Category: Original Post

Yesterday’s iPhone Event

I’ve already been getting texts from colleagues asking about yesterday’s iPhone event so I thought I would put some thoughts down here.

I get why this event has everyone’s curiosity levels at 100 every year. Everyone needs a phone. And they want to know which one will be their next. The truth is, iPhones are at a point where they are going to continue to slowly iterate year over year. Major changes are rare.

Every year Apple makes better iPhones than the previous year. In the case of this year, the most notable improvements are to the camera. If you have been holding on to your phone for 2-3 years, this will be a worthy upgrade.

There are four options: iPhone 13, iPhone 13 mini, iPhone 13 Pro, iPhone Pro Max.

Respectively, those could be explained as New Phone (Medium), New Phone (Small), Better New Phone (Medium), Better New Phone (Big).

I can’t tell you which phone to buy but chances are the New Phone is probably good enough for your needs, and what it will really come down to is size and how ready you are to upgrade. The camera is always better on the Pro models, and I have a toddler, so I am getting that model. While some years there is a better camera in the largest sized model, this is not the case this year, so iPhone Pro 13 (non-Max) it is for me. My wife will be getting a mini, which is a really lovely phone if you can stomach the low battery life.

The most attractive thing announced yesterday was probably the new iPad mini that has the new design of the iPad Pros (with flat edges and support for the second-generation Apple Pencil). If you have room for an iPad mini in your life, there is no question, you should get it. This device looks really slick. I am still riding out my iPad Pro 12.9 inch from 2018 and plan to do so for a while, though I am curious about going to the 11-inch pro model sometime down the road. I realize I might miss the larger size for sheet music reading, but I was doing it before there was ever a 12.9-inch size, and I really miss the feeling of holding the smaller size for things like reading and watching video content on the couch. The 12.9 has very much a laptop feeling in my experience. Owning a 12.9 and a mini is tempting but it seems cumbersome to charge and keep up with two iPadOS devices.

There is also a new Apple Watch and it looks like the most boring update ever unless you have a 2+-year-old Apple Watch in which case it will be a really strong update.

I also may consider the new MagSafe wallet attachment that has Find My app integration considering I just lost my wallet at school over as recently as this past weekend.

Apple acquires classical music streaming service Primephonic

Last week, Apple aquired classical music streaming service Primephonic. This service is very similar to <a href="https://idagio.com“>IDAGIO which I use and have written about here before.

<a href="https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2021/08/apple-acquires-classical-music-streaming-service-primephonic/“>Apple acquires classical music streaming service Primephonic – Apple–>

CUPERTINO, CALIFORNIA AND LONDON Apple today announced it has acquired Primephonic, the renowned classical music streaming service that offers an outstanding listening experience with search and browse functionality optimized for classical, premium-quality audio, handpicked expert recommendations, and extensive contextual details on repertoire and recordings.

With the addition of Primephonic, Apple Music subscribers will get a significantly improved classical music experience beginning with Primephonic playlists and exclusive audio content. In the coming months, Apple Music Classical fans will get a dedicated experience with the best features of Primephonic, including better browsing and search capabilities by composer and by repertoire, detailed displays of classical music metadata, plus new features and benefits.

Primephonic is no longer available for new subscribers and will be taken offline beginning September 7. Apple Music plans to launch a dedicated classical music app next year combining Primephonic’s classical user interface that fans have grown to love with more added features. In the meantime, current Primephonic subscribers will receive six months of Apple Music for free, providing access to hundreds of thousands of classical albums, all in Lossless and high-resolution audio, as well as hundreds of classical albums in Apple Music’s Spatial Audio, with new albums added regularly.

I would have never guessed that a company as big as Apple would dedicate resources to solving a problem like classical music metadata but I will take it. This will mean that I can use my same Apple Music account, library, and payment, and get a superior searching experience. Viewed simply as a utility, this seems like a win.

I wonder if this means that Apple is aware and working on the many other musical metadata problems in other styles. For example, in jazz, it would be great to search a recording by personnel, soloists, recording enegeniers, and more.

Take, Leave, Transform! What Do We Keep From Last School Year?

As we venture into the following school year, it is impossible to ignore all of the ways our teaching careers have changed over the past 16 months.

I’ve been reflecting on my current teaching practices, many of which have included new technologies and were inspired by virtual and hybrid teaching. It’s essential to think about which methods are worth taking into the future, which should be left behind, and which can potentially transform the future of teaching.

Let’s explore some practices to “take,” “leave,” and “transform” our teaching next year, in the context of five areas:

  1. Students and technology
  2. Teachers and technology
  3. Communication
  4. Hardware
  5. Assessment

Before we get started, here are a few things to take note of.

  1. This blog post originally appeared on the NAfME blog. If you would like, you can read it there._
  2. This post was based on my presentation at the Music Ed Tech Conference last month, hosted by MusicFirst. Click here for the session notes, which include links and resources related to this post.
  3. There is a podcast version of this post, which includes numerous student example recordings of the projects and assignments outlined below. Check it out below. I hope you will subscribe to the show!

Subscribe to the Podcast in: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | RSS

Ok, let’s get on to TAKE, LEAVE, TRANSFORM!

Students and tech

TAKE: Software that empowers student creativity

Digital audio workstation software empowers **all** music students to create.

Many school districts prioritized web-based creative tools like Soundtrap, Noteflight, Flat, and BandLab last year as they empowered students to make meaningful, project-based assignments from a distance.

Now that students have access to a digital audio workstation and notation editor, I cannot imagine teaching without them. In my general music classes, Soundtrap became a tool for producing our music. In-band, it became an opportunity to record student performance, collaborate on chamber music, and compose band music for the first time.

Alex Shapiro’s Putting the E in Ensemble curriculum made it possible to compose and record original band music collaboratively. My students wrote original melodies for their instruments in Noteflight, recorded them in Soundtrap, and then I shared the resulting recordings back with the class in a Dropbox folder, where they then used them as the basis for their own original band compositions in Soundtrap.

Using Alex Shapiro's *Putting the E in Ensemble* Curriculum, band students wrote and recorded original melodic content, and then edited each other's work together in their own original band piece.

LEAVE: Virtual performances

I am proud of my students for making virtual performances like the one above. They were great representations of our student’s resilience and effort, awesome for the community, and I liked editing them. But I think we can all agree that performing in the same space as one another is something we can’t wait to get back to.

TRANSFORM: Combining new tools and methods with traditional curriculum and skill development

I’m thrilled to combine these projects with the things we missed last year. For example, combining the guitar and piano aspects of my general music curriculum will more fully round out our skills. Guitars and ukeleles will become the basis of better understanding the harmonic structures underneath the music we create in Soundtrap. We can also learn to record ukulele into audio tracks in our music projects using a microphone.

Piano skills can now transcend traditional notation as our keyboards become MIDI controllers, used to create original content in our projects, rather than depending on the loop library.

Neural Mix Pro allows you to import an audio file and control the individual volume of the vocals, drums, and other accompaniment.

Teacher facing technology

TAKE: Software that empowers efficiency and teacher creativity

If technology had you down last year, I recommend finding the point of diminishing return at which you don’t feel like technology is getting more benefit for you or your students, and then stop there. For me, this sometimes means sidestepping school software and turning to more intuitive apps that make me more efficient and better organized. Here are a few:

  • Evernote: note app for clipping text, documents, website content, emails, and more. Everything is text searchable and can be organized by tag or project.
  • Spark Mail: email app that allows you to snooze messages out of your inbox to days where they are more relevant. It can also remind you when someone doesn’t respond and can even schedule emails to send at a future time.
  • Todoist: Everyone needs a task manager! Todoist is cross-platform and has most of the features of all the major task apps. It even supports collaborative project lists you can share with your music team.

Spark (Left) allows you to swipe on a message to send it to another productivity app like Todoist (Right), where you can turn email into tasks with due dates and deadlines. You can even collaborate on lists with your music team!

LEAVE: Software that gets in the way

Did you spend your waking life inside learning management software last year? Please accept my invitation to take a deep breath and discard anything that didn’t help your students learn last year.

TRANSFORM: New ways of creating engaging resources

I have shared some of the tools that make me productive. Now let’s explore the tools that help me develop resources. Many of the resources I had to make for virtual classes will enhance in-person teaching dramatically. Here are my favorite tools for making digital resources:

  • Neural Mix Pro: Takes an audio file and allows you to separate the vocals, drums, and other accompaniment and then export the resulting track. I used this to take vocals out of pop songs and then use them as the basis for scale play-along tracks last year. I also used it to separate vocals from pop songs for making remix projects in general music.

AnyTune can take an audio file and adjust the pitch and tempo, independently.

  • AnyTune: slowdown app that can take a song and change the speed and pitch independently. I use this to slow down recordings for students to practice along to (or to change it to a comfortable key). It is also capable of looping short sections of music for repetitive practice or improvisation.
  • Downie, iCab Mobile, and YouTubeDL: These tools are all capable of downloading a video or audio file from a website to your hard drive. Note: There are numerous educational reasons to use this kind of tool that fall under fair use. Make sure you investigate relevant copyright law before publicly repurposing someone else’s work.
  • Logic and ScreenFlow: Any audio and video editor will do, but for me, these applications balance ease with power. They can manipulate audio and video in nearly any way, and I don’t feel like I need another degree to use them.

Downie makes it easy to grab content from the web with a browser extension.

Communication

TAKE: Digital communication

I am also reflecting on every way that in-person collaboration can be made more efficient by going digital. I am mostly Zoom-ed out for the year, but when it comes to many of my music team’s interactions, sometimes something “could have been an email.” Digital communication helps us stay focused on our current tasks and address other’s concerns when we have the capacity, rather than being constantly interrupted.

LEAVE: Lengthy and verbose documents

The requirement of communicating through an LMS over the past year has made me realize that I can probably get away with shorter letters getting sent home in future years. Many families, especially students, responded well to concise and more frequent communication than the long-form alternative.

Slack is fun. But also for getting work done. But also fun.

TRANSFORM: New models for non-musical logistics and collaboration

You can elevate your digital communication by trying the following strategies:

  • *Slack or Microsoft Teams (your district might already pay for the latter.) Both of these tools are similar. My music team uses Slack for all of our communication because it removes the cruft and formality of email while maintaining more structure than text messaging. Using this tool, my team has created a space where we can separate different topics by channel (examples include #concerts, #fieldtrips, #fundraisers,* and more). All conversation stays organized in a chat thread within these areas. Apps like Google Drive can be linked to your Slack so that you can manage the sharing settings of documents and even see them in-line, right from within Slack.
  • Google Calendar: By creating a Google account for our team and logging into it on all our devices, we have made a workflow where we can share our schedule for rehearsals, sectionals, concerts, and events, with one another, all from within the calendar app on our computers. The neat part is that because Google Calendars are web-first experiences, we can easily embed the HTML in a password-protected page of our music program website so that families always know where they need to be and when.

Our calendar shows up everywhere from the web to my watch.

Hardware

TAKE: Microphones, interfaces, other pro audio hardware

My team purchased some microphones, audio interfaces, and MIDI keyboards last year to enhance the quality of our virtual classrooms. Here are some of my favorite devices:

  • Audio Technica AT2020: This isn’t the cheapest microphone out there, but it’s reasonable, and you get so much more from it than an entry-level product.
  • Scarlet Solo: This is the most straightforward and reliable tool for getting third-party devices like microphones, keyboards, and speakers to route in and out of a computer.
  • Amazon Essentials MIDI Keyboard I use a full-sized keyboard as a MIDI controller in most cases, but for basic note entry in a notation editor, MIDI controllers are one place to cut costs. I have a set of these for my general music class, and they have lasted many years so far.

LEAVE: The need to be tethered to a computer

Need I say more? It is exhausting to need a computer, especially when it limits us. I can’t wait to talk directly to students, hear them play in real-time, and give them the quick, authentic feedback characteristic of vital music-making.

TRANSFORM: Proven models of teaching with the computer as an extension of the self

I am not ready to write off the computer, though. The hardware we bought last year can be repurposed. The MIDI controllers can trigger justly in-tune chords and intervals from the Tonal Energy Tuner app from the front of the band room. The microphone and interface can allow me to quickly record the band and play it back for them, in higher fidelity than the voice memos app on my phone.

Furthermore, apps I used to engage students with visual and auditory experiences can elevate what would otherwise be a traditional band rehearsal. Here are some examples of such software, which can be shared through a screen and speaker system:

  • Farrago: Digital soundboard app that allows you to drag in mp3 files into a grid of squares where they can easily be triggered during rehearsal (or a school musical if you run one of those). It works for everything from play-along tracks (I have made some here, to fun sound effects. There is a sequential mode in which you can play them in a specified order automatically. I have used this feature to pre-record my entire warm-up for class. When I return to in-person instruction, I can use this warm-up approach to create two of “me” in the classroom. While students follow the recorded “me,” I have the freedom to work the room, connect with students, fix trombone posture, assist with music, and more.

Farrago.

  • Classroom Maestro: This desktop application displays a piano on-screen that highlights the keys of the keyboard you are playing on your MIDI controller in blue while also showing the notes on a staff.

Classroom Maestro.

  • forScore, GoodNotes, Tonal Energy, and Shortcuts: These are the apps I usually have on the screen of my iPad when I am on the podium. forScore shows my music, GoodNotes shows my documents (and acts as a digital whiteboard), and Tonal Energy is used for tuning drones. By streaming these applications to my projector (directly or via a program like AirServer), I can now invite students into my world, displaying contextual information and enriching their musical experience.

Bonus tip! In an iPad software update coming this fall, you can automate the opening of all your materials using the Shortcuts app. See it in action below and download this example shortcut here.

This shortcut, installed as a widget on my home screen, launches my score, tuner, and notepad, which I can use as a digital whiteboard.

To wrangle all of the new tech I want to use during rehearsal, I am investigating the modular Flex® Conductor’s System from Wenger. It is an investment, but it will hopefully allow me to have keyboards and computers positioned more accessibly during rehearsal.

Flex® Conductor's System

Assessment

TAKE: Assessment transparency

One thing I did enjoy about all assessments moving online was how they added transparency to all stakeholders. Every assignment, expectation, and instruction was in the same place, detailed in a web-accessible location for parents. Student progress was visible since things that were usually assessed informally needed to be online. I want to investigate how to keep some of this transparency moving forward.

LEAVE: Grades

I am doing some soul searching on the topic of grades and assessments this summer. If I thought grades bordered on meaningless before the pandemic, this problem has really been brought to light by a year of an ever increased achievement gap due to numerous inequities in our system.

Grades often inhibit the kind of curiosity and natural learning essential for students who are performing and creating.

UNgrading

TRANSFORM: New ways to foster student curiosity and reflection

I have been reading Ungrading (edited by Susan Blum), and it has caused me to ask some questions about where grades are really necessary. The book doesn’t challenge teachers to eliminate grades cold-turkey but instead offers lots of practical ways to reimagine the assessment process, making it feedback-centered and student-led.

Next year I am considering:

  1. Student self-grading
  2. Student-created rubrics
  3. Grading process-oriented practices and putting skill-based objectives (like instrumental performance) in a separate part of my grade book that doesn’t touch the overall student average.
  4. Eliminating processes that cause students and me to do less busy work.

Conclusion

As we prepare for the next year, I challenge you to ask yourself where the status quo wasn’t good enough and think about transforming your old teaching methods by adapting what we have learned this year.

Craft Pro currently free for teachers and students

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Craft Download here is an app that has been getting a lot of attention in the Apple community lately for the way it makes the process of organizing and sharing information very elegant.

They are currently offering the pro version for FREE to teachers and students. Make sure you check out the tweet above for more details.

In their own words, Craft is a “tool for creating beautiful documents and notes and sharing your thoughts. Everything you create in Craft can be shared with one tap. Craft supports inline markdown, backlinks, code snippets, images, videos, attaching PDF files, and rich link previews.”

Craft is on iOS and macOS and is worth checking out.

It’s hard to pin down exactly how it might serve you because it is extremely versatile. If you like organizing and sharing your ideas, particularly if you are a lukewarm Google Docs user, this is worth a look.

Automatic Instrument Rental Forms, with Keyboard Maestro

One of the things I hate the most about the beginning of the school year is managing instrument rental. It just takes too long to log student instrument needs, cross reference them with my inventory, and type out all of my loan agreements. So I automated a part of that process.

Using the app Keyboard Maestro it is possible to automate almost anything under the sun using a simple graphic user interface. Imagine tons of actions available in macOS presented as draggable blocks that you can stack on top of one another and initiate with a keystroke, by time of day, or by an event happening on your machine. It’s like building with legos. And the sky is the limit.

Watch my automation in action. I have set it up to prompt me for some information about the instrument and student. Once entered, it makes a copy of the selected file in Finder, copies it, and names it after the student. Then Keyboard Maestro waits for my next click. After clicking in the upper-leftmost field, KM fills in the rest and saves the document.

If you want to break apart the logic of it, see the image below to get an idea which triggers and actions I have used to set up the automation. If you are a KB expert and know how I can make it more efficient, let me know! If you are new to the app and need help, let me know! Patreon supporters can get access to the actual macro, install it into your own copy of Keyboard Maestro, and edit it to your liking.

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Sibelius comes to iPad

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And just like that, Sibelius has their own iPad app. This comes after yesterday’s news that Dorico has released a desktop-class iPad app. If you want to learn more about that, click that link. I have some early first impressions, a video, and a podcast interview with Product Marketing Manager Daniel Spreadbury.

I don’t have much to say about Sibelius coming to iPad because I didn’t have any access to it before today, and because it hasn’t been my primary notation editor for years. But from 30 minutes of playing with it, it is pretty powerful and will certainly offer competition in this space, which is good! I want pro iPad apps to get better. The thing that is most impressive about it is how well adapted to the iPad it appears. It has multitasking, Files app integration, and some really intuitive touch/Apple Pencil touch gestures for note input that offer a new kind of ease and accuracy I wasn’t quite expecting.

You can watch a First Look video from Scoring Notes below and read their review here. You can download Sibelius for iPad here.

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