Link Post
Robby Burns
David MacDonald unboxes the Odla music notation ...
David MacDonald unboxes the Odla music notation controller

METT Episode 82 - Beta Boys, with Will Kuhn

What to do if you use Finale

A lot of people have written about the Finale news this past week. It’s going to be a little bit before I can cover the topic on the podcast but I did want to link some resources for Finale users who might be trying to figure out their best path forward.

Darcy James Argue has a really great Facebook post with solid advise for you if Finale is mission critical software.

The latest episode of the Scoring Notes Podcast goes in depth on the topic, offering all of the facts, detailed advise on moving forward, and industry insights.

As I said in my earlier post, if you are at all curious about the Dorico deal, go for it! It has become my preferred notation editor. It’s powerful, modern, and fast.

🔗 The End of Finale | the finale blog

MakeMusic announced the end of Finale today. They encouraged their users to move to Dorico. Dorico is offering their highest tier (Dorico Pro) to users of Finale or PrintMusic for just $149.

Dorico is amazing, and I couldn't agree more that it is the future of music notation.

The end of Finale | the finale blog:

Today, Finale is no longer the future of the notation industry—a reality after 35 years, and I want to be candid about this. Instead of releasing new versions of Finale that would offer only marginal value to our users, we’ve made the decision to end its development.

Effective immediately, we are announcing these changes:

  • There will be no further updates to Finale, or any of its associated tools (PrintMusic, Notepad, Songwriter)
  • It is no longer possible to purchase or upgrade Finale in the MakeMusic eStore
  • Finale will continue to work on devices where it is currently installed (barring OS changes)

Music Ed Tech Talk Episode #81 - Software Therapy, with Dr. David MacDonald

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Show Notes:

Music, App, Tech Tip of the Week

VELCRO Brand ONE-WRAP Cable Ties, 100Pk, 8 x 1/2" Black Cord Organization Straps, Thin Pre-Cut Design, Wire Management for Organizing Home, Office and Data Centers

Nmixx: Fe3o4: Break

Stray Kids: 5-Star

Classical Session: Hayato Sumino | Apple Music

Bandle

Sequel App

Foodnoms

MusicBox: Save Music For Later

ATEEZ

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Robby Burns Transforms Band with Technology | TI-ME.org

The Technology Institute for Music Education (TI:ME) has a brand new website design. I am happy to be featured on their blog as a teacher using technology in the classroom. Click the link below for the entire feature.

Robby Burns Transforms Band with Technology:

What is a particular success story from using technology in your music classes?

A few years back, I transformed how I teach my beginning Concert Band class. When concert literature was giving us trouble, I wrote out everyone’s part for every instrument transposition and created play-along materials for all of it. The idea was to have fun in class while doing the necessary repetitions to perform successfully. My music team added a headset microphone to the front of the room, and I loaded all the play-along material into the Farrago soundboard app on the Mac. I became like a spin instructor: running tracks, encouraging repetitive effort, walking around the room, giving high-fives, correcting posture, and keeping kids engaged who might otherwise feel disconnected from the process. This approach changed how I do the job, and wouldn’t have been possible without the hardware and software I have come to depend on.

Podcast Episode #80 - New Apple Software Updates, with Craig McClellan

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#79 - Teaching Music Tech, with Gillian Desmarais

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Teaching Intonation with Tonal Energy

This blog post, podcast episode, and presentation were prepared for the NJMEA professional development conference in 2024.

This blog post exists to serve as both session notes for conference attendees, show notes for listeners of the podcast episode, and any teacher who wishes to develop intonation in their performing ensemble.

Complimentary Podcast Episode:

Where to Find Me

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Teaching Intonation

Philosophy

  • Prioritize these...
    • Tone
    • Intonation
    • Balance/Blend
    • Melodic Accuracy
    • Rhythmic Accuracy
    • Expression/Phrasing
    • Technique/Articulation
  • Sound Over Sight
    • If we are asking students to use their ears, then why are we having them use their eyes?
    • Natural Learning - think about how children learn to speak. Through modeling from parental figures, constant repetition, and encountering these repetitions in various contexts.
    • Electronic tuners can only tune intervals of unisons and octaves accurately.
    • We are used to hearing the piano in its slightly “out-of-tune” tempered state.
  • Interval Adjustment
    • Pure intervals have varying degrees of adjustment from tempered intonation to make them in tune.
    • Scale Degree | Adjustment
      • 1 | 0
      • 2 | +3.9
      • 3 | -13.7
      • 4 | -2.0
      • 5 | +2.0
      • 6 | -15.6
      • 7 | -11.7
      • 8 | 0
  • We must teach our students to HEAR when something is out of tune by listening for beats. But how?
    • Resonant intonation is the result of two other important features: superior tone and balance.
    • Good tone comes first.
    • Learning balance is difficult in a room by yourself.
    • Use of an electric drone helps.
    • Turn the drone up to a level that equals the student.
    • Song based learning that utilizes lots of simple melodies in standard keys teaches students to understand basic consonance and dissonance.
    • Lots of repetition!!!
    • Patients!
    • Reinforce that one success does not mean that everything will be in tune from here on out.
    • Don’t strive for a perfect intonation system. Resist teaching students the theory of intervals and focus on them hearing consonance and dissonance through listening to the relationships of intervals.
    • Once you know what a 5th sounds like, you can tune it anywhere.
    • Avoid technical talk unless something is absolutely in a students way.
  • Daniel Kohut - Musical Performance: Learning Theory and Pedagogy
    • Superior Concept
    • Relaxed Concentration
    • Focused Awareness
  • Reasons teachers give up on teaching intonation this way...
    • Fear of other areas of musical performance failing - wrong notes, rhythm, poor technique, inability to execute musically. The solution to this - pick easier music!!!
    • Abstract nature of these skills make them less concrete to student minds and harder to teach.
    • This is a long road. It takes time. But! - the end reward is ultimately better because students own their critical listening skills and now make musical adjustments themselves, even to features in the music that are not tone and intonation related. Each year will have an upswing towards the end. Independent musicianship is the result.

Features of Tonal Energy

  • Overview of each feature and setting - Live Demo
    • Strategies
  • Everything with drone
    • All music taught around tonal centers
    • Students tune down to the tonic most immediately beneath where the majority of their part sits
    • Students write tonal centers in their method books and concert music
  • Analyze mode - Students practice scale patterns and songs in this sequence...
    1. Visual and aural feedback
    2. Aural feedback only
    3. No drone at all
  • Practice Guide

CleanShot 2022-01-09 at 12.45.41.png

  • You can balance to the drone

    Tell students to match the volume of the drone at various levels.

  • Play along melodies with students on a keyboard or on the display

CleanShot 2022-02-03 at 18.21.25@2x.png

A midi keyboard like the Xkey can play certain key areas in tune perfectly and can automatically tune chords to just intonation. Combined with an iPad, this is like owning a Yamaha Harmony Director.

CleanShot 2022-02-03 at 18.21.47@2x.png

Lightly Row with Tuning Drones

Recording Tonal Energy into GarageBand with Inter-App Audio

Embellishing the Drone Track with Drums

Embellishing Lightly Row

Scale Exercise Play-Along Tracks with Trap Beats - Promotional Video

Image.png

Image.png

CleanShot 2022-02-03 at 18.23.30@2x.png

  • More Resources

Extra Show Notes from the Podcast Episode:

App of the Week

Album of the Week

Tech Tip of the Week

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!

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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.

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.

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:

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:

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!

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