Practical Projects for Your Elective Course

I will be presenting a session at the NJMEA Conference this week titled Practical Projects for Your Elective Course. In preparation for this presentation, I have reissued an older episode of my podcast with similar content to make it quickly accessible in the feed for attendees of the session.

This post contains the episode and resources related to the presentation.

The podcast episode opens with my first impressions of the Apple Vision Pro which I got to try out last week.

Enjoy!

Listen to the podcast episode and subscribe below!

Subscribe to the Podcast in… Apple Podcasts | Overcast | Castro | Spotify | RSS

This is the first year that I have had consistent access to a cloud-based DAW and notation editor with all of my students. The result of this experience has been dozens of new Soundtrap project ideas. I plan to do an episode and post about how I am using these tools for composition projects in the band classroom later this year.

In the episode above, and in this post, I give an overview of three of my most successful Soundtrap projects this year. These projects can be done in any digital audio workstation, including Bandlab, GarageBand, Logic, Ableton Live, etc.

Listen to the episode for a more thorough explanation of each idea.

C Melody and Loop Audition

Melody writing in Noteflight and producing in Soundtrap go hand in hand. Because of Noteflight’s many export options, you have many ways to get your melody out of Noteflight and into your Soundtrap project.

After giving students some time to experience the user interface of Soundtrap, I have them write a short, 8 measure long, melody in the key of C using Noteflight.

Next, I have them export this melody as a MIDI file and then import it into a track in Soundtrap. Next, I have them add three more tracks and create an accompaniment for their melody using at least one of the three loop types.

1. Bass

2. Percussion

3. Harmonic (guitar, synth, piano, etc.)

Here is a recent submission of this project one of my students made. This assignment was submitted later in the semester when we had expanded the project into composing two alternating melodies which became the basis of a song-form in Soundtrap. By alternating between both melodies (and varying the loop accompaniment) the student made a song that follows the form: Verse—Chorus—Verse—Chorus—Bridge—Chorus. This particular student chose to improvise the blues scale over the bridge.

Row Your Boat Multi-Track

This idea was taken from the amazing Middle School Music Technology class content in MusicFirst. I recommend checking out their subscription options if you like this idea. MusicFirst combines the activity with curated YouTube and Spotify playlists that give students an idea about early recording studio practices for multi-track recording before music was produced digitally.

I am giving an overview of this project with permission from MusicFirst. Full Disclosure: MusicFirst is a past sponsor of the Music Ed Tech Talk blog and podcast.

To start, the student performs the song Row Row Row Your Boat into a software instrument track in Soundtrap. After it is recorded, they quantize it to the nearest 1/8th or 1/16th note so that it is rhythmically accurate.

Next, they duplicate this track two times. Using the piano roll to edit the MIDI content of each loop, students select all notes and drag them higher to create harmony. I have them move the second track a third higher and the next track a fifth higher so that they get a nice three-part voicing.

After multi-tracking the melody of Row Row Row Your Boat, this student moved the starting point of each region to create a round.

Next, I have them move any notes that land on black keys as a result down to the nearest white key so that every note of each voice is in the key of C.

Next, I have them duplicate these three tracks and transpose them up an octave. Next, I have them take the lowest voice and transpose it down three octaves to add some bass. You can have students make the final result as dense as you like.

Optionally, students can experiment with using different instrument sounds and adding groove-based loop accompaniment.

Here are three recent examples of my student’s submissions:

All-Star Remix

In this assignment, I take a popular song that students choose and separate the voice from the instrumental accompaniment. Then I add it to an audio track in a Soundtrap template and match the tempo and key of the Soundtrap project to the vocal track.

This way, students can drag and drop loops and have them match the pitch and tempo content of the vocals.

I have a post with more details about this project here.

You can watch a video of how to do it below.

Here are two examples of my own student’s recent work:

For a Soundtrap project idea for teaching band/choir/orchestra students to compose, check out the podcast episode and blog post below:

• Getting Performing Arts Students to Compose

Episode Info

See below for all notes associated with the podcast episode…

Description

Robby overviews his three most successful Soundtrap projects in 2021.

Chapters:

• 00:00:00 - Intro

• 00:00:14 - Sponsor: DMV Percussion Academy

• 00:01:24 - About this Episode

• 00:03:51 - YAY SUMMER

• 00:05:11 - 1: Melody Composition / Loop Accompaniment

• 00:14:35 - 1: Student Examples

• 00:16:15 - 2: Row Your Boat Multi-Track

• 00:22:19 - 2: Student Examples

• 00:24:27 - 3: All-Star Remix

• 00:34:38 - 3: Student Examples

• 00:36:00 - Grading for Mastery Not Creativity

• 00:37:47 - Tech Tip of the Week

• 00:39:20 - App of the Week

• 00:40:00 - Album of the Week

• 00:42:44 - Conclusion

Show Notes:

• Noteflight

• Soundtrap

• MusicFirst

• How to Make a Song Remix Project in Soundtrap (Blog Post and YouTube Video)

• Reddit: Isolated Vocals

• Neural Mix Pro

• Lalal.ai

App of the Week: 
Reeder 5

Album of the Week:
Alison Balsom - Paris

Thanks to this week’s sponsor, the DMV Percussion Academy. Learn more and register here.

Please don’t forget to rate the show and share it with others!

Subscribe to Music Ed Tech Talk:

Subscribe to the Blog

Subscribe to the Podcast in… Apple Podcasts | Overcast | Castro | Spotify | RSS

What Does It Mean To Be Creative? - Off the Beaten Path

Theresa is addressing important questions on her blog this week. Stay tuned for a near future episode of Music Ed Tech Talk. She is the next guest.

What Does It Mean To Be Creative? - Off the Beaten Path:

Creativity is a word we hear often in education, especially in music education, and it’s something I’ve become quite passionate about in the last few years. How are we, as music educators, offering opportunities for students to be creative? When do students get to create their own music and make their own musical decisions, instead of only recreating someone else’s music and performing music as dictated by someone else? Keep reading here…

How Andy Bliss Uses OmniFocus

Speaking of The Omni Show, Andy Bliss (performing artist and musician's coach), was on a recent episode.

Andy talks about the intentionality of performing, teaching, and learning, in a way that really resonates with me. I think this is partly because he uses his technology to both help him meet his varied goals, but also as a part of the reflection process which determines them in the first place.

Listen below.

How Andy Bliss Uses OmniFocus:

Today, Andy Bliss joins us to share his insights on using OmniFocus to supercharge work as a performing artist and musician's coach. With a background in both the arts and technology, Andy knows a thing or two about the intersection between creativity and efficiency.

Liz Lerman’s Critical Response Process

Frequent Music Ed Tech Talk guest and pal David MacDonald was recently on my Holiday Gift Guide episode of the show and mentioned the book Critique Is Creative, a book about Liz Lerman's Critical Response Process.

From the book's description page:

Devised by choreographer Liz Lerman in 1990, Critical Response Process® (CRP) is an internationally recognized method for giving and getting feedback on creative works in progress. In this first in-depth study of CRP, Lerman and her long-term collaborator John Borstel describe in detail the four-step process, its origins and principles. The book also includes essays on CRP from a wide range of contributors. With insight, ingenuity, and the occasional challenge, these practitioners shed light on the applications and variations of CRP in the contexts of art, education, and community life. Critique Is Creative examines the challenges we face in an era of reckoning and how CRP can aid in change-making of various kinds.

David and I got to talk about this process when he recently visited me while presenting on this very subject at the Teaching Composition Symposium at UMBC.

I really liked the idea of a methodical approach to providing more empathetic and consistent feedback to students, with detachment from emotion and ego. I picked up a copy and am eagerly reading for ideas I can integrate into my own teaching practices.

I encourage you to read David's blog post about the book which includes the text of his presentation.

Better Feedback on Compositions Using Liz Lerman’s Critical Response Process – This Page Left Intentionally Useless.:

This is the text of a presentation I gave at the inaugural Teaching Composition Symposium at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County on 21 October 2022. I’m told presentations were video-recorded, so I’ll update this post later with that recording.

I’m sure you’ve had the experience of getting feedback on a composition that was well-meaning, but ultimately unhelpful. Even someone telling you how great your music was or how much they loved it is often frustrating because it’s hard to know what they heard that made them love it. Feedback that your music was mind-blowing and that your music was stomach-turning are equally unhelpful, because without more information, it’s impossible to learn something from this feedback.

In this presentation, I’ll talk about some of the common limitations of informal, unstructured feedback like this; and I’ll describe how I have used Liz Lerman’s Critical Response Process (CRP) to better support and motivate composers in my studio, and how you might implement it in yours.

In my previous experiences with critique sessions in studio classes, I found that the feedback offered usually said a lot more about the person offering it than it did about the music they were nominally responding to. Rather than suggesting how the composer might have written a work differently, this feedback often seems to answer the question “How would this piece have gone if I had written it, rather than you.” While I do think there should be space for composers to respectfully challenge one another’s creative intent, it is worth starting by identifying what that intent was to begin with. A better feedback system should assume that each composer in the room has a different set of musical goals and experiences.

3 Soundtrap Projects Your Students Will Love

Listen to the podcast episode and subscribe below!

Subscribe to the Podcast in… Apple Podcasts | Overcast | Castro | Spotify | RSS

This is the first year that I have had consistent access to a cloud-based DAW and notation editor with all of my students. The result of this experience has been dozens of new Soundtrap project ideas. I plan to do an episode and post about how I am using these tools for composition projects in the band classroom later this year.

In the episode above, and in this post, I give an overview of three of my most successful Soundtrap projects this year. These projects can be done in any digital audio workstation, including Bandlab, GarageBand, Logic, Ableton Live, etc.

Listen to the episode for a more thorough explanation of each idea.

C Melody and Loop Audition

Melody writing in Noteflight and producing in Soundtrap go hand in hand. Because of Noteflight’s many export options, you have many ways to get your melody out of Noteflight and into your Soundtrap project.

After giving students some time to experience the user interface of Soundtrap, I have them write a short, 8 measure long, melody in the key of C using Noteflight.

Next, I have them export this melody as a MIDI file and then import it into a track in Soundtrap. Next, I have them add three more tracks and create an accompaniment for their melody using at least one of the three loop types.

1. Bass

2. Percussion

3. Harmonic (guitar, synth, piano, etc.)

Here is a recent submission of this project one of my students made. This assignment was submitted later in the semester when we had expanded the project into composing two alternating melodies which became the basis of a song-form in Soundtrap. By alternating between both melodies (and varying the loop accompaniment) the student made a song that follows the form: Verse—Chorus—Verse—Chorus—Bridge—Chorus. This particular student chose to improvise the blues scale over the bridge.

Row Your Boat Multi-Track

This idea was taken from the amazing Middle School Music Technology class content in MusicFirst. I recommend checking out their subscription options if you like this idea. MusicFirst combines the activity with curated YouTube and Spotify playlists that give students an idea about early recording studio practices for multi-track recording before music was produced digitally.

I am giving an overview of this project with permission from MusicFirst. Full Disclosure: MusicFirst is a past sponsor of the Music Ed Tech Talk blog and podcast.

To start, the student performs the song Row Row Row Your Boat into a software instrument track in Soundtrap. After it is recorded, they quantize it to the nearest 1/8th or 1/16th note so that it is rhythmically accurate.

Next, they duplicate this track two times. Using the piano roll to edit the MIDI content of each loop, students select all notes and drag them higher to create harmony. I have them move the second track a third higher and the next track a fifth higher so that they get a nice three-part voicing.

After multi-tracking the melody of Row Row Row Your Boat, this student moved the starting point of each region to create a round.

Next, I have them move any notes that land on black keys as a result down to the nearest white key so that every note of each voice is in the key of C.

Next, I have them duplicate these three tracks and transpose them up an octave. Next, I have them take the lowest voice and transpose it down three octaves to add some bass. You can have students make the final result as dense as you like.

Optionally, students can experiment with using different instrument sounds and adding groove-based loop accompaniment.

Here are three recent examples of my student’s submissions:

All-Star Remix

In this assignment, I take a popular song that students choose and separate the voice from the instrumental accompaniment. Then I add it to an audio track in a Soundtrap template and match the tempo and key of the Soundtrap project to the vocal track.

This way, students can drag and drop loops and have them match the pitch and tempo content of the vocals.

I have a post with more details about this project here.

You can watch a video of how to do it below.

Here are two examples of my own student’s recent work:

For a Soundtrap project idea for teaching band/choir/orchestra students to compose, check out the podcast episode and blog post below:

• Getting Performing Arts Students to Compose

Episode Info

See below for all notes associated with the podcast episode…

Description

Robby overviews his three most successful Soundtrap projects in 2021.

Chapters:

• 00:00:00 - Intro

• 00:00:14 - Sponsor: DMV Percussion Academy

• 00:01:24 - About this Episode

• 00:03:51 - YAY SUMMER

• 00:05:11 - 1: Melody Composition / Loop Accompaniment

• 00:14:35 - 1: Student Examples

• 00:16:15 - 2: Row Your Boat Multi-Track

• 00:22:19 - 2: Student Examples

• 00:24:27 - 3: All-Star Remix

• 00:34:38 - 3: Student Examples

• 00:36:00 - Grading for Mastery Not Creativity

• 00:37:47 - Tech Tip of the Week

• 00:39:20 - App of the Week

• 00:40:00 - Album of the Week

• 00:42:44 - Conclusion

Show Notes:

• Noteflight

• Soundtrap

• MusicFirst

• How to Make a Song Remix Project in Soundtrap (Blog Post and YouTube Video)

• Reddit: Isolated Vocals

• Neural Mix Pro

• Lalal.ai

App of the Week: 
Reeder 5

Album of the Week:
Alison Balsom - Paris

Thanks to this week’s sponsor, the DMV Percussion Academy. Learn more and register here.

Please don’t forget to rate the show and share it with others!

Subscribe to Music Ed Tech Talk:

Subscribe to the Blog

Subscribe to the Podcast in… Apple Podcasts | Overcast | Castro | Spotify | RSS

iPads, Chromebooks, and the responsibilities of the post-PC educator

Below, I share some thoughts on the recent article in The Atlantic about why some schools are selling their iPads. Click here to read the article.

I was always skeptical of how quickly schools adopted iPads on a large scale. While they are easy to adapt as teacher tools for organization, proper training is necessary before they are put in the hands of an entire classroom. Generally speaking, educators are behind the times when it comes to technology because of how long it takes to organize and implement new hardware and curriculum. The iPad’s potential got hyped back in 2010 and though I know there are situations in which they are engaging kids, my experience tells me that many administrators are buying them out of the excitement of being seen as “technological” and telling interested teachers to just go right ahead without any plan how to enhance existing learning.

The examples in The Atlantic suggest some excellent points about the productivity of tablets vs. laptops. The idea that kids see tablets as “fun” devices and computers as “work” is of central interest to me. I wonder if American adults were surveyed, if the majority would say that their iPad is a reading, web browsing and light gaming device, or instead, that it is primarily used for email, documents and professional software. I use mine for both. However, I find myself leaving it at home from time to time. Though tablets are both productive and mobile, they are also playgrounds of varying different activities and amusements. I soon learned, for example, that if I wanted to get any serious reading done, I had to bring my plain old Kindle on the go instead of using the Kindle app on iPad where I would constantly get distracted by email, text messages and game notifications. For getting “real” work done, my Mac has the software features and keyboard for getting it done faster. Of course, I have seen many examples of iPads used in the classroom where it seemed the teacher intended them to be used as a fun gimmick rather than a tool for engagement or productivity, but that is a criticism for another post.

The question I raise is: do we as educators have a responsibility towards teaching students to manage the distractions that come with the utility of modern technology? Or do we “edit” real life, making school less like the real world but one in which getting positive results out of children is more immediate? I am talking about editing the classroom in the same way, for example, elementary school children get in line to travel down the hall or band directors give donuts to the section who has 100 percent sectional attendance. I understand why Chromebooks are favored in the examples in The Atlantic. There is something organized and concrete about putting your device in “listening mode” where it has to be in an objectively fixed position and no distractions can get through. I get it, but if we are truly living in a post-PC world, do kids need to learn how to cope with the distractions of a tablet as much as they did the inconveniences of a PC years ago?

As for IT management, Chromebooks make total sense. While I have known Google devices to be far more frustrating to manage for IT departments due to their open source nature, when kids are using apps as basic as Google Docs, the cloud is the perfect place to work. The nature of Google apps, Docs in particular, is to function entirely on the web. There are no software hassles, disk space shortages, or any of these other traditional “computer-y” ideas. Apple has to step up here. They are catching up, but I still have to think a little too hard about what is happening to a document when I save it to the cloud on a Mac or iPad. Google’s simple approach is a huge asset for students to share work with teachers and making sure that there are fewer management problems on the student end.

Chromebooks have appeared useless to me due to their limitations, but it seems these limitations are an advantage with large numbers of students in the classroom. I am interested to see if there is continued iPad fallout in the coming years or instead, an establishment of how post-PC devices are valued in education.