6 Music Podcasts I Love

This is a followup to my post about my favorite tech podcasts from a few weeks ago.

There are a handful of music shows that are in my regular rotation. They span the topics of performance, conducting, theory, musicology, and pedagogy

Sticky Notes: The Classical Music Podcast

Great show for people who want to learn more about classical music, regardless of experience level with it.

Sound Expertise

Will Robin has conversations with scholars about music. This show goes deep, but I find it really approachable no matter how much experience you have with the weekly topic.

The Third Story

Leo Sidran hosts long-form interviews with musicians from various backgrounds. I particularly enjoyed the interviews with Cory Henry, Becca Stevens Louis Cole.

He really gets the guests to open up and reveal their humanity, intimate accounts of their life experiences, and creative journey.

The Brass Junkies

This is one of the few instrumental music education shows that doesn’t feel like the air has been sucked from the room when I listen.

This show features candid, personal, conversations with brass musicians from all over, about their professional journey and pedagogy.

Everything Band Podcast

Mark J. Connor does an excellent job interviewing band teachers, performers, and composers of music for winds and percussion.

UpBeat

This is an awesome podcast about conducting, with great industry advise and interviews with conductors from all over.

I may be a little biased because I went to school with one of the hosts, John Devlin.

The show is great and the parody ads are hilarious.

METT Episode #17 – Talking About the Weather, with Chris Cicconi

Dr. Christopher Cicconi, Assistant Professor of Music Education, and Director of Bands and Orchestra at Towson University, joins the show to talk about selecting meaningful repertoire for your ensemble. We also talk about score study with iPad Pro apps, involving yourself in your music teaching community, and yes, I go on a tangent about my favorite new weather app.

<div class="
      image-block-outer-wrapper
      layout-caption-below
      design-layout-inline
      combination-animation-none
      individual-animation-none
      individual-text-animation-none
    ">




    <figure class="
          sqs-block-image-figure
          intrinsic
        " style="max-width:999px">







      <div class="image-block-wrapper">
        <div class="sqs-image-shape-container-element



          has-aspect-ratio
        " style="position: relative;padding-bottom:84.58457946777344%;overflow: hidden">







            <img src="https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5595df9ce4b0ce9ff9ecd1a8/1601906714231-C88BQJMIWJW7ADRPTTOH/CleanShot+2020-09-23+at+20.27.54.png" alt="CleanShot 2020-09-23 at 20.27.54.png" width="999" height="845" style="display:block;object-fit: cover;width: 100%;height: 100%;object-position: 50% 50%" loading="lazy">

        </div>
      </div>






    </figure>


</div>

Show Notes:

App of the Week:
Robby – Weather Line and Carrot Weather
Chris – Fidelity

Album of the Week:
Robby – Trust in the Life-force of the Deep Mystery – The Comet Is Coming
Chris – Game of Thrones Highlights – Spotify Playlist | Mad Max: Fury Road Soundtrack

Where to Find Us:
Robby – Twitter | Blog | Book
Chris – Towson University Profile Page

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

Subscribe to Music Ed Tech Talk:

Subscribe to the Blog

Subscribe to the Podcast in…
Apple Podcasts | Overcast | Castro | Spotify | RSS

Thanks to my sponsor this month, MusicFirst.

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.

<div class="sqs-video-wrapper" data-provider-name="YouTube" data-html="
“>

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.