Yamaha SEQTRAK

CleanShot 2025-02-22 at 15.26.30.

I’ve been playing with a Yamaha SEQTRAK a bit for the past week.

This device is incredibly cool. It’s a mobile idea station designed for both power and portability. It features a multitrack sequencer, a wide variety of synths, effects, and a sampler. With about four hours of battery life, it’s fun to carry around the house or on the go. The build quality is solid, and its design is stylish. The touch strips are highly responsive.

A complimentary app lets you control the entire device through a graphic user interface. The app also includes eye-catching visualizers that sync with your music. I have a feeling some of my general music students will enjoy it—the focused form factor could serve as a great introduction to sequencing.

If this sounds interesting, there are plenty of demos and tutorials available online, one of which I embedded below. I just wanted to share that I think this wave of portable beat machines is a great trend—and the SEQTRAK gets my thumbs-up!

About migrating Apple Account purchases between accounts – Apple Support

Now THIS is a true “finally.”

For years, I’ve thought that if Apple were ever going to allow the merging of a media-only Apple ID with a primary one, it would have happened a decade ago. I had long since given up hope that they would ever dedicate resources to this.

Recently, I’ve been dealing with an awful macOS bug where the App Store won’t stay logged into my secondary “media” Apple ID. When I called Apple Support, several specialists were surprised that it’s even possible to use two different Apple IDs. That’s how far back this issue dates. The last time Apple even allowed the creation of an Apple ID dissociated from an @mac, @me, or @iCloud address was so long ago that most of their support team is too young to know it was ever possible. Wild.

I’m overjoyed that I can finally end my 15+ year nightmare of managing media purchases under a separate account. Maybe you’re in the same boat.

If so, be sure to read all of the fine print. There are several conditions, and I’ve seen multiple reports on Reddit about common bugs. I haven’t done the migration yet because you can’t if you’ve purchased anything with one of the IDs in the past 15 days, and I just bought an app a few days ago.

I’ll report back once I go through with it. This might be one of those things where it’s worth waiting a month or so to let the rest of the internet (and Apple) work out the bugs.

About migrating Apple Account purchases between accounts – Apple Support:

You can choose to migrate apps, music, and other content you’ve purchased from Apple on a secondary Apple Account to a primary Apple Account. The secondary Apple Account might be an account that’s used only for purchases. You’ll need access to the primary email address or phone number and password for both accounts, and neither account should be shared with anyone else. Learn more about how to migrate purchases.
Keep reading here…

Twenty Years on this Journey – Technology in Music Education

Chris Russel wrote some reflections on blogging for 20 years about music, education, and technology.

This part caught my attention…

Twenty Years on this Journey – Technology in Music Education:

What has also surprised me is how technology in our field, music education, has been in a holding pattern, even before COVID. The deep dive into the use of devices during COVID has resulted in a push against the use of technology by parents and teachers alike, but the technological slowdown started before that.
Keep reading here…

My gut reaction to reading this was to remember my own excitement for tech in 2005. So much hardware and software was on the verge of a breakthrough in democratizing the creative process–making things that used to be expensive, difficult, and professional more affordable, consumer-friendly, and personal. I was primarily excited by how easily I could make and share music.

When I think about what we’re being told are the breakthroughs of 2025, it’s all AI. The positioning of AI as some sort of “next big thing” still feels like an answer in search of a question. AI, and the developments of the early 2000’s, can both make things easier, but so much of what’s emerging today feels pro-capital and anti-curious.

Definitely follow Chris Russel’s awesome work. He has helped me level up my ukulele teaching chops in recent years, and this conversation might be a good starting point for some of that if you are interested.

What We’re Fighting For – Edward Zitron

This is a long but worthwhile read that touches on many key points about the declining quality of technology everywhere–and, as a result, my diminishing joy in using it. It also speaks to my hope that I can continue finding computers both fun and useful in the future.

What We’re Fighting For:

We do not “use” the computer — we negotiate with it to try and make it do the things we want it to do, because the incentives behind modern software development no longer align with the user.
Keep reading here…

Will Kuhn and I talk changes to the podcast, automation, apps of the year, tech we’re thankful for, and some of our recent favorite music

Check out the latest episode of Music Ed Tech Talk!

Will is here! We discuss forthcoming changes to the show, automation, apps of the year, tech we’re thankful for, and some of our favorite media we’ve been engaging with.

This episode was recorded in late December 2024.

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Chapters

00:00:00 Here he goes taking about Dark Souls again

00:08:15 MCU (Muppet Cinematic Universe)

00:15:14 Introducing…Will Kuhn, now a METT Regular! And Jaye, podcast editor!

00:20:23 2025 Mike Kovins TI:ME Teacher of the Year Robby Burns – acknowledgments and thank yous.

00:27:04 Thank you Patreon Supporter Susan!

00:27:46 MacStories’ App of the Year: Delta Emulator

00:40:31 Siri Shortcuts App

00:43:32 Current AI uses – productivity, creativity, philosophy

00:51:31 Robby’s National Board Certification Application and NotebookLM

00:57:51 What are we really trying to do [with AI and our students]?

01:02:58 Three Holiday Topic Blitz – Tech We’re Thankful For; Tech We’re Thankful For In the Workplace; Gifts and Gift Cards

01:16:54 How about music?!

Show Notes and Links

Where to Find Us

Robby – robbyburns.com
Will – willkuhn.com

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

79 – Teaching Music Tech, with Gillian Desmarais – Music Ed Tech Talk ↩︎
61 – Music Technology 101, with Heath Jones – Music Ed Tech Talk ↩︎
61 – Music Technology 101, with Heath Jones – Music Ed Tech Talk ↩︎
69 – I Don’t Want a Valuable Life Lesson, I Just Want An Ice Cream – Music Ed Tech Talk ↩︎
52 – Dorico Updates! with Daniel Spreadbury – Music Ed Tech Talk ↩︎

Netflix confirms it didn’t mean to support that Apple TV feature everyone has wanted for years – 9to5Mac

Nooooooooooooo!

Netflix confirms it didn’t mean to support that Apple TV feature everyone has wanted for years – 9to5Mac:

Within a few hours of popping up in the United States, however, the feature started to vanish. Mark Gurman at Bloomberg shared that he believed the integration was a bug, although actual support could come in the future. Meanwhile, The Verge reports that Netflix has confirmed that support for Apple’s TV app was a mistake and not intended to occur.
Netflix has notoriously not played nice with Apple’s TV app because it prefers to be the one-true-channel for streaming movies and TV shows.
Now back to your regularly scheduled Netflix price increases.
Keep reading here…

Amazon revamps Prime Video’s Apple TV app | The Verge

Wow, another finally for the Apple TV.

My son watches a lot of kids’ content on Amazon Prime and frequently asks to rewatch the same episode (or 10-second clip) over and over again.

The fact that Amazon has been using its own janky playback controls instead of Apple’s far superior ones has made me want to rip my hair out on occasion. This will be a welcome improvement.

Amazon revamps Prime Video’s Apple TV app | The Verge:

Amazon’s Prime Video app just got a big update on Apple TV. The app is now better optimized for tvOS, allowing you to swipe on the Siri Remote to scroll through Prime Video’s shows and movies as well as use touchpad gestures for fast-forwarding, rewinding, and scrubbing through content.
Keep reading here…

Netflix finally has integration with the Apple TV app – FlatpanelsHD

Wow, finally! I thought this would never happen. I use the Apple TV’s Up Next feature so often that I almost never see Netflix content. It was almost certainly a contributor to my decision to cancel Netflix a few years back.

This integration seems like it isn’t as complete as the integration of other apps like Amazon Prime and Disney+, but it’s a whole lot better than nothing.

Netflix finally has integration with the Apple TV app – FlatpanelsHD:

It seems that Apple has finally struck a deal to integrate Netflix into the Apple TV app, with Netflix content now appearing in Continue Watching, Search, and the Watchlist
Keep reading here…

Readwise Reader now syncs highlights to Apple Notes

I’ve been using Readwise Reader for the past few years as both an RSS client and a read-it-later service.

I subscribe to all my favorite blogs and news sources within the app. My workflow typically involves swiping through the day’s articles, saving some to my read-later list, and catching up on them when I have time.

One of Readwise’s standout features is its ability to capture highlights from both web articles and Kindle books, automatically syncing them to your preferred notes app. It now integrates with Apple Notes!

Here’s what my Apple Notes app looks like after an export: The sync pulls in book cover art, metadata, and the full text of each quote, along with direct links to those highlights in Readwise Reader and the Kindle app. It’s an invaluable tool for research and deep thinking.

After a bruising year, Sonos readies its next big thing: a streaming box | The Verge

We have a lot of Sonos speakers in our house. $200-$400 dollars for a tv box seems crazy high in cost. Unless they really nail the interface for it and provide far more HDMI outputs than my TV, I don’t see how this competes with the abundance of affordable streaming devices on the market–let alone the premium (yet still less expensive) Apple TV.

After a bruising year, Sonos readies its next big thing: a streaming box | The Verge:

After the most tumultuous nine months in Sonos’ history, the brand is trying to find its footing again. Even as work continues to rehabilitate the company’s beleaguered mobile app, Sonos is planning to take a big swing in a new product category: it’s getting into video for the first time. In the coming months, Sonos will release a streaming player that sources tell me could cost between $200 and $400 — a truly staggering price for its category.
Keep reading here…