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#48 - Holiday Special 2021, featuring Will Kuhn, Craig McClellan, David MacDonald, and Jon Tippens

Friends of the show join to answer burning questions about music, education, and technology in 2021 (and beyond).

Patreon subscribers get some extra discussion about Dune and Foundation.

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Show Notes:

Album of the Year - Nate Smith: Kinfolk 2 | Stevie Wonder: Talking Book | Magdalena Bay: Murcurial World | John Mayer: Sob Rock | Cory Wong and Dirty Loops: Turbo

App of the Year - Obsidian | Fin Timer | OP-Z App | Pixelmator Photo | Molskine Actions

Tech Tip of the Year - Focus Modes (some discussion about how I am using these on episode 44 of this show) | camelcamelcamel.com | Use OBS for everything | Feedbin | Press and hold the spacebar on iOS to move your cursor around

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

The Prime Directive, featuring Will Kuhn and Ethan Hein (Music Ed Tech Talk Podcast #32)

Description

Ethan and Will join the show to talk about their book Electronic Music School, the Prime Directive, writing apps, and the future of the iPad.

Thanks to this week's sponsor, the DMV Percussion Academy. Leran more and registere here.

Chapters:

  • 00:00:00 - Intro
  • 00:01:25 - Sponsor: DMV Percussion Academy
  • 00:02:03 - Star Trek
  • 00:04:18 - Electronic Music School
  • 00:10:09 - Teaching Underlying Musical Concepts of Electronic Music Styles
  • 00:18:33 - Perceived Threat by Traditional Performing Arts Teachers
  • 00:24:28 - Teaching Songwriting
  • 00:27:23 - Scaffolding
  • 00:37:15 - Fighting Racism with Music Education
  • 00:48:37 - The Prime Directive
  • 00:52:34 - Staying Relevant?
  • 01:07:15 - We Live on Twitter
  • 01:07:15 - Writing Apps
  • 01:13:21 - Bedtime
  • 01:16:07 - The M1 iPad Pro
  • 01:35:51 - Tech Tip of the Week
  • 01:38:14 - Album of the Week
  • 01:41:07 - App of the Week
  • 01:43:24 - Closing

Show Notes:

App of the Week:
Robby - Tot
Will - In Haler Radio
Ethan - Figure

Album of the Week:
Robby - Tauk - Shapeshifter II: Outbreak
Will - Suburban Lawns - Janitor (Original Video)
Ethan - Clipping - The Deep

Where to Find Us:
Robby - Twitter | Blog | Book
Will - Twitter | Website
Ethan - Twitter | Website

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

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Subscribe to the Blog

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

#20 - Electronic Music School, with Will Kuhn

Will Kuhn joins the show to talk about Apple's new Macs, teaching electronic music, home automation, and his forthcoming book, Electronic Music School.

Show Notes:

We recorded this episode right after last weeks Apple event! People have now used and reviewed these machines! I recommend this one, this one, and this one.

Other topics include:

  • Apple in education
  • M1 chip implications for audio software
  • Other Apple Fall announcements and products
  • Ableton Live 11

Do you have a product or service you would like to promote to music educators? Sponsor Music Ed Tech Talk!

Stuff mentioned:

App of the Week:
Robby - Neural Mix Pro
Will - Ableton Live 11

Album of the Week:
Robby - Vulfpeck | The Joy of Music The Job of Real Estate
Will - Machinedrum - A View of U | beabadoobee

Where to Find Us:
Robby - Twitter | Blog | Book
Will - Twitter | Website

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

Sponsor Music Ed Tech Talk!

New Macs announced yesterday, new Mac operating system shipping tomorrow

Apple's "One More "Thing Event

Apple announced three new Macs yesterday that will use their new M1 chip. This will allow unprecedented increases in power, speed, and battery life. It will also allow iOS apps to run on them natively.

I have shared some real quick impressions below. If you want to hear more about this transition, Will Kuhn is on the upcoming episode of the podcast to talk about his impressions, amongst other topics in technology and music education. That episode should drop over the weekend.

Quick thoughts

  • Apple announced a new MacBook Air, MacBook Pro 13", and Mac mini. Of these three, the Air and Mac mini are particularly tempting to me. They maintain similar prices (way cheaper in the case of the mini), and dramatically improve performance, battery life, speed, and allow for using iOS apps. If you need a Mac, and you don't need the most powerful one on the market, I couldn't recommend either of these more. Of course, it is always safe to wait for reviews, but I anticipate that there won't be any significant deal breakers outside of potential software compatibility.
  • There are a lot of things Apple could do with the M1 chip down the road. Add FaceID, a cellular chip, a touchscreen, and maybe even a new design. Apple decided not to do these things yet and keep the designs pretty much like the last generation. I think this sends the message to the general public that this is not some new, experimental thing, but instead, the same old Mac you know and love. Just way better.
  • I was surprised not to see more iOS apps demonstrated. Apple showed a few iOS apps (like the game Among Us and HBO Max) running on one of the new Macs. Before the event, I have noted that it is weird that the TV app will show my recently watched HBO shows, but I can't play them on an intel Mac like I can on iOS or tvOS, which have the HBO app. This will be an obvious improvement. But where is Hulu? Netflix? Surely Apple chooses who they feature on stage strategically. Still, I would have expected them to do more bragging if they were anticipating a ton of extremely popular apps to launch on day one. Fingers crossed for a lot of new options in the Mac App Store early on.
  • No AirTags, over the ear headphones, or Apple TV. I was personally curious about these devices, particularly the rumored studio headphones, but maybe they will come later.

macOS 11 - Big Sur

The new Mac operating system, Big Sur, is coming out tomorrow. This update is dramatic in numerous respects. You will immediately notice a fresh coat of paint. The user interface and app icons will feel a lot more like they do on iOS.

iPad Apps on the Mac

I am excited because iOS app developers I care about are finally starting to announce Catalyst apps in volume. Catalyst is Apple's technology that allows developers to easily turn their iPad apps into Mac apps. There have been relatively few good examples of this over the past year. GoodNotes 5, Streaks, Twitter, and Home, are a few of the ones I use regularly, but the list isn't long.

Instapaper has a Mac app as of today (yay), and forScore is launching one tomorrow. I expect to see a lot more in the coming weeks. It seems like changes to this new OS have finally provided developers the tools they need to make their iPad apps "good enough" to ship on the Mac.

Will I Install It On Day One?

While I usually wait to install releases like this, forScore will be enough of a productivity boost for my Mac workflow that I will be reckless and install it tomorrow, most likely. This will put my online teaching software setup at risk, but I think it is worth it. I am tired of having a beautifully curated music library on the iPad and not on my most powerful machine. Until forScore ships iCloud syncing, I plan to move my "true" sheet music library to the Mac version.

Music Software Compatability

If you depend on any creative professional music software, audio interfaces, or other apps you aren't sure will be compatible with Big Sur, don't be like me. Wait! I have a fallback Mac mini I can use if things get ugly.

If you are wondering what score editing software is compatible with, fortunately, Scoring Notes has already got the scoop. Read their article below.

Music notation software, macOS Big Sur, and Apple Silicon M1 Macs:

As far as Sibelius, Finale, Dorico, MuseScore, and Notion, are concerned: Broadly speaking, Big Sur does not appear to affect these applications much one way or the other. We don't expect users already working on macOS Catalina to be negatively or positively affected by Big Sur when working with these applications — and whenever a new OS is involved, status quo is very welcome news indeed.

🔗 Electronic Music School, with Will Kuhn and Ethan Hein

Will Kuhn and Ethan Hein have a new Twitch channel called Electronic Music School. Every Sunday at 5 pm, they go over lesson plans for teaching music technology, using Ableton Live.

Even though the technology part of my general music curriculum is limited, I have really enjoyed the few of these live streams I have caught little bits of. The visual presentation is very engaging, the guests are diverse, and the discussions are very relevant to the curricular challenges of teaching popular music.

Check it out here.

Find Robby elsewhere on the web