🎙 #2 – Hip-Hop In Music Education, Music Education In Hip-Hop, with Ethan Hein

Ethan Hein joins the show to talk about no less than the following: Ableton Live, bias in harmonic analysis, hip-hop in music education, music education in hip-hop, the racial politics of defining genre, white people covering hip-hop songs on acoustic instruments, basing a dissertation on blog posts, the aesthetics of dubstep and metal, and Ethan and Will Kuhn’s forthcoming book.

Show Notes:

Animoog iOS app
John Lee Hooker
Howlin Wolf
Philip Tag, musicologist
Old Town Road – Lil Nas X, ft. Billy Ray Cyrus
Lil Nas X and the racial politics of country music – Ethanhein.com
Sweet Home Alabama – Lynyrd Skynyrd
Hey Jude – The Beatles
Naima – Ethanhein.com
Steven Feld, ethnomusicologist
Animals as Leaders
Twinkle Twinkle Little Star Metal Cover – Leo Moracchioli
Chris Thile covering Kendrick Lamar’s Alright on Prarie Home Companion
White people with acoustic instruments covering rap songs – Ethanhein.com
Punch Brothers Covering Radiohead’s Kid A
Biz Markie – Just A Friend
Angel of Doubt – Punch Brothers
willkuhn.com
Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites – Skrillex
Instapaper
Why hip-hop is interesting – Ethanhein.com

App of the Week: OmniGraffle | Scrivener | Audacity

Album of the Week: untitled unmastered. – Kendrick Lamar

Where to Find Us:
Ethan Hein: Facebook | Twitter | Blog | SoundCloud
Robby Burns: Twitter | Blog

Apple Podcasts | Overcast | Castro | Spotify | RSS

🗒 Apps for the Performing Ensemble Director – HCPSS PD Fall 2019

Apps mentioned in today’s session…

Productivity

Pixelmator / Pixelmator Pro / Pixelmator Photo

Music Creation/Viewing/Listening

Practice

Utility

Misc.

Lynda.com

App of the Week: PDF Expert 7

Readdle Launches PDF Expert 7, Free Update for iPhone & iPad

Today we are incredibly excited to launch PDF Expert 7 — our vision of what the ultimate PDF experience for every iPhone and iPad should be.

<div class="
      image-block-outer-wrapper
      layout-caption-below
      design-layout-inline
      combination-animation-none
      individual-animation-none
      individual-text-animation-none
    ">




    <figure class="
          sqs-block-image-figure
          intrinsic
        " style="max-width:1575px">







      <div class="image-block-wrapper">
        <div class="sqs-image-shape-container-element



          has-aspect-ratio
        " style="position: relative;padding-bottom:56.253971099853516%;overflow: hidden">







            <img src="https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5595df9ce4b0ce9ff9ecd1a8/1565197371903-RMAAEU28XEF7U13H2AUX/public.jpeg" alt="public.jpeg" width="1575" height="886" style="display:block;object-fit: cover;width: 100%;height: 100%;object-position: 50% 50%" loading="lazy">

        </div>
      </div>






    </figure>


</div>

This week’s update to PDF Expert secures it as my favorite PDF app on iOS. The one and only problem I have been having with it for the past year or two was its lack of integration with the iOS document browser, which shows you the same interface as the Files app when selecting which PDF you want to work with. I wrote about this last week with reference to the OmniGroup’s apps getting support for the native file browser this fall.

Accessing the the document browser is a tap away at all times. A ‘recent documents’ option is also one tap away. This is helpful because PDF Expert does a great job of integrating different options for managing your PDFs. It has Dropbox and Google Drive support. It also allows you to store PDFs locally within the app. This is useful for me when I am creating new PDFs or temporarily making copies of them for the purpose of editing the order of pages, the text of my documents, etc…

<div class="
      image-block-outer-wrapper
      layout-caption-below
      design-layout-inline
      combination-animation-none
      individual-animation-none
      individual-text-animation-none
    ">




    <figure class="
          sqs-block-image-figure
          intrinsic
        " style="max-width:2500px">







      <div class="image-block-wrapper">
        <div class="sqs-image-shape-container-element



          has-aspect-ratio
        " style="position: relative;padding-bottom:74.95999908447266%;overflow: hidden">







            <img src="https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5595df9ce4b0ce9ff9ecd1a8/1565197870642-3I1XF3DAXW0R50JY4D3S/public.jpeg" alt="The PDF Expert 7 interface. ‘My Files’ are locally stored documents which do not sync to iCloud. They can be viewed in the Files app through the PDF Expert file provider." width="2500" height="1874" style="display:block;object-fit: cover;width: 100%;height: 100%;object-position: 50% 50%" loading="lazy">

        </div>
      </div>






      <figcaption class="image-caption-wrapper">
        <div class="image-caption"><p class="">The PDF Expert 7 interface. ‘My Files’ are locally stored documents which do not sync to iCloud. They can be viewed in the Files app through the PDF Expert file provider.</p></div>
      </figcaption>


    </figure>


</div>

I like my ‘one true’ copies of my documents to live in iCloud. I will often take a scan of a stack of concert band parts, drag it into PDF Expert, extract the individual pages into separate parts (Flute 1, Flute 2, etc.), and then save these parts back to iCloud. I don’t want any of the extra files generated during this process cluttering up my documents folder, so its nice to have a quarantined area of PDF Expert where they can live.

<div class="
      image-block-outer-wrapper
      layout-caption-below
      design-layout-inline
      combination-animation-none
      individual-animation-none
      individual-text-animation-none
    ">




    <figure class="
          sqs-block-image-figure
          intrinsic
        " style="max-width:2500px">







      <div class="image-block-wrapper">
        <div class="sqs-image-shape-container-element



          has-aspect-ratio
        " style="position: relative;padding-bottom:74.95999908447266%;overflow: hidden">







            <img src="https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5595df9ce4b0ce9ff9ecd1a8/1565196841770-0MU2SBDZSCDOR98S0JL2/public.jpeg" alt="The old PDF Expert interface." width="2500" height="1874" style="display:block;object-fit: cover;width: 100%;height: 100%;object-position: 50% 50%" loading="lazy">

        </div>
      </div>






      <figcaption class="image-caption-wrapper">
        <div class="image-caption"><p class="">The old PDF Expert interface.</p></div>
      </figcaption>


    </figure>


</div>





















































<div class="
      image-block-outer-wrapper
      layout-caption-below
      design-layout-inline
      combination-animation-none
      individual-animation-none
      individual-text-animation-none
    ">




    <figure class="
          sqs-block-image-figure
          intrinsic
        " style="max-width:2500px">







      <div class="image-block-wrapper">
        <div class="sqs-image-shape-container-element



          has-aspect-ratio
        " style="position: relative;padding-bottom:74.95999908447266%;overflow: hidden">







            <img src="https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5595df9ce4b0ce9ff9ecd1a8/1565197154757-K5WVCVD617V3L386DA1H/public.jpeg" alt="The PDF Expert file provider, accessed through the Files app." width="2500" height="1874" style="display:block;object-fit: cover;width: 100%;height: 100%;object-position: 50% 50%" loading="lazy">

        </div>
      </div>






      <figcaption class="image-caption-wrapper">
        <div class="image-caption"><p class="">The PDF Expert file provider, accessed through the Files app.</p></div>
      </figcaption>


    </figure>


</div>

These local files can also be accessed from the native Files app as PDF Expert is a file provider.

Furthermore, PDF Expert gets its own iCloud folder where you can store documents by default. This is becoming less necessary because of how easy it is to access the Files interface, regardless of where your PDFs are stored.

As mentioned above, the ‘recents’ option makes it more streamlined to find what you want, no matter which of these methods you have used to store documents.

I am focusing a lot on the file workflow here because PDF Expert 6 already had the best feature set of any PDF app I have used on iOS. A clean interface, great editing tools, the ability to edit the text and images of a PDF (for real!) and more. These features are now all free. PDF Expert 7 introduces some pro features that come at the cost of 50 dollars a year. Some of these features include converting to PDF from Word or Excel files, and the option to customize the look and feel of the editing tools at the top of the screen. I am glad PDF Expert chose these features to put in the paid tier. It is just enough that it will be worth it for some users, but all of the good stuff is still in the free version.

I will probably try the one week free trial but will most likely stick with the free version.

<div class="
      image-block-outer-wrapper
      layout-caption-below
      design-layout-inline
      combination-animation-none
      individual-animation-none
      individual-text-animation-none
    ">




    <figure class="
          sqs-block-image-figure
          intrinsic
        " style="max-width:2500px">







      <div class="image-block-wrapper">
        <div class="sqs-image-shape-container-element



          has-aspect-ratio
        " style="position: relative;padding-bottom:74.95999908447266%;overflow: hidden">







            <img src="https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5595df9ce4b0ce9ff9ecd1a8/1565197421568-RWR1QG0QYYYU9ISZXNV1/public.jpeg" alt="These PDFs are stored inside of iCloud Drive, inside a folder called PDF Expert. Though this is becoming less necessary now that the Files app is integrated more directly into the app." width="2500" height="1874" style="display:block;object-fit: cover;width: 100%;height: 100%;object-position: 50% 50%" loading="lazy">

        </div>
      </div>






      <figcaption class="image-caption-wrapper">
        <div class="image-caption"><p class="">These PDFs are stored inside of iCloud Drive, inside a folder called PDF Expert. Though this is becoming less necessary now that the Files app is integrated more directly into the app.</p></div>
      </figcaption>


    </figure>


</div>





















































<div class="
      image-block-outer-wrapper
      layout-caption-below
      design-layout-inline
      combination-animation-none
      individual-animation-none
      individual-text-animation-none
    ">




    <figure class="
          sqs-block-image-figure
          intrinsic
        " style="max-width:2500px">







      <div class="image-block-wrapper">
        <div class="sqs-image-shape-container-element



          has-aspect-ratio
        " style="position: relative;padding-bottom:74.95999908447266%;overflow: hidden">







            <img src="https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5595df9ce4b0ce9ff9ecd1a8/1565196892083-LCBDJJS30HZWFVKZ6EGZ/public.jpeg" alt="The new PDF Expert interface puts the iOS document browser. In this screenshot, I can directly access PDFs that are stored in my musical Scores folder, which is in my iCloud Drive." width="2500" height="1874" style="display:block;object-fit: cover;width: 100%;height: 100%;object-position: 50% 50%" loading="lazy">

        </div>
      </div>






      <figcaption class="image-caption-wrapper">
        <div class="image-caption"><p class="">The new PDF Expert interface puts the iOS document browser. In this screenshot, I can directly access PDFs that are stored in my musical Scores folder, which is in my iCloud Drive.</p></div>
      </figcaption>


    </figure>


</div>

🎙 Introducing Music Ed Tech Talk, My New(ish) Podcast!

Today I am excited to announce that my podcast, Robby Burns + Friends, is getting a long overdue re-brand. I am renaming the show Music Ed Tech Talk. It will continue to follow the candid guest/host conversation style and will focus on music, education, technology, and other mutual interests.

Given my investment in the fields of music and education, and my intense interest in technology, most episodes of Robby Burns + Friends were already centered on these topics. I felt it was time to rebrand the show to better indicate to new listeners what they should expect when they press play.

That being said, I see this show, in combination with my blog, to be my digital megaphone, so don’t be surprised to hear me venture into the unknown. This is not a show about music technology education. It is a show about music, education, and technology. Three separate interests, sometimes discussed in isolation, sometimes in combination, and sometimes not at all. What I am saying is — don’t be surprised to hear occasional digressions on Star Wars and pickling.

I am hosting this show in the same place so you should expect to keep getting episodes in your feed if you were subscribed to Robby Burns + Friends. If not, please let me know. I am keeping the first three seasons of RB+F in the Apple Podcasts Directory under the new title because I feel that they are, spiritually speaking, the same show. I will be tightening up the format a little bit, and am planning to speak with new and exciting guests.

That about sums it up. Ushering in this new season of Music Ed Tech Talk is my very first guest ever, Jon Tippens. You can listen to the new episode and read the show notes here or click play right below.