit in a linear outline instead of a map. Nodes can be turned into checkable to-dos, and you can export your entire map to a task app like Things or OmniFocus.

MindNode's outline mode, clip art, and design editing tools.

If you are on Windows, Android, or are looking for alternative options to MindNode, check out these options:

DayOne

DayOne is an elegant and fully featured journaling app for iOS and macOS that can handle it all. It allows you to create journal entries based on text, photos, or voice memos. You categorize your journal entries by tagging them with keywords or putting them into separate journals. Entries sync across all of your devices.

One of the many things I use a journal for is for reflecting on each rehearsal and deciding where I want my focus to be in the following class. Organizing DayOne entries by image, calendar, event, and other media types.

Some great alternatives include:

I appreciate that DayOne has a calendar and media-centric way of letting you view your entries. If you are someone who does add photos, your content will feel interactive and quick to find.

"Manage" Your Tasks Instead of Drowning in Them

Learn a Task Management App

The OmniFocus Forecast view shows me only the tasks that are relevant to a selected day.

You may be familiar with the to-do app on your phone. Some of the most notable are Reminders and Google Keep.

These apps are a great start, but you might find that the alternatives below to be more powerful and flexible. Teachers have our hands full. We need tools that allow us to capture our thoughts the moment we have them, and I am not talking about post-it notes all over your laptop. The following apps all have options for adding tasks to your to-do app in one (or less) taps and feature robust organizing tools like projects, tags, saved search.

The OmniFocus Inbox.

OmniFocus is my digital brain. On my laptop, I hold the control key plus the spacebar to add a task, even if the app isn't running in the foreground, to quickly enter a thought as it comes to me. On my phone, I can use my voice assistant or the widget on my home screen to quickly capture ideas. My favorite feature is maildrop. OmniFocus provides me with a unique email address I can forward emails towards that will send them to my OmniFocus inbox, with the subject line as the task and the message's body as an attached note. This helps me get those actionable emails that don't require a response out from my mail app and into a to-do list where I can snooze them for when they are relevant. Sanity achieved!

Organizing Tasks by Project.

Once they are in the database, they go into an inbox to organize them with projects, tags, start dates, and due dates. Start and due dates are crucial for me in a task app. I use the Forecast view in OmniFocus to see what tasks I want to be working on for a given day and which ones are due. I provide due dates only to tasks that I cannot survive the day without doing. This means that I am less often overwhelmed when all of the tasks turn red and overdue items clutter my view of what is important. OmniFocus also supports project templates.

I have templates for concerts, field trips, band adjudication, teaching new repertoire, running my district's Middle School Honor Band, and more. When I create a project from one of these templates, I can even set up the start and due dates relative to an event.

For example, when I tell OmniFocus the date of a winter concert, the task "pack tuba into the car" doesn't show up on my radar until a few hours before I leave for the venue. The task "write concert program" shows up numerous days early.

The fact that I can view things by project, due date, a tag, or a custom perspective means that once I organize them, I can view them from different angles where I am focused on only what is relevant at a given time, place, mental state, or context.

If you are looking for a little more power than the standard Reminder app on your phone, and want something more straightforward and elegant, try Things by Cultured Code. Both apps are based heavily on the Getting Things Done methodology by David Allen, which has helped to shape how I manage the projects in my life.

OmniFocus is available for iOS, macOS, and on the web. Most of the apps I listed above have similar features.

If you are just starting out with task management, I recommend Todoist. It has a free option, is available on all platforms, including the web, and has most of the features you could expect from a to-do app (no start dates, though). Todoist also features collaboration! This means you can share a project with other users on your music team or staff and share tasks with one another for ultimate transparency and teamwork.

Todoist Project Collaboration.

If you want to learn more about how I manage my time as a music teacher using to-do apps and complementary software, check out this video.

Whatever task app you settle on, make sure it has the features you need. Dr. Frank Buck (productivity consultant, retired band director, and administrator) refers to his top features like the Essential 7:

1. "Due date" field and ability to sort by due date
2. Repeating tasks
3. Note section for each task to house supporting information
4. Search feature
5. Communicates with your email
6. Syncs across all devices
7. Voice input

*I actually do use a paper journal called The Theme System journal, primarily because I believe that New Year's resolutions are usually too concrete or too vague as to be fulfilled.

🔀 Guest post: 10 Productivity Apps to Help You Organize Your Lesson Plans | Midnight Music

This month I wrote a guest post for Midnight Music, an awesome blog and website designed to equip music teachers with technology knowledge and resources.

The post includes about 10 of the productivity apps I use to create, organize, and collaborate on lesson plans in the music classroom. The list covers some of the web tools and native iOS/Mac apps that are most indispensable to my work as a teacher.

Click the link below to head on over to Midnight Music and read the whole thing.

10 Productivity Apps to Help You Organize Your Lesson Plans | Midnight Music:

Everyone likes to organize themselves differently. Teachers prefer different tools, organization methods, and preference over how much of their workflow is digital. Whatever your approach, there are a handful of great apps that can help you create your plans, search them, group them, and collaborate on them. The following apps are some of my favorite tools for managing lesson ideas, plans and resources.

Many of them have similar features as one another, but all of them have unique strengths. My philosophy is that there is always a better and more specific tool for the job.

🔀 Mastering Organization in Rehearsal with iPad

In September, School Band and Orchestra Magazine published an article of mine about using the iPad to be organized while rehearsing a large ensemble. I am reposting it here for readers of my blog to enjoy...

Mastering Organization in the Rehearsal with iPad:

Chances are likely that you have heard of a few iPad apps for use in the classroom. Like me, you may have heard about so many of them that you can’t even remember them all. Or you have made it so far as to download them and now hundreds of little icons have been left un-touched in a folder called “Music,” sitting on your home screen.

There are a lot of fantastic music teaching apps for educators and students. Tuning apps, notation apps, note reading apps, staff recognition, music games, creation tools, historical videos, you name it. The iPad is often positioned in music education as a miscellaneous platform. One that we use for whatever purpose it serves best in the moment, whether that be in our own hands or those of our students. Few of us have an iPad for each of our students though. And several years into owning one, you might still wonder what niche it is really intended to fill.

For me, the iPad become a transformative tool in the classroom when I started to think about it like a digital piece of paper. And it became in-dispensable when I found ways to become de-pendent on it while rehearsing large ensembles.

The apps in this article have turned the iPad in-to a necessity for me. Many of them are not simply portable versions of desktop apps I use elsewhere. They are apps that thrive, particularly on the form factor of the iPad.

Files

Rather than bringing a pile of parent letters, pie sale pamphlets, and field trip documents to the podium, I have taken to queuing these documents on my iPad. Thankfully, Apple has re-leased a Files app with iOS 11. This app func-tions very similarly to the Finder on the Mac. You can view documents, launch them in other applications, and even drag files from one fold-er into another. The Files app works out of the box using Apple’s iCloud Drive, but third party cloud providers get to join the fun too! Installing apps like Dropbox and Google Drive now makes them appear alongside the left sidebar in the Files app. No need to go fishing in the Dropbox app to see your documents stored there. In Files, they are displayed, natively, alongside your other iCloud files. You interact with your documents the same way no matter which cloud service you are browsing.

You can drag your favorite folders to the side-bar for easy reach, regardless of what third party cloud drive provider they are part of. Us-ing the iPad’s split view feature, you can open another app, like Mail, on the other side of the screen and drag files from the Files app, over into the Mail app, to add them as attachments.

If you are looking for a little more control, I rec-ommend an app called Documents 5 by Read-dle. If you have purchased their app PDF Ex-pert (which is amazing), it allows you to use all of the PDF Expert annotation tools right from within the Documents app. You can also open multiple different files at once in a tabbed inter-face, much like a web browser. This is useful for mornings where I need to review multiple different documents with the class at once.

Notability

I give my students a weekly rehearsal grade for preparation and participation. I use a rubric to generate this score but I base it off of informally collected data in the classroom. I needed a way to quickly jot down information on top of stu-dents names and then an easy way to view it from my computer later while inputting grades. I decided to design a seating chart using Om-niGroup’s OmniGraffle app (but you could just as easily draw one and scan it into your com-puter as a PDF). I open these PDFs in an app called Notability. Of all the many great note apps on iPad that let you scribble on a PDF, I find Notability to be the least fussy. The mo-ment the PDF shows up on screen you can begin scribbling on it with an Apple Pencil. It really feels as responsive as paper. I write quick notes on student performance on these charts throughout rehearsal. Jimmy is sitting with great posture, Susan is late, John didn’t bring his instrument...When I sit down at my computer, I launch the Mac version and view all of the charts because the edits have been syncing over iCloud. Then I enter my grades.

Going into the Dropbox app each morning, du-plicating the file, and opening it in Notability was getting to be quite a chore. So I decided to automate it...

Workflow (Now Shortcuts)

Workflow is an app for iOS that allows you to string together multiple actions and trigger them with one tap of a button. This all takes place in plain English, using drag and drop blocks to make up your recipe. This app is a real testament to the growing power of iOS as a productivity platform. If this app sounds in-tense, don’t worry. When you download it, the app walks you through the process.

One of my favorite “Workflows” is a two step workflow called “Band Seating Chart.” Step one of this workflow looks into my Dropbox account for a file called “Symphonic Winds.PDF.” Next, it opens that file as a new note in Notability. All in one tap. Workflows can be published as tap-pable app icons on the homescreen for easy use. So to create a new seating chart in Nota-bility every day as described above, all I do is tap once. Pretty cool.

If designing workflows seems tedious, never fear. You can download these pre-made from a user submitted gallery.

Note: Workflow was purchased by Apple and was integrated into iOS as the Shortcuts app with the release of iOS 12 this past fall. Look forward to more posts about this awesome app in the future.

forScore

forScore is my app of choice for all score read-ing and annotating now. I keep all of my music in it. Since the app added the ability to index long Real Book style PDFs last year, I even store my method books and longer form teach-ing materials within it. Indexing these files means that I can search for individual song ti-tles in the forScore search, even if they are within the body of a larger single file. forScore takes me right to the exact page I want to be on.

Of course my more obvious stuff goes in for-Score as well — things like band scores, meth-od books, sheet music for the next gig, you name it.

I am a messy note taker. While I miss the tac-tile feeling of post it notes and pencil on a pa-per score, doing it with forScore allows me to be as messy as I want and just erase it later in the tap of a button. forScore allows me to an-notate with my Apple Pencil right on the screen. With my seating chart open on the other half of the iPad screen in Notability, I can actually an-notate my seating chart and my score simulta-neously. And for the workaholics out there, have you ever tried score study in bed? You don’t need to keep a messenger bag of paper in your bedroom anymore!

forScore is full of fun bells and whistles. My cur-rent favorite is to embed press-able buttons in my scores that initiate tuning drones and met-ronome clicks. And forScore works with all the new iPad features of iOS 11. So, for example, I can open the Files app on one half of the iPad screen, forScore on the other, and drag and drop scores from Files right into my forScore library. These are just a few of the many pow-erful features in forScore.

Drafts

One of the most stressful things in rehearsal is tending to all of the student needs. Not to men-tion my already spinning head, struggling to keep all of my teaching responsibilities togeth-er. Drafts is a note taking app that focuses on simplicity at the front end, and unlimited power on the backend. Launching into this app brings the user to a blank white space and a key-board, where you can instantly begin typing. Once you have accumulated a bunch of unpro-cessed “drafts,” you can swipe to the right to reveal numerous custom “actions.” These ac-tions can process the text in your notes by rout-ing them to other third party services. Your draft could become the body of an email or text, a Twitter status, or a calendar event. It could be exported as a task to a todo app or become the basis of a Google search. User ac-tions can be created much like workflows in the Workflow app, even including multiple different steps. I use one of my favorite Drafts actions to take meeting notes and then, in one tap, save them to Evernote, email them to the members of my music team, and parse out the actions relevant to me and save them to my todo app of choice, OmniFocus. As with Workflow, you can download user created actions from an online gallery. When the whirlwind of rehearsal starts, and students begin telling me about bro-ken valves, missing music, and the like, I simply start brain dumping all of my thoughts into Drafts. Then later, I sit down at my desk and process all of these thoughts by sending them to the apps they need to go to.