#48 – Holiday Special 2021, featuring Will Kuhn, Craig McClellan, David MacDonald, and Jon Tippens

Friends of the show join to answer burning questions about music, education, and technology in 2021 (and beyond).

Patreon subscribers get some extra discussion about Dune and Foundation.

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Show Notes:

Album of the Year – Nate Smith: Kinfolk 2 | Stevie Wonder: Talking Book | Magdalena Bay: Murcurial World | John Mayer: Sob Rock | Cory Wong and Dirty Loops: Turbo

App of the Year – Obsidian | Fin Timer | OP-Z App | Pixelmator Photo | Molskine Actions

Tech Tip of the Year – Focus Modes (some discussion about how I am using these on episode 44 of this show) | camelcamelcamel.com | Use OBS for everything | Feedbin | Press and hold the spacebar on iOS to move your cursor around

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

Sponsor: Light the Music

Thanks to my sponsor this month, Light the Music:

Light the Music empowers educators to ignite student creativity and collaboration. Using a digital audio workstation, students learn about the fundamentals of music while creating their own music that is authentic, relevant, and meaningful to them.

Light the Music provides a curriculum aligned with the creating strand of the National Core Arts Standards. As students are introduced to the technology tools, they create an artist’s profile to guide their work throughout the curriculum. Students then learn about the elements that make up a piece of music; rhythm, chords, bass, and melody. They learn concepts by recreating and remixing, then use that knowledge to create something new. In each lesson, students share their work with classmates to give and receive feedback that is kind, specific, honest, and helpful.

The Light the Music curriculum comprises 8 units and 26 lessons, containing tutorial videos, templates, resources, and slides to make teaching easy. In each lesson, students learn, practice, and apply new skills. The curriculum offers a scaffolded structure for teachers to sequence lessons, yet contains enough flexibility for students to get support or dive deeper when desired. Students will work towards creating their own piece of music and a video to go along with it. At the conclusion of the 8 units, students share their work in a final showcase.

Light the Music is ideal for students in sixth through twelfth grade general **music, music technology, music appreciation, or any other music courses where student creativity is a goal. Additional stand-alone lesson plans for teachers looking for a one-time project are also available. If you’d like to learn more, check out www.lightthemusic.com.

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NPR Playlist – 50 Best Albums of 2021, Ranked

For a while, I had a holiday tradition of taking “best albums of the year” posts on the web, and making Apple Music playlists out of them.

NPR has started doing this, which saves me some time, but I sort of miss the ritual.

Anyway, here are links to their streaming playlists. I always learn about some good new music listening through this list every year.

Some of my favorites I have already heard are, in no particular order…

  • An Evening with Silk Sonic, Silk Sonic
  • Mood Valiant, Hiatus Kaiyote
  • Floating Points, Pharoah Sanders & The London Symphony Orchestra

NPR Music’s 50 Best Albums of 2021, Ranked : NPR

If the year presently coming to a close was a dance, it’d be a hesitant shuffle, tentative steps toward — or heyyyy, maybe away from? — an uncertain future. So maybe that’s why, when we sat down together to discuss which albums we loved the most over the course of 2021, NPR Music’s staff and contributors found ourselves drawn to albums by artists making breakthroughs, moving forward with clarity, without balking at the obstacles falling in their way. Our list of the year’s 50 best is topped by an album that was unmatched in concept, songwriting or performance, but it had so much good company. Everywhere on this list you’ll find the thrill of artistic revelation, musicians finding themselves, willing something new into reality. There’s plenty of fun, but little escapism. Many of these albums are stacked with great songs, but these aren’t snacks. Even when slight they are composed, with a sense of purpose. This is nourishment. Look around. You’ll find something fortifying to build you up for the road ahead. (As a bonus, you can find our list of the 100 Best Songs of 2021 here.)

_Stream NPR Music’s 50 Best Albums of 2021:Spotify / Apple Music / Tidal / Amazon Music / YouTube Music

Top 10 Podcast Episodes of 2021!

Yesterday, I posted my top 10 blog posts written in 2021. Today, I thought I would share the most popular podcast episodes I published.

Note: everyone uses different podcast players, so I have linked to the show notes/blog posts that accompany many of these episodes. A few of them will require you to scroll down for the playback controls. Or, of course, you could subscribe to the show! (Don’t forget to leave me that sweet 5 star review if you are on Apple Podcasts, it really does help!)

Subscribe to the Podcast in…

Apple Podcasts | Overcast | Castro | Spotify | RSS

Thanks to all of the awesome guests who joined the show this year!

  1. forScore for the Mac, with Dr. David MacDonald
  2. Dorico for iPad, with Daniel Spreadbury
  3. The Prime Directive, with Will Kuhn and Ethan Hein
  4. What Do We Keep?
  5. It’s a Floor Wax. It’s a Dessert Topping. Stop! You’re Both Right!, with Alex Shapiro
  6. Rogue Amoeba Audio Apps, with Paul Kafasis … technically released late December 29, but it was downloaded so much this year, I’ll allow it.
  7. Sibelius for iPad, with Joe Plazak
  8. Pass the Baton, with Theresa Hoover
  9. Ukulele Makeover, with Dr. Chris Russell
  10. Smart Speakers and Their Assistants, with Dr. David MacDonald

#47 – Craft for Music Educators, with Dr. David MacDonald

David rejoins the show to talk about how we use Craft, an extremely versatile, elegant, and powerful app for the web, iOS, and macOS devices.

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Support Music Ed Tech Talk

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Show Notes:

App of the Week

Robby – Documents

David – GoodReader

Music of the Week

Robby – NPR Top 50 of 2021

David – Silk Sonic

Tech Tip of the Week

Better Touch Tool

Where to Find Us:

Robby – Twitter | Blog | Book

David – Twitter | Website | Blog

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

Top Ten Blog Posts from 2021

I thought it would be fun to take a look at the analytics on the blog this year and acknowledge the most popular posts written in 2021.

Here they are!

  1. Dorico for iPad: First Impressions
  2. Creating a Song Remix Project for Your Music Class Using Soundtrap and Neural Mix Pro
  3. forScore for the Mac
  4. Sibelius Comes to iPad
  5. 3 Soundtrap Projects Your Students Will Love
  6. Develop Performance Skills
  7. Take, Leave, Transform! — What Do We Keep From Last School Year?
  8. Getting Young Performers to Compose
  9. Automatic Instrument Rental Forms
  10. Ukulele Resources, Pedagogy, and Curriculum

And a bonus!

  1. iOS 15 and Safari Extensions

Though not a blog post, My Favorite Technology continues to be one of the most popular pages of robbyburns.com. It contains a list of my most depended on hardware, software, and services.

Guest APPEARANCE: iPad Pros Podcast

I am delighted to join the iPad Pros Podcast again, this time to talk about how I use the iPad to teach middle school band and run my private teaching studio.

Listen below or in your favorite podcast app.

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You can also check out my most recent guest apperance below, to talk about notation apps on iPad.

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