🔗 Ethan Hein - Teaching Myself the Bach Chaconne with Ableton Live

Ethan Hein - Teaching Myself the Bach Chaconne with Ableton Live:

Gorgeous though the chaconne is, my enjoyment has been hampered by my inability to figure out the rhythm. All classical performers insist on doing extremely expressive (that is, loose) timekeeping. I don’t have the sarabande rhythm internalized well enough to be able to track it through everybody’s gooey rubato. Bach’s rhythms are complicated enough to begin with. He loves to start and end phrases in weird spots in the bar–the very first note of the piece is on beat two. So I needed some help finding the beat. A chaconne is supposed to be a dance, right? Bach wrote those note values the way he wrote them for a reason. Did he really want performers to assign any length they felt like assigning them? My gut tells me that he didn’t. I suspect that he probably played his own music in tempo, maybe with some phrasing and ornamentation but still with a clearly recognizable beat. I imagine him gritting his teeth at the rubato that modern performers use. Maybe that’s just me projecting my own preferences, but this sense comes from listening to a lot of Bach and performing some too.

So, I wanted to hear someone play the chaconne in tempo, just to hear how it works. And since no one seems to play it that way, I finally went and got the MIDI from Dave’s JS Bach MIDI page and put it into Ableton Live. I added a bunch of triple meter Afro-Cuban drum patterns to help me feel the beat, and had them enter and exit wherever I heard a natural section boundary in the music.

My personal favorite way to enjoy this piece is by performing it on vibraphone, but this is cool too. :)

🔗 Best Music Technology Books for Teachers | Midnight Music

Best Music Technology Books for Teachers | Midnight Music:

I love buying books – both digital and paper – especially when they are relevant and useful. Here are a number of music technology in education books I recommend. I own almost all of these books and they contain excellent ideas for music technology curriculum integration.

I am honored that my book is on the list. Definitely check out the link. Some of these books are epically good, especially if you teach a music technology subject. Others, like mine, are suitable for a music teacher of any subject.

🎙 New podcast episode! - Working with PDFs, featuring guest, Paul Shimmons

In this weeks episode, I am joined by Paul Shimmons (band director, music tech in education blogger, and podcaster). We have a great time talking about our various workflows for reading, editing, annotating, and organizing our PDFs. This episode was recorded shortly after the announcement of iOS 11 which will bring a lot of new productivity features to the iPad. Naturally, we had to discuss these announcements and how they might reshape our PDF workflows next fall.

You can listen to the episode here.

🔗 New York Times - On 'OK Computer," Radiohead Saw the Future: Ours

Jon Pareles writing for the New York Times...

On ‘OK Computer,’ Radiohead Saw the Future: Ours:

It all came true. Twenty years after Radiohead released “OK Computer,” capitalism’s tech overlords have inexorably cultivated a work force and customer base of wish-they-were-androids. Using algorithms that ruthlessly tabulate every available metric, they are determined to maximize efficiency, and they see no profit in human downtime, imperfection or ideals. On “OK Computer,” Radiohead saw it coming, amid all the other alienation and malaise that its songs would enfold in melody and noise.

This is a great write up celebrating the 20 year anniversary of one of my favorite albums from one of my favorite bands. Radiohead saw where music technology was heading and paved the way for future musicians to blur the line between human and robot.

After 20 years, it’s clear that “OK Computer” was the album on which Radiohead most strongly embraced and, simultaneously, confronted the legacy of the Beatles. Radiohead picked up chord progressions (like the pivotal bit of “Sexy Sadie” in “Karma Police”), instrument sounds and ideas on structure from the band, even as it completely inverted its 1960s optimism.

I have often compared Radiohead’s use of technology in the recording studio to the Beatles’ studio practices in their later albums. It’s nice to see Pareles dig into this comparison a little further. 

You can celebrate this amazing album by checking out their reissue, "OK Computer: OKNOTOK 1997 2017,” which is a remaster of the original CD, includes eight B-sides for EPs they released in the 90’s, and recordings of never before released songs from the “OK Computer" era. 

Click here to listen on Apple Music.

🔗 Soundtrap Enable Import Export MIDI Music Files

Soundtrap Enable Import Export MIDI Music Files:

The MIDI music technology protocol is used worldwide to enable electronic devices -- computers, cellphones, karaoke machines and more -- to generate sounds. The enhanced MIDI support by Soundtrap furthers the creative process by making the multiple tools used to make music interoperable online. This is part of an effort by Soundtrap to broaden its ecosystem of best-of-breed industry solutions so that musicians and music creators have even more flexibility in their music-making efforts. For example, Soundtrap is now interoperable with digital audio workstations (DAWs) through MIDI File Export so users can send all or part of their composition to other solutions such as GarageBand or Pro Tools.

I experimented with Soundtrap with my general music classes last Spring. I was entirely skeptical about the prospect of running a DAW in a web browser but Soundtrap impressed me. It does a great job handling audio and MIDI files in a way that doesn't feel much slower than using a native app like GarageBand. My students loved the collaborative features and we were all left wanting more.

One of my GarageBand assignments in previous years was a MIDI remix, where I put MIDI files for familiar movie and pop songs in a shared folder and encouraged students to remix them, altering the instrument voices, form, and adding loops to transform the style. The fact that I can actually now do this assignment entirely in a web based application through Soundtrap's MIDI import and export is impressive. And this is not even to mention the fact that Soundtrap can perform import and export between other web-only based applications like Noteflight. Very cool. If you have been thinking about checking out Soundtrap for yourself, or for a classroom, I highly encourage it.

🎙 New podcast episode! - Scanning, with Guest Chris Russell

This week, middle school choral educator, music technology specialist, blogger, and podcaster, Chris Russell, joins the show to talk about using scanning apps in the music classroom.

Click here to listen to ---> DIGITAL ORGANIZATION TIPS FOR MUSIC TEACHERS, CHAPTER 5 - SCANNING, WITH GUEST CHRIS RUSSELL (SEASON 2, EPISODE 5)

Readdle Brings Drag and Drop to their iOS apps! What is this black magic!??!

A timely followup to MacStories’ iOS 11 Wish List Video…

One of my favorite productivity app developers, Readdle, has added drag and drop support to all of their iOS apps. This means that you can actually drag an email attachment from Spark Mail on one half of your iPad's screen onto the Documents app on the other half of your screen and drop it in a folder. It works the other way too, allowing you to drag files from Documents into mail messages in Spark as email attachments.

For those of you who don’t know, Documents is a fantastic app and pretty much serves the role that a Finder app would if Apple ever chose to release one on iPad. Readdle’s apps are featured prominently throughout my book. PDF Expert, Documents, and Scanner Pro are especially useful in my daily teaching workflow.

Readdle has a great blog post demoing this feature and explaining how they were able to pull it off. It really is black magic! Read the post here.

Watch the video below.

Conference season!

It is a pretty exciting time of year for me. I am presenting at the Ohio Music Educators Association conference next week and at the Texas and Maryland MEA conferences the following week.

At each conference I am promoting my new book, Digital Organization Tips for Music Teachers. I am also introducing two new sessions into my repertoire: Digital Time Management for Music Teachers and Working with Digital Scores.

My book will be available for sale at TMEA and most likely at OMEA. I look forward to seeing you if you are at either of these conferences!