CAI in Music Education

This week we’ll be investigating several CAI (computer-assisted instruction) resources that teachers use in music. Under the category of intelligent accompaniment, we will take a look at SmartMusic (http://www.smartmusic.com/) which is made by MakeMusic; the company that makes Finale. We will also look at Sibelius’ new counterpart called Starplay (http://www.starplaymusic.com). The different uses of these programs will be discussed in class, but I would encourage you to take a look at the demo videos, and even download the free versions to try each of them for yourself.

You will also be assigned several CAI software titles that we have available in our lab to write a review on. Your reviews should be posted here by no later than Thursday (4/17) at 2pm. In your review, you should try to answer the following questions:

1. How intuitive was the software? Were you able to navigate easily? Would students be able to?
2. How effective is this title in teaching music concepts? What concepts does the program focus on?
3. What level(s) would this program be best suited for?
4. Would you use this title in your teaching? Why or why not?

Your reviews should take the format of title of the program followed by a paragraph review. Example:

Music Ace
Music Ace is a fun and interesting program for learning basic music reading, etc.

Write these paragraphs as though they were going to be published as reviews in a music education periodical (i.e. Teaching Music or Illinois Music Educator). The programs to review are:

Music Ace 1 & 2
Music Lessons 1 & 2
Sibelius Instruments
Sibelius Groovy Shapes
Auralia
Practica Musica
Musictheory.net

Savin’ it!

A great article regarding the new problem of saving, archiving, and organizing digital data. Incredibly, the amount of digital information in the world is expected to increase 10-fold in the time you’re here as a student. Here’s my favorite quote regarding some of the complexity:

“There might be 100 versions of a report on a company’s hard drive, but which one was the final draft?” Dr. Hestrom said. “How was the underlying data used? Which architectural drawings of the many versions generated for a project were actually used to erect the building, and what was the chain of decisions that led to the brick-and-mortar result?

“It’s not that the bits aren’t lying around,” she continued. “They may or may not be lying around. But being able to understand how they were collected,” and being able to ascertain how the underlying data was used, makes the information useful. People think that because the cost of storage is dropping “we can save everything,” she said. “But that’s based on a naïve view of what ‘everything’ actually is.”

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/09/technology/techspecial/09store.html?ex=1365480000&en=78580979351bbb54&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

Technologies of composition

While we are working with technologies that allow composing (Audacity, GarageBand, notation software) the industry is also working on new technologies that allow and support composing.

Microsoft has a new technology, “My Song” which appears to be in a demo/beta phase. The program will create plausible chords to a melody sung by the user. Enjoy the demo video here:

http://research.microsoft.com/~dan/mysong/

Of course, there’s positive and negative possibilities within this technology, but I thought it novel/interesting enough to merit sharing.

Source: I learned about My Song from a post on slashdot.org, where you can read hundreds of comments: http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/04/07/1550226

Homework: Record Effect reading

One of my absolute favorite pieces by one of the best music writers currently working (Alex Ross, music critic for the New Yorker) is a review of books looking at recorded music:

http://www.therestisnoise.com/2005/05/music_and_machi.html

Please read this article before class on Tuesday. For us, the issue is making sense of the impact recording makes upon music (and music education). This should give us more room to think about recording as a possible music literacy.

Below: here’s a poster for a class at the YMCA (where I stayed in NYC last week for the AERA conference):

Assignments: Remix and Musique Concrète

These two assignments must be done before class on April 15 (we will listen to them in class on that day!). You will have some time in class today and some on Tuesday, but most of this assignment should be completed outside of class.

Audacity help and tutorials here: http://audacityteam.org/wiki/index.php?title=Audacity_Wiki_Home_Page

We will also look at several artists who make extensive use of manipulated audio in their music. Today, we heard two tracks from Matmos. Of course, on your own, you may want to see more or more, or some of the more dance oriented work, or a brief interview (from YouTube). If you want something more traditionally musical, you can see how they create a percussive/static-oriented accompaniment to a song by Björk in a live performance of her song “Cocoon”.

Nets

We’ll be talking today about GarageBand, looking at examples and talking a bit about production and (re)mixing.

One way to think about a program is as a technology that makes certain kinds of creativity or expressiveness more or less likely. My mentor, Elliot Eisner, put it well when speaking more generally about education:

The kinds of nets we know how to weave determine the kinds of nets we cast. These nets, in turn, determine the kinds of fish we catch.

Source: Eisner, E. W. (1994). Cognition and Curriculum Reconsidered (2nd ed.). New York: Teachers College Press. (p. 41)

What kind of fish does GarageBand catch? How about Sibelius? Finale NotePad? Audacity? iTunes? etc.?

Horns and Politics

Here’s the link to the in-class survey:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=urph0nnZVJ2H7bd8UIbfTA_3d_3d

In the mean time, I visited NYC for the conference of the American Educational Research Association, but also stopped by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which has an amazing musical instrument collection, including this beautiful horn:

Billy Bragg on royalties and rights

Even though we’re not in the business of making professional musicians, many of our students do hope to spend their life, and perhaps make a living, making music.

Musician Billy Bragg has an editorial discussing royalties for artists who appear on sites like MySpace. Anything that gets at the changing shape of the music business in an intelligent way is worth a read by music educators:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/22/opinion/22bragg.html?ex=1363924800&en=26dde2922bbab6f2&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

Copyright Caper #3847

The NYTimes does it again: a great copyright caper that gets into rights as they are experienced by college marching and pep bands. Here’s a juicy quote, followed by a link:

In theory, bands need to get approval and pay for the rights to use songs. They often start with the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (Ascap) or Broadcast Music Inc. (BMI), which license music and distribute royalties to songwriters and composers. They deal with sheet-music publishers, such as Hal Leonard or Alfred Publishing, which combine to control the majority of the popular-music catalog.

Rights to a song can cost $50 to $350, according to Jeni Paulson, president of CopyCat Music Licensing. Her company, a type of middleman, works with many Pac-10 and Big Ten band directors. They call, usually in the summer after making a wish list for the coming school year, and say which songs they want to use. CopyCat does the research on licensing and returns with a price.

“Not all directors know that they’re supposed to ask permission,” Paulson said.

Some artists and songs are simply off limits. Van Halen’s “Jump” is a popular request, but always denied. So are the works of the composer John Williams, meaning that the familiar chords of “Jaws,” “Star Wars” or “Raiders of the Lost Ark” should not be heard blaring through arenas.

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/19/sports/ncaabasketball/19bands.html?ex=1363665600&en=24bb71500c929f18&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

Nerds like us (or, at least, me)

Many lovers of science fiction and fantasy are mourning recent passing of Gary Gygax (creator of Dungeons and Dragons) and Arthur C. Clarke (science fiction writer perhaps best known for the film 2001: A Space Odyssey).

The New York Times quotes Clarke talking about the relation of imagination to technological progress in a way that music educators might enjoy:

Mr. Clarke was well aware of the importance of his role as science spokesman to the general population: “Most technological achievements were preceded by people writing and imagining them,” he noted. “I’m sure we would not have had men on the Moon,” he added, if it had not been for H.G. Wells and Jules Verne. “I’m rather proud of the fact that I know several astronauts who became astronauts through reading my books.”

Here’s the whole obituary:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/18/books/18cnd-clarke.html?ex=1363579200&en=8ffffca2465f63ff&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink