Category: Uncategorized

The Craft Thanksgiving release is nuts.

Craft’s Thanksgiving release is a substantial one. Posted to their subreddit on ThursdayAttachment.png…

A few things that stand out:

• API/MCP integration. This is the big one. I’ve already linked my Craft workspace to ChatGPT via MCP, and it has really interesting potential. The chatbot inside Craft is also very powerful, and it’s fascinating to have it tell me things about my notes and act upon them. The API will allow it to talk to a ton of other apps in my lineup. I can’t wait to experiment with it more.

• Whiteboard improvements. I haven’t been using Whiteboards much, but these improvements make me want to give them a try.

• Improved tabs. Tabs have been a big pain for me on Mac, but having them appear vertically in the sidebar is a small change that dramatically improves usability.

My main issue with Craft is still the speed of the Mac app, which is sluggish. Putting more stuff in it is surely not the answer, but it’s going to be hard not to with this update.

Great music and video apps on sale

Marcos Tanaka’s apps are currently on sale. They’re all clever, tightly focused, and each one uniquely solves a specific problem without unnecessary complexity.

Play is my favorite: a “watch later” app for web video. I use it kind of like how I use Readwise Reader as a “read later” tool for written content. I like to queue up videos throughout the day and then watch them on my Apple TV at night, when I am in a mode more appropriate for long term video.

Several of his apps are music-focused as well. MusicBox, MusicHarbor, and MusicSmart are all worthy additions to a music educator’s collection.

METT Podcast Episode #87 – School Music License, with Brenna C. Horn-Cronin

In this episode, Brenna C. Horn-Cronin, Executive General Manager at School Music License, joins us to discuss how the service empowers music educators to navigate performance licensing ethically and efficiently. We cover administrative advocacy, the future of licensing in education, pricing structures, and more.

Listen here! or in your favorite podcast player…

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Show Notes and Links

School Music License Resources
– School Music License Website
– News and Announcements
– Options & Prices
– Email: info@schoolmusiclicense.com
– Promo Code: TechTalk10 – 10% off your first purchase!

Referenced Podcast
– The Brass Junkies Podcast

Chapters

00:00:00 – School Music License Overview
00:06:20 – Working for and with teachers, and calming the fears of “gotchas”
00:08:27 – How the service has positively affected teachers
00:12:10 – What’s coming next?
00:13:35 – Pricing Tiers
00:16:20 – Administrative Advocacy
00:17:58 – Small Scale Licenses
00:20:40 – The importance of educating educators and keeping up with technology
00:22:00 – Visions for other areas of Music Education
00:30:10 – BREAK! Podcasting About Podcasting
00:35:10 – Encouraging LESS technology use (during performances) – how and why
00:42:45 – School Culture and giving credit where credit is due

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Where to Find Us

Robby – robbyburns.com
Will – willkuhn.com

Sessions | Audio Unit (AU) Plug-in Host for Studio and Stage

This a pretty cool tool I was recently turned on to. I’m looking forward to giving it a try.

Sessions | Audio Unit (AU) Plug-in Host for Studio and Stage:

Sessions is a performance-oriented plug-in host that puts all your virtual instruments and effects at your fingertips. With powerful features and a streamlined workflow, musicians can enjoy ultimate freedom to explore, create, play and perform without a DAW.
Keep reading here…

From the Creators of Shortcuts, Sky Extends AI Integration and Automation to Your Entire Mac – MacStories

All I can say is “wow!” It’s rare and thrilling to see an app that quickly demonstrates how immediately it could transform the way I use my computer.

This is, to me, a demonstration of where learning language models should fit into computing.

From the Creators of Shortcuts, Sky Extends AI Integration and Automation to Your Entire Mac – MacStories:

For the past two weeks, I’ve been able to use Sky, the new app from the people behind Shortcuts who left Apple two years ago. As soon as I saw a demo, I felt the same way I did about Editorial, Workflow, and Shortcuts: I knew Sky was going to fundamentally change how I think about my macOS workflow and the role of automation in my everyday tasks.
Keep reading here…

Retreating to Safety – Marco.org

Though I’m not a developer, I do watch Apple’s World Wide Developer Conference keynote every year with lots of enthusiasm.

Given how increasingly sour I have become about Apple recently, I can say that I identify quite a lot with Marco Arment’s feelings in this post.

Retreating to Safety – Marco.org:

This will be the first WWDC I’m not attending since 2009 (excluding the remote 2020 one, of course). Given my realizations about my relationship with Apple and how they view developers, I’ve decided that it’s best for me to take a break this year, gain some perspective, and decide what my future relationship should look like.

Maybe Apple’s leaders are doing that, too.
Keep reading here…

TI:ME at Maryland MMEA 25/26 – TI:ME

TI:ME at Maryland MMEA 25/26 – TI:ME:

TI:ME is excited to partner with Maryland MMEA for the upcoming season of PD events. Apply to speak at either or both events today!

The deadline for the Call for Proposals and Performance Applications is June 4, 2025.

This process will be for consideration of sessions/performances for all conference events in the 2025-2026 year.
Keep reading here…

Please join TI:ME and put in proposals for the MMEA conferences. We’d love to have you come present!

Practice Pro: An Elegant, All-in-One Practice Tool with a Custom Widget Interface

Practice Pro is a new practice tool from Modular Tools for Musicians.

The app’s design takes inspiration from iOS’s home screen widget system, making it feel instantly familiar and intuitive. Each widget serves a specific function, and while they are simple in design, they provide just enough features for most musicians.

In my setup (as shown in the screenshot below), I use the small metronome widget, tap tempo widget, timer, stopwatch, clock, and tuning drones. I also make use of a tally widget, which helps my students track repetitions—an essential tool for reinforcing consistent practice. Typically, I’d have to jump between four or more apps to access all these features, but with Practice Pro, everything is in one place.

Here’s how I might use this in a lesson. I might start the stopwatch and timer widgets, then tell a student:
“Practice measures 1-2 until you’ve played them successfully 10 times in a row or for two minutes straight—whichever comes last.”
Next, I tap in the desired tempo, activate the metronome, and they’re off. Having everything within one interface makes the process seamless. Plus, the widgets are fully customizable, with more options available than what I just described.

My students have responded enthusiastically to Practice Pro’s design, often asking how to install it themselves when they see it in action.

Right now, it’s available at a launch sale price of just $5—a great deal for such a useful and well designed tool. I highly recommend checking it out!

60 Minutes – U.S. Marine Band forced to cancel concert with students of color after Trump DEI order

I am incredibly proud of my former student, Rishab Jain, for his outstanding accomplishments in music. I’m especially proud of his involvement in this recent 60 Minutes story.

I highly encourage you to watch the full video—his remarks at the 2:30 mark particularly stood out to me.

If we’re a society that’s surpassing art, we’re a society that is afraid of what it might reveal about itself. If we’re suppressing music, we’re suppressing emotions, we’re suppressing expression, we’re suppressing vulnerability, we’re suppressing the very essence of what makes us human. We are devaluing our own humanity; we are degrading our own humanity.

You can watch the entire concert here.

I am presenting at the Maryland Music Educators Association Conference this weekend!

2025 Annual State Conference Graphic (1).

I am thrilled to be presenting at the Maryland Music Educators Association Conference this weekend! My session focuses on teaching intonation in the music classroom with support of technology.

If you’d like to attend, the session is on Saturday, March 8 at 10:45 AM. If you’re already here or have attended, thank you for coming!

This post serves as a resource for session notes, including links to the primary tools I mention, and a complimentary podcast episode.

Complimentary Podcast Episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nEKe44aNCuE

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Session Outline and Links to Resources Mentioned in the Session

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

GarageBand for iOS allows easy creation of engaging play along tracks by using TE Tuner as a plugin and combining its sounds with other instruments.

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

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CleanShot 2022-02-03 at 18.23.30@2x.png

  • More Resources
  • Hal Leonard Intermediate Band Method
  • Beat Elimination as a Means of Teaching Intonation to Beginning Wind Instrumentalists, The Journal of Research in Music Education, Winer 1972
  • The Problem of Tonality in Seventheenth Century Music, Delbert M. Beswick, Music, Ph.D. Dissertation, University of North Carolina, 1950
  • Musical Performance: Learning Theory and Pedagogy – Daniel Kohut
  • Automating Band Warmups, Teaching Auditory Skill, and Managing My Classroom… With Solfege Bingo

Extra Show Notes from the Podcast Episode:

App of the Week

Album of the Week

Tech Tip of the Week