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#63 - YouTube and Composition Workflows, with Dr. Scott Watson

Dr. Scott Watson (Professor of Music at Carin University, band director, composer, and YouTuber) joins the show to talk about his favorite technology, tips for rehearsing honors ensembles, his favorite young band compositions, and more!

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Thanks to my sponsors this month, Scale Exercise Play-Along Tracks.

Show Notes:

App of the Week: Robby - AnyTune / Downie
Scott Watson - NotePerformer

Album of the Week: Robby - Arch Echo - You Won't Believe What Happens Next! Scott Watson - Barbers Overture to School for Scandal: https://youtu.be/Q387-LXIHUA / Stravinsky Octet for Wind Instruments: https://youtu.be/YyqLnP0hOnI

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

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

More on Scott

Dr. Scott Watson is Professor of Music at Cairn University (Langhorne, PA), teaching undergraduate and graduate courses in music composition/arranging, music education and technology. For 35 years he was an instrumental and elective music teacher in the Parkland School District (Allentown, PA), first as high school Director of Bands, then as coordinator of the elementary band/strings program across the district. He is a frequently commissioned composer with more than 100 published pieces for band and strings at all levels that have been performed around the world at venues including the Academy of Music (Philadelphia), the Midwest Clinic (Chicago) and the White House (Washington, D.C.). He is an exclusive composer/clinician for Alfred Publications and a contributor for their Sound Innovations band series. Watson has presented numerous workshops/clinics for music educators, frequently serves as guest conductor/clinician for honor/festival bands, and is the author of the highly regarded music education text, Using Technology to Unlock Musical Creativity (©2011, Oxford University Press). To learn more, visit www.scottwatsonmusic.com.

Guest Appearance: Passing the Baton

I am happy to join Theresa Hoover and Kathryn Finch, authors of the Passing the Baton book, on their YouTube interview series this week.

This week’s interview features Robby Burns, a middle school band and general music teacher in Howard County, Maryland. Robby talks about how he incorporates creativity and music composition in his middle school band classes.

Episode 14: Creativity Through Music Composition (Part 2 of 3)

If you are into this, you should definitely check out the most recent episode of my podcast featuring Theresa, herself.

Appearance: At Percussion Podcast

I had a blast joining the At Percussion podcast last week to talk about teaching percussion, using tech, running a successful private teaching studio, being productive, and more.

Listen in your favorite podcast app or watch below:

Control Alt Achieve covers 40 Google for Education Updates for Summer 2021

Google made some big education announcements last week, including a bunch of education features across their apps.

Control Alt Achieve has a great overview of them. Click below to read more.

Control Alt Achieve: 40 Google for Education Updates for Summer 2021:

Summer is a nice time to take a break and relax, but Google has instead been busy working on new updates and features for schools.

On June 22nd Google hosted their "Anywhere School 2021" event (http://goo.gle/tas21) where they covered loads of announcements concerning 40 updates for Google Classroom, Google Meet, Chrome and Chromebooks, and Google Workspace tools in general.

In case you missed it, or are just trying to review through everything that was shared, see below for a list of all 40 updates that were shared at the event.

On the one hand, many of these features looks great (especially the education streaming feature with YouTube/Google Meet). On the other hand, it is easy to see that some of these features are born out of the needs of virtual/hybrid learning and may not be as useful as schools potentially return to in-person instruction this fall.

That said, it looks like there is plenty in store for Google Classroom users, no matter what teaching environment you may find yourself in this fall.

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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🎙Apps for Research and Remembering, with David MacDonald

Composer and teacher, David MacDonald, returns for a discussion about the apps we use for notes, research, writing, and clipping data to find later.

Other topics:

  • What kinds of work goes in which kinds of apps
  • Digital research tools
  • Kindle Paperwhite
  • Streaming / virtual teaching tools
  • Music theory YouTubers
  • Zooming in to your Mac screen
  • Quickly taking a screenshot with the Apple Pencil
  • Our favorite music and apps of the week

Show Notes:

App of the Week: Robby - Stream Deck Mobile App David MacDonald - Reincubate Camo & FiLMiC Pro

Album of the Week: Robby - Owane | Yolo EP Vol. 1 David MacDonald - Scary Pockets YouTube channel

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

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

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Follow me on Twitch!

I’ve been experimenting with live video over the past weeks. I went live on Facebook with David MacDonald last Sunday to talk about tech we are using to teach music. This past Saturday I went on Twitch and tried to build an automation that would automatically log me into my virtual classes and open the apps I need to teach. The video is up on my Twitch, YouTube, and Facebook pages.

Join me for this fun experiment! Follow me on Twitch, YouTube, and Facebook using the links below to tune in to future live sessions.

🎬 My Virtual Winter Band Concert 2021

Watch my "How to Make a Virtual Ensemble" video here.

At the end of last spring I posted three virtual ensemble videos of my Ellicott Mills Middle School students performing concert literature we would have otherwise played on a concert.

While concert literature has had a very diminished role in my teaching this school year, my students found playing this music on our Google Meets (on mute) very engaging.

Our ensembles chose to record one piece each and I edited them into the following two videos. I am very proud of their hard work this year. A majority of the students in these ensembles have only had a year or two of in-person instruction.

Credit to my amazing colleague, Nicole Sobel, who taught all of the woodwinds last semester. Usually, I teach the Concert Band and she teaches the Symphonic Band, but due to some scheduling changes to this school year, we thought it would be best for these ensembles to be broken up by instrument instead.

If you want to learn how I make these, watch the video below…

Take Advantage of IFTTT Discounted Price Until October 31

In an upcoming episode of my podcast, Frank Buck and I talk a bit about automation. In that episode we reference a great service called If This Than That. I have been using it for years and though the service is free, they recently announced a Pro Version with a “choose your own price” subscription model.

You can choose a price as low as $1.99 a month until October 31. Since the podcast episode isn’t dropping until later in the week, I thought I would get this news out there now.

This is an extremely useful service that has been a part of my productivity workflow for years. IFTTT allows you to string together different apps and services to create automations, or, “Applets.” Some examples might include:

  • If I save a YouTube video to watch later, add a task to remind me to watch it

  • If I like a Tweet, save the attached article to a read it later list

  • If I am tagged in an Instagram photo, save it to my Dropbox

  • If I do an item on my to do list, log it in a row of a Google Sheet

  • If I pin something on Pinterest, share it to Facebook

The possibilities are limitless. The pro version adds a ton of features, for example:

  • Multi-step Applets

  • Queries and conditional logic

  • Multiple actions

  • Faster Applet execution

    ... and beyond.

IFTTT is a great tool and I strongly recommend you check our the new pro features before the end of this month!