Making the Grade is a reoccurring weekly series on 9to5Mac written by Bradley Chambers. It typically features tech analysis concerning Apple’s relationship to education.
I recommend subscribing to 9to5Mac on Twitter or in an RSS app (like Reeder 5) if you are interested in more. Here is a link to a recent article…
In the hours after the WWDC Keynote, there are always little “nuggets” of news that come out that didn’t make the event, but can often be pretty impactful because it can give you an idea of where Apple is moving in the future. When 9to5Mac first spotted the mention of the custom domains in iCloud in the moments after the Keynote, I knew immediately this was the first step to offering this service to schools
forScore has long been my most essential iPad app, and one of the few apps I consider iPad-first. This is to say that it is an app that takes specific advantage of the iPad’s strengths (form factor, pencil support, paper-like display, direct touch input) and leverages them in a way that makes the iPad feel essential.
For the same reasons it is essential on iPad, it has seemed slightly less essential on the iPhone (small screen size is impractical) and Mac (similarly, the design is not easy for direct manipulation, annotation, portability, or sticking on a music stand).
Still, an app this useful screams to be used cross-platform! The more I moved my sheet music library from PDFs on my hard drive to forScore, the more I found I needed to be able to work with the same library structure on my other devices. An iPhone is small, but there are those moments when it is the only device on you and you want to reference something really quickly. In a moment that my iPad battery once failed, I did conduct a percussion ensemble rehearsal from forScore on the iPhone.
In the same way that the iPhone is sometimes useful for being always the one in your pocket, the Mac is also useful sometimes. For example, file management is way easier on a Mac. No matter how many Mac features the iPad adds (drag and drop, Files app, etc.), it is simply not as easy as the Mac. Yes, the iPad can technically do the same things as the Mac in this regard, but it’s slower and more cumbersome. Furthermore, most users know how to use the Finder on Mac but don’t know how to work with the Files app on iPad, even though it is mostly the same these days.
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<img src="https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5595df9ce4b0ce9ff9ecd1a8/1625925617918-12I7KK37KZGE9QZ2BWRR/CleanShot+2021-07-10+at+09.28.40.gif" alt="It is actually possible to open forScore and the Files app side by side on the iPad. From there, you can drag and drop multiple files at once from one app to another." width="800" height="601" style="display:block;object-fit: cover;width: 100%;height: 100%;object-position: 50% 50%" loading="lazy">
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<div class="image-caption"><p class="">It is actually possible to open forScore and the Files app side by side on the iPad. From there, you can drag and drop multiple files at once from one app to another.</p></div>
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I’d like to note that a year of teaching (mostly) online has sent me “back to the Mac,” so to speak. The Mac’s efficiency in multitasking, as well as its ability to run streaming apps like OBS and Loopback, has positioned it as my primary work device. Streaming forScore to my iPad’s screen to my Mac using OBS and AirServer is great, but it’s fiddly, indirect, and kills my iPad battery. It has become so much more direct to have forScore running right on the Mac, in the same place my other work is already happening.
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<div class="image-caption"><p class="">In video conferencing apps like Zoom, I can now share music on the screen with my students directly, thanks to forScore running on my Mac.</p></div>
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The wait is over. Actually, it has been over since the fall. With the launch of macOS 11 Big Sur, forScore has released a universal version of their app on the Mac App Store. This means that it will be a free download for those who have purchased the app on iPad.
Note: I wrote most of this review fairly soon after release. Its scope is therefore more like what I would call “First Impressions.” I have been using it all school year long by the time I am actually posting this and think it is now more accurate to call it a review even though I will not be covering every detail comprehensively in the words below.
The goal of this review is to cover what’s unique about the Mac experience. If you want to learn more about forScore’s features, check out this excellent review by David MacDonald
For more on this subject (and speaking of David MacDonald), listen to my podcast review of forScore for Mac, where he was the guest.
Having forScore on the Mac is a huge deal for me. I have been using it aggressively since the fall. It is on a shared screen during every band class and private percussion lesson I teach. Using it right on the Mac is just as easy as I expected.
All of the buttons, knobs, bells, whistles and user interface elements are exactly where you would expect them to be because it looks and feels like the iPad app. I will get into the implications of that in a moment.
Adding music to my library is now a breeze. Until this point, I have been storing all of my scores in a folder in iCloud Drive and then creating duplicate copies in the iPad version of my forScore library. This means that to share music on my Mac’s screen (without doing the AirPlay method above), I have to open the files in PDF Expert. They don’t have any of my indexes, metadata, or attached recordings. I cannot annotate them as I can in forScore, or use music stamps, and I cannot see them in the context of my organized setlist. It is in some ways like maintaining two separate libraries of the same stuff.
To make matters worse, iCloud Drive periodically decides to put some of my scores back in the cloud when I am low on space. When this happens, and I try to open a score from the Spotlight, even a score I used the day before, I will have to wait an extra-long time for my Mac to download the file before actually opening it.
I am happy to report that forScore on the Mac resolves these frustrations. Not only is it lightning-fast for me to get all of the scores that were not in my forScore database inside of it, but scores can also now sync across devices over iCloud. Using keyboard shortcuts like Command+Clicking, Command+Tabbing, and the precision of the keyboard and mouse, allowed me to easily drag and drop most of my remaining digital sheet music library straight into forScore from the Finder. I never pushed forScore too hard in this regard, but at one point, I dragged about 40 scores into forScore from the Finder at once and it handled them with a breeze. This is something the iPad would occasionally crash while trying to do.
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<img src="https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5595df9ce4b0ce9ff9ecd1a8/1625925693795-EPHCPH8HKUPPQ5MTUC4M/CleanShot+2021-07-10+at+09.23.47.gif" alt="The file import process I showed on the iPad above is far faster and more precise on macOS." width="800" height="500" style="display:block;object-fit: cover;width: 100%;height: 100%;object-position: 50% 50%" loading="lazy">
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<div class="image-caption"><p class="">The file import process I showed on the iPad above is far faster and more precise on macOS.</p></div>
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Because of this ease, finding duplicated, and deleting them was also easy. So was adding metadata. The Mac is now my preferred tool for doing this kind of logistic work in bulk.
Catalyst
forScore uses Apple’s Catalyst technology which means that Mac apps can share code with iPad apps. Apple introduced this at WWDC in 2019 and in the year that followed, relatively few apps made this transition. A notably good app using this technology is GoodNotes 5. They ditched their native Mac app in version 5 and decided to bring the iPad version over. GoodNotes is a good comparison to forScore, because its strength is, similarly, that it is a touch-first app that feels best when conceptualized as a digital “piece of paper.”
Catalyst apps can be automatically provided to the Mac by the developer with one press of a button, but they won’t be good experiences. Developers can do more work to have the app feel more like it belongs on the Mac, using things like the Touch Bar, custom Tool Bar elements, keyboard shortcuts, etc. The results have been lackluster. Still, having a Mac version of GoodNotes is better than not having one. And because it is an app I usually use on iPad, the need for the Mac version was more for reference.
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<div class="image-caption"><p class="">GoodNotes 5 on the Mac. It looks good. But I am constantly forgetting whether to double or single tap on things because it behaves like an iPad app, but I have the conventions of a Mac hardwired into my brain when I am sitting in front of one.</p></div>
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<img src="https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5595df9ce4b0ce9ff9ecd1a8/1625925943296-PZECRR7DN8VCHN5QJDL6/CleanShot+2021-07-10+at+09.33.07%402x.png" alt="This is an even weirder example of an iPad toolbar on Mac, but it brings GoodNotes to my Mac, and for that I am grateful." width="2466" height="1736" style="display:block;object-fit: cover;width: 100%;height: 100%;object-position: 50% 50%" loading="lazy">
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<div class="image-caption"><p class="">This is an even weirder example of an iPad toolbar on Mac, but it brings GoodNotes to my Mac, and for that I am grateful.</p></div>
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At WWDC in 2020, Apple announced that more developer tools would be coming to Catalyst, so that it is easier to bring even more of the things that make Mac apps feel like Mac apps to your iPad version. They also announced that new Macs would be coming out (they shipped on November 17th) with new processors built by Apple. These new machines would be able to run native iOS apps without developers doing anything at all.
Steven Troughton Smith highlights these three methods on Twitter.
I imagine forScore went with the last of those three options for the Mac. Even though it feels like a mostly native experience, some things get weird.
With everything in macOS 11, it’s getting harder to define what Catalyst is. There are 3 forms:
• Unmodified iOS apps (Apple Silicon-only) • Traditional Catalyst apps (more Mac like, but blurry scaling) • Optimized for Mac/Mac Idiom Catalyst apps (pixel perfect, Mac controls)
There are things about forScore on Mac that “look” like the iPad and things that “behave” like the iPad. The things that look like iPad are more forgivable.
For example, the toolbar of an iPad app looks distinct from that of the Mac. Apple is attempting to blur this distinction by redesigning their stock apps to have buttons that are made of thin-lined graphics, rather than appearing as press-able buttons.
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<img src="https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5595df9ce4b0ce9ff9ecd1a8/1625927574019-GM7BSBYVSPMU4JVA8HM1/CleanShot+2021-07-10+at+10.26.59.png" alt="The old macOS toolbar used to look like this." width="660" height="42" style="display:block;object-fit: cover;width: 100%;height: 100%;object-position: 50% 50%" loading="lazy">
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<div class="image-caption"><p class="">The old macOS toolbar used to look like this.</p></div>
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<img src="https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5595df9ce4b0ce9ff9ecd1a8/1625926010644-DXF4VPMDVEBHUUU8GOPP/CleanShot+2021-07-10+at+09.34.25%402x.png" alt="By contrast, iOS apps that are brought to the Mac with Catalyst have a toolbar that looks like this." width="2184" height="124" style="display:block;object-fit: cover;width: 100%;height: 100%;object-position: 50% 50%" loading="lazy">
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<div class="image-caption"><p class="">By contrast, iOS apps that are brought to the Mac with Catalyst have a toolbar that looks like this.</p></div>
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<img src="https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5595df9ce4b0ce9ff9ecd1a8/1625926023520-5OPPPFE0T935YJ3UJVHZ/CleanShot+2021-07-10+at+09.35.00%402x.png" alt="The new macOS toolbar seeks to blur this distinction by bringing its own toolbar design closer to that of iPad apps." width="2318" height="134" style="display:block;object-fit: cover;width: 100%;height: 100%;object-position: 50% 50%" loading="lazy">
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<div class="image-caption"><p class="">The new macOS toolbar seeks to blur this distinction by bringing its own toolbar design closer to that of iPad apps.</p></div>
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iOS apps also have different pop-over style elements that feature a Cancel button in the upper left and a Done button in the upper right. These don’t feel Mac-like but they get the job done. You can, for example, still press Escape to dismiss them like you can on a Mac, though the difference in user interface might suggest otherwise.
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<img src="https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5595df9ce4b0ce9ff9ecd1a8/1625926353940-01RZ0O2TIHUM2W052HPV/CleanShot+2021-07-10+at+10.11.24%402x.png" alt="Alerts and settings screens trip me up with Catalyst apps because they really make me feel like I am using an iPad." width="1582" height="2026" style="display:block;object-fit: cover;width: 100%;height: 100%;object-position: 50% 50%" loading="lazy">
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<div class="image-caption"><p class="">Alerts and settings screens trip me up with Catalyst apps because they <em>really</em> make me feel like I am using an iPad.</p></div>
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<img src="https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5595df9ce4b0ce9ff9ecd1a8/1625926372271-7XBJJL36WU5ENAIJ9M5M/CleanShot+2021-07-10+at+10.11.46%402x.png" alt="By contrast, here is the user interface of the OmniFocus settings screen, which follows native Mac app conventions." width="1674" height="1200" style="display:block;object-fit: cover;width: 100%;height: 100%;object-position: 50% 50%" loading="lazy">
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<div class="image-caption"><p class="">By contrast, here is the user interface of the OmniFocus settings screen, which follows native Mac app conventions.</p></div>
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Here are some other details and quirks that highlight the varying degrees of success that forScore has at being Mac-like…
Window resizing
Windows can be resized on Mac. This is implemented pretty well in forScore. When the window is dragged to certain dimensions, the score will automatically decide if it is better to fit one or two pages of the score on the screen. As with an iPad, you can click the book-looking button to the left of the file’s title to force it to keep two pages on screen, regardless of window size. Tools in the toolbar also automatically disappear at smaller window sizes and reappear at larger ones.
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<img src="https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5595df9ce4b0ce9ff9ecd1a8/1625926073403-R9CJPA55LPPTLYG3XY50/CleanShot+2021-07-10+at+09.36.12.gif" alt="forScore can do things on Mac it can’t do on iPad, like window resizing!" width="800" height="577" style="display:block;object-fit: cover;width: 100%;height: 100%;object-position: 50% 50%" loading="lazy">
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<div class="image-caption"><p class="">forScore can do things on Mac it can’t do on iPad, like window resizing!</p></div>
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Menu bar
The Mac has the menu bar which exposes (in well-made software) all of the available actions in the app. This helps with discoverability and customization. Users can always find what they want from the menu bar and can set menu bar items as keyboard shortcuts in the System Preferences app. It is nice to see many of forScore’s options in the menu bar, but I am not certain that all of them are there. Fortunately, forScore for Mac has an area in settings that allows you to customize keyboard shortcuts for many of the app’s features.
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<img src="https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5595df9ce4b0ce9ff9ecd1a8/1625925996474-FBX5YWUGJMS2ONEK8SDA/CleanShot+2021-07-09+at+09.39.48.png" alt="You can set up custom keyboard shortcuts in forScore." width="983" height="814" style="display:block;object-fit: cover;width: 100%;height: 100%;object-position: 50% 50%" loading="lazy">
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<div class="image-caption"><p class="">You can set up custom keyboard shortcuts in forScore.</p></div>
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Page navigation
It’s really weird. Simply put, page navigation conventions that work on iPad do not always translate to the Mac. For example, touching and dragging the screen to turn pages is natural when you use your hand to turn the pages, but less so with a keyboard and mouse. Common Mac conventions like two-finger scrolling to swipe pages are implemented in forScore. But other things are weird. Two-finger scrolling feels more natural in other document-based apps like, for example, Preview. In forScore, you can pinch to zoom, but pages that are zoomed in larger than the window size take extra page-turning gestures to navigate. This if because forScore’s default behavior when you swipe is to show you whatever of the page is not on the display. This makes sense because in a performance you might want to zoom in closer to the music. When doing this, it makes sense that a one-touch gesture reveals the next part of the music (regardless of what page it is on), but in practice, this is not Mac-like. Any other app that deals with PDFs would show me the next page when I do the page turn gesture. This quirk is particularly weird if your score is just a few pixels taller than the window size you have set. Turning the page takes two swipes instead of one. The first swipe awkwardly jolts the screen down just enough to see the few missing pixels at the bottom of the screen, and the next swipe actually turns the page.
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<img src="https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5595df9ce4b0ce9ff9ecd1a8/1625926106078-YBOGTZI6YTS3LX4EQURA/CleanShot+2021-07-10+at+09.40.48.gif" alt="When my window is just too short, I have to turn the page twice, to turn it once. These kinds of quirks aren’t terrible, but when you encounter them, it’s easy to perceive the app as broken or untrustworthy." width="625" height="800" style="display:block;object-fit: cover;width: 100%;height: 100%;object-position: 50% 50%" loading="lazy">
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<div class="image-caption"><p class="">When my window is just too short, I have to turn the page twice, to turn it once. These kinds of quirks aren’t terrible, but when you encounter them, it’s easy to perceive the app as broken or untrustworthy.</p></div>
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Zooming in and out
The above-mentioned quirk is even weirder when you have zoomed in a lot. I do this often to focus my students on a particular excerpt of music. When scrolled in, there is (to my knowledge) no way to keep scrolling from the trackpad. You have to zoom out, turn the page, and then zoom in again. Contrast this with Preview, a native Mac app, which will just let me scroll freely through the document, no matter how far I have zoomed in.
Spotlight!
I am pleased to say that searching for score files in Spotlight (Command+Spacebar) results in all my scores showing up, even chapter titles in an index of a larger score.
Mac apps tend to have sidebars that reveal list views and top-levels of organization hierarchy in an app. These can often be toggled on and off though I usually leave them on so I can get to things more quickly. forScore on the Mac supports the option to keep the sidebar permanently visible, so you can always see your library alongside whatever score is selected. Cool.
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<div class="image-caption"><p class="">I like that the Mac version of forScore supports a permanently-visible left sidebar. I wouldn’t mind this feature on my 12.9 inch iPad Pro.</p></div>
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Conclusion
There are of course more Mac-like things to celebrate and more iPad-like things to question, but the bottom line is this: forScore is an app loved by musicians all over, and it is completely stellar that the developers dedicated time to bringing this application over. It is unknown if it would ever have happened without Apple’s Catalyst technology, but because of it, we get to have a pretty ok Mac app, where we otherwise would not. And having a pretty ok Mac version of an indispensable iPad app is… actually great! So thank you forScore team!
There are certainly more Mac apps that I would love to see on iOS than there are iOS apps I would like to see on the Mac, but the list is getting smaller.
Its been a busy few weeks as I have been wrapping up the end of a tough school year. While I am late to getting this week’s podcast episode out, I have been working on this site and have a bunch of content to share in the coming week.
I managed to sneak in enough time during the last week of school to watch Apple’s WWDC Keynote and to talk about it on Music Ed Tech Talk with Craig McClellan (cohost of my other podcast, The Class Nerd).
It was an opportunity to take a nice break from the challenging end-of-year procedures, and to think about how Apple’s fall software updates will impact how I get work done in the classroom. Listen below.
Robby and Craig break down the announcements from Apple’s Word Wide Developer Conference and discuss how teachers might use the upcoming features to their latest software updates.
I am often asked where I go to learn about technology.
The truth is that most of it comes through a few blogs and podcasts. I don’t listen to many podcasts that deal specifically with integrating technology into the music classroom, though there are a few good ones. (Aside from my own, I recommend Katie Wardrobe’s show Music Tech Teacher and MusicFirst’s Profiles in Music Teaching with Technology.)
I don’t listen to prescriptive “how-to” shows. I focus more on industry analysis, details of hardware and software features, and extended discussion. My favorite shows are conversational in tone rather than the hyper-produced style of the modern-day shows that NPR has popularized.
I find this style of show to be far more listenable and engaging while giving me a deeper and underlying understanding of the technology I use. This way, I am more empowered to adapt the technology I have to my unique professional challenges and lifestyle.
Here are my six favorites…
Upgrade
Probably my most listened show. Heavily focused on Apple technologies, news, and the streaming media landscape. The show is deeply informative but also has some produced elements like theme music and segments, which keep each episode moving at an engaging pace.
Here is a recent episode where the hosts review the new M1 iMacs and M1 iPad:
The Vergecast
The Verge is a great website for learning about all things in consumer tech. Their podcast is the most produced on this list, but the camaraderie between speakers allows for the ideas to present as looser and more raw than they do in written articles.
I have been considering an electric vehicle lately and enjoyed this episode about recent EUVs:
Mac Power Users
This show delivers tips for making the most of your computing devices each week. It includes pro tips, app recommendations, and interviews with professionals spanning many industries. Listening to MPU is one of the inspirations for my book, as it focuses on not just the tools, but how to implement them creatively.
If you are looking for a place to start, check out Music Ed Tech Talk frequent guest, David MacDonald, on this episode of Mac Power Users:
The Talk Show
John Gruber’s The Talk Show is one of the shows that made me love podcasting. Though episodes are inconsistent in length, scope, and irregularly released, Gruber and his guests always have engaging discussion. So much so that I don’t mind rants about sports, politics, and other “off-topic” diversions. This show is in some respects a prototype for the kinds of discussions I like to have on my podcast. Personal, detailed, and analytical.
Accidental Tech Podcast
Also very Apple-focused, but with more perspective on software development and adjacent technologies. This show is lengthy and more unstructured but also very deep. The three hosts are in software development and sometimes talk about topics that are just on the outside of my wheelhouse, but I am still able to follow along. The perspective of these hosts has strongly influenced the kind of quality and detail I expect from my technology.
This episode is a fan favorite, and gives you an insight into the kind of detail the hosts cover, and also their relationship:
Dithering
This is a paid show. For me, it is worth the $5 a month because it includes John Gruber from The Talk Show with one of my favorite of his reoccurring guests, Ben Thompson, who is a brilliant technology analyst. Two 15-minute episodes are released each week. The tight format keeps the discussion fast and rich.
Apple Silicon Macs are likely going to be announced at their upcoming event this Tuesday, November 10th.
Bradley Chambers is incredibly knowledgeable about Apple’s relationship with education and he makes some great points in the post below about how this transition could influence the Mac in education.
I believe that Apple will have untold flexibility in what kind of laptops they can produce for schools now. Is it possible to build an 11″ MacBook based on Apple Silicon that is $799 when purchased in bulk but still runs extremely fast? I believe so. It might not be in the first year or two of Apple Silicon’s lifespan that we see it, but in a few years, it’s certainly possible that Apple will have reduced the cost on the A14 to put it in a K–12 focused laptop in the future.
I could be way off base on my predictions. Still, I believe that Apple Silicon will unlock a lot of potential in K–12 to produce lower-cost laptops that will run circles around much higher priced laptops running Intel chips. I’d love to see an 11″ Apple Silicon laptop aimed directly at students that could be used for many years.
I really do hope that Apple tries to be creative with the Mac in education again. Still, I fear that anything they do is too little, too late. Apple has has not been aggressive in education. They tend to make huge leaps in certain areas of their business and then let them settle for a long time, sometimes years. This approach works for developing consumer software like note-taking apps, but it is not aggressive enough to compete with Chromebooks and cloud-based education software. I think back to Apple’s education event a few years back where they positioned the iPad as their future in schools and released a bunch of APIs that iOS app developers could use to link into their Classroom app. Years later, what has come of any of that? If you are using iPads in education, and you use Apple Classroom in combination with third party apps, I would love to hear from you!
Chromebooks and web apps have taken off. And a lot of these web apps can talk to each other. For example, third parties like Flipgrid and Noteflight can integrate with LMS software like Blackboard and Canvas. But these connections are often full of frustrating bugs. On top of this, the quality of a lot of this software in ed tech is already so poor. I wouldn’t exactly call it a race to the bottom, because most developers are doing their best with the resources they have, but I like to dream about an alternate reality where Apple’s vision for an “app-centric” model were the norm instead of the “web-centric” model we have now.
Of course, web software is cheaper and cross-platform. So it makes sense that it has caught on for being most equitable. But in a world where Apple had kept their prices more competitive, maybe school districts would have been more willing to buy students 1:1 Apple products, especially when schools jumped online in March.
Today Apple is updating Final Cut Pro X with powerful new features designed to enhance remote workflows and speed up editing for content creators. Improvements in creating and managing proxy media provide editors with portability and performance when working with large resolution formats, or when collaborating remotely. New social media tools automate video cropping in square, vertical, and other custom sizes for popular social media platforms, and new workflow improvements enhance the versatility and performance of Final Cut Pro — making the Mac stronger than ever for all video editors and motion graphics artists.
Teachers rejoice! If you are looking to make online lesson content or virtual band/orchestra/choir/whatever videos this school year, look no further than Final Cut Pro X.
If you were already taking advantage of their 90 day free trial, guess what? They just released a new version, and you can renew your trial with the update!
There’s a 90-day free trial for Final Cut Pro 10.4.9 if you want to check it out/train yourself up.
“Intuition, I realized, was the certainty with which a skill instantly worked on the basis of rational experience. Without training, intuition does not develop. People only think that intuition is inborn. If intuition unexpectedly reveals itself, however, it is because unconscious training has been amassed somewhere along the way. ”
— Shinichi Suzuki , Nutured by Love
What is Solfege Bingo
Solfege Bingo is a game for young music students. You can play in class to help develop audiation, pitch recognition, and solfege.
The book comes with a series of bingo cards, each of which with three-note Solfege patterns in each square. “Do re mi, fa sol do, etc…” With the book comes a CD that has many different recorded examples of a singer singing these patterns, with space in between each pattern. Students match the three-note patterns they hear with the ones on their card until they get bingo.
The CD features a second set of recorded examples in which a clarinet plays the patterns so that the students must recognize the patterns by ear, not by syllable.
I first learned about this series as a student teacher, where the choir teacher would use them as warm-ups. She would use them as ear training examples to familiarize her ensembles with solfege. On the recorded examples, the space between each pattern is equal to the length of the patterns themselves, so you can use them as a call and response. The recording models the pattern, the choir sings it back.
Transposing the Tracks for Bands and Adding a Drone
A few years ago, I got the idea to transpose these recordings into band keys using GarageBand. I added a clarinet drone on the key center (using one of the software MIDI instruments) to help students hear the relationships of the pitches not only to each other but also to the tonic.
In band, I start the year by implementing these play-along tracks during warm-ups, starting in concert Bb. I first use the vocalist track and have students sing back. Then they play it back, with brass buzzing on mouthpieces. Then with brass on instruments. (The repetition of this has the side effect of reinforcing fingerings.) Eventually, once I feel like they have begun to internalize the pitches, I play them the clarinet version of the recording. The clarinet drone rings through my entire track, which takes the place of my usual Tonal Energy Tuner drone.
It sounds like this when it’s done…
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<img src="https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5595df9ce4b0ce9ff9ecd1a8/1598794636657-ZIEPEZK131RK9SSQFK6W/0cleanshotblog.png" alt="In GarageBand, I dragged in the audio file I wanted to edit, creating an audio track. Then, I created a second software instrument track, selected clarinet as the instrument, and held out the note Bb on my MIDI keyboard for the drone. Double-clickin…" width="2500" height="1589" style="display:block;object-fit: cover;width: 100%;height: 100%;object-position: 50% 50%" loading="lazy">
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<div class="image-caption"><p class="">In GarageBand, I dragged in the audio file I wanted to edit, creating an audio track. Then, I created a second software instrument track, selected clarinet as the instrument, and held out the note Bb on my MIDI keyboard for the drone. Double-clicking an audio region reveals a transpose option on the left. Dragging the slider moves the pitch up of the selected region up or down by a semitone.</p></div>
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Classroom Management (Making Two of Me)
I recall a year where I was struggling with engaging one of my band classes during the warm-ups. I needed a way to create some structure and reinforce expectations for the first 10 minutes of class, while making sure that the winds got the tone and ear development I wanted them to have. It is always easy to assume that students are against you when they are talking amongst themselves, wandering the back of the room, and slouching in their seats. I have come to find that, more often than not, my students aren’t against me, they just flat out didn’t understand my expectations for participation, posture, and technique and that they needed my support (even when it seems my expectations should be obvious).
My solution was to duplicate myself. I needed there to be one of me on the podium guiding the rehearsal sequence, and another of me walking the room to adjust students’ expectations of themselves.
I added the Solfege Bingo play-along tracks to slides in my daily agenda presentation, which is always on display at the front of the room through a projector. I make all of my slides in Apple’s Keynote. I found that I could embed an mp3 of one of my tracks into a slide and set the presentation to automatically skip to the next slide after a certain length of time had passed. So I created a sequence of these Solfege Bingo tracks, and a couple of other typical warm-ups I do, and embedded them all in Keynote slides so that the warm-up would happen automatically.
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<img src="https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5595df9ce4b0ce9ff9ecd1a8/1598793117355-3KSJN6YFIHRAZJLXBIF4/CleanShot+2020-08-30+at+09.06.33%402x.png" alt="In the upper right corner, click the Transitions button to reveal transitions. From the Start Transition dropdown menu, you can choose to have a slide start automatically after a certain amount of time, using the Delay timer. You might have to tweak…" width="2500" height="1604" style="display:block;object-fit: cover;width: 100%;height: 100%;object-position: 50% 50%" loading="lazy">
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<div class="image-caption"><p class="">In the upper right corner, click the Transitions button to reveal transitions. From the Start Transition dropdown menu, you can choose to have a slide start automatically after a certain amount of time, using the Delay timer. You might have to tweak this a little bit to get it right, but the result is that these couple of Keynote slides play in a row, automatically, while I walk around the band room and give feedback to students.</p></div>
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This allows me to work the room. While warm-ups were taking place, I can walk in the percussion section and remind them what instrument they play for warm-ups that day (it’s on the chart in the back of the room 🤷♂️). I can give postural feedback to my trombones. I can high five the tuba player. I can fit someone for a concert shirt. I can do nearly anything. And this is all while reinforcing audiation, tone development, and proper intonation.
I recommend the Solfege Bingo book. It’s effortless to modulate tracks with software. You can use the pitch-flex feature in GarageBand, as I mentioned above. But you can also use apps like Transcribe!, The Amazing Slow Downer, or Anytune.
Adding a clarinet drone is easy. I added a software instrument track in GarageBand, set it to a clarinet, and played the tonic along to the recording. But you could also use Tonal Energy as a GarageBand instrument.
Conclusion
Given the time I am posting this, it is worth mentioning that I totally intend to use these warmup play-along tracks in my online band classes this fall, which will be taking place in Google Meet. I am using the Loopback app to route the audio of Keynote through to the call, and a soundboard app called Farrago to trigger them. I can run the tracks through Google Meet and everyone plays along while on mute. I am hoping to blog about Farrago soon.
I am also planning to blog about another version of this workflow I have tried in especially needy classrooms, where I go as far as to record myself giving instructions to the band in between transitions, and even program the tracks to rehearse concert music for me while the real ‘me’ works the room. I have run up to 40 minutes of a band rehearsal through pre-recorded instructions and play along tracks before!
Apple and Zendesk today made Business Chat generally available for all businesses that use Zendesk Support, over two years since the service first went into beta.
Business chat is a really useful feature that lets you connect with customer support right in the Apple Messages app.
The feature takes email out of the equation and improves the entire user experience to where contacting support feels as simple as texting a friend.
I have used it to get a hold of Apple and Home Depot and it’s a dream. By Zendesk integrating it, it will become easy for the numerous large and small companies to take advantage of it. The more widespread this becomes, the less often you will need to search Google for the exact page of a companies website you are looking for, fill out a web form, get tons of confirmation responses, and wait forever.
Music Ed Tech Talk 
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