Tag: online learning

Overviewer – an app that turns an iPhone into a document camera for Zoom and virtual learning

I tweeted about this app when it came out but never posted it here…

Definitely check out Overviewer, a new app that turns an iPhone into a document camera for Zoom and virtual learning. It is made by the same developer as Dark Noise, a white noise app that has no business being as thoroughly considered as it is.

From the developer:

My wife is a Kindergarten teacher and when COVID hit she had to figure out how to teach a bunch of 5 and 6 year olds how to draw letters over Zoom. Initially she made her own document camera using her iPhone and the default camera app. Zoom has a wonderful feature where you can share your iPhone’s screen by plugging into your laptop with a lightning cable or even wirelessly over AirPlay but when you open the camera app there are two issues.

  1. There’s a bunch of buttons and chrome around camera view so it looks clunky
  1. The camera app doesn’t actually rotate when you turn it sideways (just some of the labels) so you can only share your phone in portrait mode which means huge black bars on each side of the zoom call and a tiny video stream of what you want to share.

More Jamboard in the Music Classroom (Testing The New Integration with Google Meet)

Google Meet rolling out Jamboard integration for collaborative whiteboarding | 9to5Google:

Last week, Google’s video conferencing tool launched a 49-person grid and background blur. Google Meet is now integrating with Jamboard to add a digital whiteboard for visual and collaborative brainstorming.

Google Jamboard, which I have blogged about here, is indeed a fun tool and all of my students find it engaging. 

This new Google Meet integration is awesome. Once you start up a digital whiteboard from within a Meet, Jamboard asks you if you want to create a new one or use an existing file in your Google Drive. If you opt to create a new one, it automatically saves it to your drive and names it using the date and meet code of your session.

Immediately, a dialogue with share permissions for the file pops up, pre-filled with the accounts of all students who are present in the Meet so that you can make sure they all have access in one click.

The integration is very smooth. I tested it today at the beginning of my classes so that they could give feedback to one another on a recent Soundtrap project I had them do.

The students recorded brass duets and trios in Soundtrap projects last week. I played three examples of them for the class today and students posted sticky notes on this whiteboard that took me one minute to set up last night. It was a simple activity that was made even more simple by this new integration.

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Introducing My “Scale Exercise Play-Along Tracks With Trap Beats” – Available Now on My New Online Store!

I am announcing a new section of this website. A STORE! Starting today, I will be selling digital products and services I have created for musicians and music teachers. Check it out here!

First up is a collection of Scale Exercise Play-Along Tracks with Trap Beats underneath them.

You bet there’s a promotional video.

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Here is the product description from the sale page:

This collection contains over 70 major scale play-along tracks for your ensemble.

Each track includes a tuning drone playing the tonic with a scale overtop in just intonation so that you can reinforce flawless intonation, tone production, and blend amongst your students. Every exercise includes a count-off and a trap beat underneath to engage your students while reinforcing slower playing and subdividing!

The audio-only version of this package includes mp3 files of the following recordings in all twelve major keys, at 70bpm.

  • Whole note scale

  • Half note scale

  • Quarter note scale

  • Eighth note scale

  • Scale Exercise in Thirds

  • Mini-Scale with Arpeggio

Also included:

  • Remington at three different speeds! Perfect for playing underneath many of the exercises that come from popular band methods.

The premium version of this product includes the audio tracks above in addition to the Logic Pro and GarageBand stems so you can edit every element of the tracks, including speed, pitch, and instrumentation.

These are perfect for running through your Zoom/Google Meet/Virtual Classroom to keep kids playing as much as possible.

I have been using tracks like these with my band students for years now and they LOVE them. The trap beat resonates with them. Its popularity in hip hop music aside, there is something compelling about them, musically. The backbeat on three, combined with the busy hi-hat activity, helps kids subdivide slower tempos and keeps them motivated to practice stuff like long tones and scales. The strong 808 baseline asserts the beat while adding fun syncopation.

It was essential to me that the drones were in just intonation because I teach my students to hear and adjust to the beats that result when unison pitches and diatonic intervals are in/out of tune. The Yamaha Harmony Director was definitely the tool for the job. Here’s a really brief blog post I shared earlier this month about the process if you want to take a stab at making something like this.

You can alternatively do this process using the (excellent) Tonal Energy Tuner App, a MIDI keyboard, and GarageBand on iOS. I wrote about that here. I prefer the Tonal Energy experience, but the Yamaha’s hardware keys made it easier to “perform” the drones and allowed me to create in Logic Pro, which I am more proficient in.

The original concept for this was very ambitious initially, and I simplified the vision a ton to help myself “ship it.” I have seen music teachers asking for something like this on social media a lot lately, and it seemed like time to do the work. I am happy with how they turned out and I hope to create more of these down the road in varying style, tempo, and exercise patterns.

A few notes:

  1. Due to file upload limitations on Squarespace, buying the stems directs you to download a text file instead of the audio files. The text file contains a link to a third-party hosting source. A little inelegant, I know, but setting up a Squarespace store was otherwise the most comfortable choice.
  2. These are incredibly effective for engaging synchronous ensemble rehearsals. No, we still can’t play at once, but running rehearsal tracks through your Google Meet or Zoom call while students are muted is a great way to keep them playing. These tracks are slow enough that I have had success having groups of 3-6 unmute while playing along, and it is not total chaos. Between these, my Solfege Bingo tracks, and The Breathing Gym DVD, we can be synchronously active for more than 80 percent of each class. I get the audio to route directly through to the call using Loopback.
  3. Many of these tracks, particularly the scale exercise in thirds, mini-scale, and Remington tracks, pair perfectly with a multitude of examples in the Foundation for Superior Performance band method books series. I did not title them as such because the book and my project are in no way connected. I bring it up here because I know those exercises are ubiquitous in band rehearsals, and it’s for this reason, many directors have their students purchase those books.
  4. I made the arrangements of these tracks simple to keep the appeal as wide-reaching and flexible as possible. My hope is that people who really want to change the style, edit the beat, change the speed, or any other kind of alternation, will buy the version that comes with the GarageBand and Logic stems. Tip: If you want to use software instruments to create your own accompaniment, and want them to be justly in tune with my tracks, Logic Pro has support for tuning systems. That means that if you mute my trap beat and add your own samba tracks, you can have the instruments play in the key area you select instead of their usual equal tempered tuning.