Author: Robby Burns

Digital Organization Tips for Music Teachers – TMEA 2023 (4:15 pm)

Update! — February 17, 2023:

Thanks to everyone who came to my session! I received two requests after the session and have since written two complimentary blog posts to address them.

  1. I was asked to show off the screenshots of my “Band Wiki” in Craft. You can view those here.
  2. I was asked if there are any strategies for making meaningful connections between web-based documents like Google Docs, and the more traditionally type that live on a hard drive. Here is a post about how I use Obsidian and Hookmark to create a personal wiki-style list of links to information of all kinds.

This blog post and presentation were prepared for the Texas Music Educators Association Professional Development Conference 2023.

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.

Where to Find Me

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  • My Book: Digital Organization Tips for Music Teachers | Oxford University Press
  • My Scale Exercise Play-Along Tracks: Audio Only | Audio and Stems … current on sale
  • My appearance on LearnOmniFocus.com (Learn how I manage time and tasks in the music classroom)

    • Session Outline and Links to Resources Mentioned in the Session:

      • The three things that have changed the most since my book:

        • Not really a lot

        • I wrote it to be workflow based, not prescriptive. Some ideas are a little out of date but the principles remain

        • Exceptions and developments:

      • Types of data and where they go

      • Native apps vs. web apps

        • Native apps typically store data locally on your computer, sometimes giving you access to the individual files themselves in your file system
        • Web apps typically require an internet connection and keep your files all inside of the application they were created in

      • Project vs. Category/Tag vs. App organization

        • Files can be organized into Folders on your computer
        • Alternatively, files can be tagged on your computer, giving you a more dynamic and flexible organization system
        • You may also choose to think about your files as stored within the app they were created in (you might not have a choice if they were created using a web app)

      • Email

      • Tasks and projects

      • Notes

      • Files

        • Finder

        • Folders

        • Tags

        • Stacks

        • Syncing iCloud documents

        • Google Drive

        • Spotlight and Searching apps (finding it is the key) – Press Command+Spacebar

        • Use apps like Hook to bridge the gap between native and web apps

          • I use a Dashboard in Obsdian

      • Making things digital that are not digital

      • Sheet Music Management

      • Audio

        • iTunes

        • Apple Music

        • Spotify

        • IDAGIO

        • Apple Classical?

      • Automation

Teaching Intonation with Tonal Energy – TMEA 2023 (11:30 am, Room CC 216 B)

This blog post, podcast episode, and presentation were prepared for the Texas Music Educators Association Professional Development Conference 2023.

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

Subscribe to the Blog…RSS** | Email Newsletter

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

Support My Work

Become a Patron!

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

ChatGPT, Mastodon, and New iPad Apps

David MacDonald joins the show to discuss ChatGPT, Mastodon, new creative iPad apps, and more.

Subscribe to the Blog…

RSS | Email Newsletter

Subscribe to the Podcast in…

Apple Podcasts | Overcast | Castro | Spotify | RSS

Support Music Ed Tech Talk

Become a Patron!

Buy me a coffee

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

Show Notes:

App of the Week:

Robby – Ivory

David MacDonald – The Eurorack Simulator

Music of the Week:

Robby – Fame – Cipher

David MacDonald – The Books – Lost and Safe

Where to Find Us:

Robby – Mastodon | Blog | Book

David MacDonald – Mastodon | Website

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

I’m presenting at TMEA 2023

Hello! I am pleased to say I am presenting at the Texas Music Educators Association conference next month. Will you be there? If so, I hope you will check out one of my two sessions.

Digital Organization Tips for Music Teachers – Wednesday, February 8 @ 4:15 pm, Room CC 214B

Teaching Intonation with Tonal Energy – Friday, February 10 @ 11:30 am, Room CC 216

Stay tuned to the blog for complementary session notes and links.

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Watch ChatGPT Build A Working Guitar Pedal Plugin

This is one of the coolest things I have seen from ChatGPT so far.

In this video, the AI is able to write a functional VST plugin for a DAW that simulates a guitar pedal. Obviously this requires a lot of trial and error, as well as some human intervention at points. But this, to me, is why ChatGPT is compelling. You can talk to it conversationally.

There are a lot of ethical conversations about art and AI happening in my corners of the web these days, and I am not prepared to get into it here. That said, I think code is one of the examples where I have found AI to be an actual utility in my life. I have asked ChatGPT to write me short AppleScripts that automate cumbersome computer tasks, and it has done it successfully!

Eric Jimenez Joins Hal Leonard Team

Press Releases – Eric Jimenez Joins Hal Leonard Team | Hal Leonard Online:

12.16.22—Hal Leonard is excited to announce that Eric Jiminez has joined their education team as Account Manager – Education Technology. In this role, Eric will focus on serving school districts with the resources, curriculum, technology, methods, repertoire, and professional development that Hal Leonard has to offer.

Congratulations to Eric! Check out his podcast The Score.

Scale Dice by Way of Dice by PCalc – Ehler

I use the app Dice by PCalc to simulate the rolling of various dice while playing tabletop and role playing games. It is good fun, but not something I have used in the classroom. Ehler has the very cool idea of using it for assigning scales. You could use these similarly for any kind of classroom need where you have to randomize an order of something (and make it fun).

You can check out the app here and read Ehler’s post below, which includes a link to download the scale dice into the Dice app.

Scale Dice by Way of Dice by PCalc – Ehler

I’ve known many directors over time to use “scale dice” to help students practice their major scales with an element of randomness. In Iowa, this is a useful preparation for All-State auditions, but it can be a handy thing to do in sectionals and small-group lessons too. Dice by PCalc has support for custom dice, and these wind up looking great.

Currently, the app supports six distinct dice designs on screen at a time (so it would be easy and practical to have six different students at once get assigned a scale with a single roll)

You can configure these dice yourself, but I’ll save you the work by sharing my “custom dice” export here.

How Andy Bliss Uses OmniFocus

Speaking of The Omni Show, Andy Bliss (performing artist and musician’s coach), was on a recent episode.

Andy talks about the intentionality of performing, teaching, and learning, in a way that really resonates with me. I think this is partly because he uses his technology to both help him meet his varied goals, but also as a part of the reflection process which determines them in the first place.

Listen below.

How Andy Bliss Uses OmniFocus:

Today, Andy Bliss joins us to share his insights on using OmniFocus to supercharge work as a performing artist and musician’s coach. With a background in both the arts and technology, Andy knows a thing or two about the intersection between creativity and efficiency.