If there was ever a group of students who have been traditionally overlooked by assessment technologies in a music program, it’s the drummers. One of the main reasons for this is that it is almost impossible to get accurate assessment results for non-pitched instruments. Our own performance assessment software, PracticeFirst is working diligently to try to make that happen but it is likely still in the future. That said, there are some wonderful activities in the MusicFirst suite of content and software that can engage your drummers and percussionists with meaningful assessment activities. One of my favorite is the Drum Sticking section of our award winning music theory software, Musition. This simple yet effective section not only teaches aspiring drummers how to read music and rudiments along with the correct sticking, but also assesses them in a very innovative and fun assessment interface. Here’s how to access this amazing content:

I am absolutely thrilled to share that the company that I started back in 2012 has been acquired by an incredible group of investors who focus solely on the ed tech market - Achieve Partners. This is great news for us as well as our four sister companies that are coming along with us - Charanga, Rising Software, Focus On Sound, and O-Music. A HUGE thank you goes out to all of my team members - both past and present - who have helped me build this company from an idea to one of the most important brands in the music education technology market today. This acquisition means that our future growth is in very good hands, and we will be making investments to ensure that students and teachers will have access to the very best tools and content for many years to come. In addition to my team, I would like to send a huge thank you to Mr. Bob Wise, the heart and soul behind Wise Music and the person who believed in me and invested in my idea to build this company. I will always be thankful and grateful for his confidence in me and his commitment to making music education more meaningful and accessible through technology. Here is the press release that has just gone out today:

Before 2024 winds down to a close, we are launching an incredible new feature in PracticeFirst - the performance assessment offered exclusively through MusicFirst - that allows students to click on any note in an assigned exercise to reveal the correct fingering for that note, as well as the ability to hear how that specific notes sound. This feature is something that has been on our customer request list for a few years, and the amazing development team at MatchMySound has done a wonderful job making it available. As anyone in the software industry knows, what might seem to be a relatively easy thing to add to a software’s overall functionality rarely is. Working hand in hand with the content team from MusicFirst under the direction of Marjorie LoPresti, we’ve been able to launch this feature just in time for the start of 2025. Here is how it works.

The Teach Music Coalition was formed in direct response to a nationwide teacher shortage, and their mission is to help find resources and solutions for the immediate, short term, and longer-term challenges facing the music educator workforce, working to retain, shepherd, diversify, and recruit the next generation of music educators. This year at the Midwest Band & Orchestra Clinic in Chicago, I was invited to their annual meeting by Bob Morrison, who leads the group. At the early morning breakfast gathering, I met many of my industry friends and representatives from almost every company and group in the music education industry, including the American Choral Directors Association, the American String Teachers Association, Music for All, the National Association for Music Education, the National Federation of State High School Associations, the NAMM Foundation, and many others. I attended representing MusicFirst, and we are very proud to be joining this coalition. Here is a quick video that provides an overview of what the group does.

As 2024 draws to a close, I always know where I will be the week before Christmas - the Midwest Band & Orchestra Clinic in Chicago, IL. It is one of those events that I look forward to each year, as I get to catch up with so many colleagues, industry partners, former students, and my fellow MusicFirst staff members. While I didn’t present any sessions this year, I did have the pleasure of sitting in on Leah Elaine Hanley’s session titled Assessment Strategies for Ensembles, where she highlighted the incredible ways that she uses her MusicFirst Classroom implementation. She shared many wonderful examples, including how she uses PracticeFirst and Auralia. It was an absolutely PACKED house and I know that everyone appreciated her incredible energy and passion for teaching. She is a ROCKSTAR and I was so thrilled to see how she uses our tools in her classroom. I also got to hang out with two of our MusicFirst Education Managers, Mike Olander and Matt Ferry. I love watching them interact with current and prospective customers. Our booth was constantly busy through the show and I look forward to working with some new school districts in 2025.

Like many, I have been eagerly waiting for access to the latest generative AI tool from OpenAI called Sora - a tool that creates video based on text prompts. The hype over the release of this tool has been pretty big and the posted demos on the internet have been stunning. OpenAI announced last week that Sora was finally being launched to the public - but only for paid subscribers. At first, most folks received a message that Sora wasn’t adding new accounts as they were overwhelmed with requests, but I finally got in this past weekend. What I will say up front is that I’m not that impressed with the results so far, but I am quite certain that the end products will improve greatly over the next few weeks and months. I am sharing 5 videos in this post, along with the text prompts that generated them, to show you what Sora is doing now. I also share some thoughts on how this incredible tool might be incorporated into music education. Here is the sizzle reel that has been on YouTube for the past few months:

Last night I had the great pleasure of attending an amazing event hosted by TeachRock, one of my favorite music education organizations, in downtown NYC at the legendary SOBs. It was the Concert for Creative Classrooms, featuring 3 of my all-time favorite musical artists (John Medeski, Joe Russo, and Marc Ribot), in a Grateful Dead themed event (I am a lifelong Deadhead). MusicFirst was a very proud sponsor of the event which was a benefit concert with proceeds going to support their incredible mission. The opening act was a Dead cover band, Hell or High Water, which was followed by a terrific ceremony, led by Executive Director Bill Carbone and Founder Stevie Van Zandt, that honored teacher Ben Wides and supporter Deborah Solomon. After the ceremony, we were treated by an amazing set of improvisatory music by Medeski, Russo & Ribot. I had the absolute THRILL of meeting both John Medeski, and reconnecting with Joe Russo, who actually attended the middle school in Franklin Lakes that I taught music at for many years. The best part of the evening was that I shared it with my daughter Abby. I strongly encourage you to learn more about this incredible organization and consider donating LOTS of money before the end of the year (everyone loves tax deductible donations)!

It’s not very often that I find a new piece of technology and need to pause for a moment or two to process what I am seeing. Further, when a new technology has the potential to transform the way that students learn and teachers teach, I tend to get very excited. NotebookLM, from Google, is a transformative new AI tool that has been around for a while now and in my opinion, it will change the way that we teach and deliver our instruction as well as prepare our students for exams. I learned about it from my daughters who use it regularly to study for exams. My daughter Abby used it to study for her LSATs, and my daughter Izzy is using it in her studies at the University of Miami. What separates this AI tool from others is that it doesn’t do the assignments for students at all; it simply generates a variety of ways to study for exams - from organizing class notes into a custom interactive study guide to generating audio study guides that truly sound like professionally produced NPR-style podcasts. It is incredible. Here is a video overview about how it works, led by one of my favorite authors, Stephen Johnson, who now works for Google on this project.

I thought I would pass along a very exciting promotion that we just announced at MusicFirst. Have you been wanting to try some new software with your students in the spring semester? Well now is the perfect time to get started! For a limited time, we're offering 6-month subscriptions to MusicFirst software for 50% off. Unlock access, for all of your students, to MusicFirst Classroom, MusicFirst Elementary or any integrated software. This special offer is available from January 1, 2025, through March 31, 2025. All orders must be placed by March 31, 2025, to qualify.

Sometimes you stumble upon a simple website that is absolutely PERFECT for use with your students. Soundworld is one such site. Created by technical director and educator JD Stallings, this site teaches and reinforces concepts around signal flow. I was teaching my music technology students last night at Montclair State University, and I showed them Soundworld. I was able to guide them through the thought process and technical aspects of setting up a sound system and I think it is HIGHLY effective at doing so. The site focuses on a simple 4-channel mixer that is prominently in the middle of the screen (see below). From there, students have to think through the entire setup process using various cables, input devices and speakers. Using simple click, drag and drop functionality, the students are charged with making a simple sound system work. Here’s how:

Yesterday I had the distinct honor of speaking with both undergraduate and graduate students at the University of Connecticut about all things MusicFirst, music technology, and the impact that generative AI will have on the field. The incredibly bright and engaged students were not only fully engaged in the conversation, but expressed their insights, opinions and feelings about the role of technology in music instruction and where they see the future of our profession. They are the students of two of my favorite music educators in the field, Dr. Cara Bernard and Dr. Joseph Abramo. Between the two classes I spoke with, I had the opportunity to interview five of these students: Luke Olsen, Pio Castellano, Caroline Shadman, Matthew Calorossi, and Claire Gordon (pictured above). They will appear in an upcoming episode of my podcast, Profiles in teaching With Technology on December 19th. I sat down with these bright students and asked them a series of questions about their musical journeys, their thoughts about technology, and their vision for the future. It was an amazing discussion and I cannot wait for you all to hear what they had to say.

Have you ever wondered how to get your podcast distributed on services like Spotify, Apple Music, and other similar services? It’s REALLY easy! If you create podcasts with your students or if you have a podcast of your own, there is no better way to let the world know about them (and listen to them) than posting it on the huge distribution sites. The best part? It’s FREE! This lesson plan provides you and your students with everything you need to know to get your podcasts out there. It is a part of a curriculum that I wrote, Podcasting Across The Curriculum - available exclusively in the MusicFirst Classroom. Enjoy!

Like many, I have been playing with DALL-E3 - from Open AI - for quite some time now. While I see images created by this pretty amazing AI model on websites LinkedIn a LOT, I really only use it for AI demonstrations. OpenAI developed DALL-E, which was first released in January 2021. The name DALL-E is a combination of the Spanish surreal artist Salvador Dalí and the Disney robot Wall-E. DALL-E3 can generate images in a variety of styles, even for concepts that don't exist in the real world. It can also imitate different artistic styles and works of real humans. In my experience, the images that DALL-E3 creates for music education based prompts are often riddled with mistakes and can even be pretty problematic. For example, take a good look at the image above. The prompt that I typed to generate this image was “Create an image of a middle school string orchestra rehearsing being conducted by a robot.” Notice anything? To me, it appears that every student in the image is of Asian descent. I didn’t specify the race of the students at all and yet this is what I got. The stereotype that Asian students play string instruments is not only wrong, it’s pretty offensive. Aside from that aspect, the image is riddled with bizarre things, including: they are playing their instruments with the wrong side of the bow, some of the bows are curved, some instruments are missing, and the music on the board is pretty funny. I think that if you are looking to have some fun with AI, and to show students that AI isn’t quite “there” yet, you should actively solicit prompts from your students and then find all of the anomalies in each image. It is a perfect “fun” activity if you’re either discussing AI or you have a few minutes to spare at the end of a class. Here are a few images complete with the prompts I entered. See if you can find what’s wrong!

As a part of the brand new Modern Band Bundle available exclusively in the MusicFirst Classroom, we employed several amazing music educators to create curriculum that will help music educators get a modern band program up and running in their school. One of those authors is the amazing Steve Holley - a music educator/bassist/author living in Denver, CO. Steve is currently the President of APME - the Association of Popular Music Education, and has written numerous publications on building and fostering popular music programs in schools. His curriculum - titled Coaching a Popular Music Ensemble - is fantastic and includes TONS of resources on the what, why and how of building a popular music program. Whether you’re working with a modern band, a flex ensemble, or any group interested in performing contemporary music, this course provides the tools to inspire and guide your students to getting an ensemble up on stage at your next concert. Here is a link to an overview of the syllabus. So what is in this course and why should you include it in your int your teaching? I’m glad you asked.

Sometimes a goodbye is a GOOD thing! When we first launched the MusicFirst Classroom back in 2014, we quickly realized just how much students (and their teachers) relied on mobile devices to access content and assignments. Back then, the wonderful folks on the Apple iOS team did not allow access to the microphone on their devices in any browser other than Safari. As very little music software could run natively in that browser (which is still largely the case), and the device microphone was not available to the Chrome browser, we were forced to create what is known as an iOS Helper app for the MusicFirst Classroom. Software developers know that every time you have to create something custom for a specific device or browser, it makes everything more complicated (and expensive). We launched the MusicFirst Student App in October of 2015 - making it possible for teachers and students to access our amazing platform and software on any iOS device. Was it a great app? No. The reviews on the iOS store (entirely written by students) were terrible. Never fun to read those. Did it serve its purpose? Absolutely. That said, the development team and MusicFirst was constantly looking for ways to get rid of the app - making it a more seamless experience for users. We always wanted the Chrome browser to be the way that our users accessed out tools. Well, as of two weeks ago, I am very happy to report that the MusicFirst Student App has been decommissioned and is no longer available. That means that everything (including access to the device microphone) is now running natively in the Chrome browser on iOS devices. While this might not seem like a big deal to many, it is a HUGE win for us and our customers. Thanks to Michael Avery and his team for making this a reality. Onwards!

Like many others today, I woke up to the very sad news that one of the greatest musicians of our time, Quincy Jones, had passed away at the age of 91. This incredible legend had such a massive influence on most of the music that I grew up with. I thought it would be good to share some wonderful resources about Quincy Jones so that you can help your students understand just what an icon he was. I hope that you find these useful.

Bret Pimentel’s is a woodwind player who has created some incredible resources for music educators who teach woodwinds, and their students. I stumbled upon his page recently, and I was blown away by the many tools that can be found on his resource page for music educators and students. The site provides several valuable tools, and three of my personal favorites—the Fingering Diagram Builder, Note Image Generator, and Random Note Picker—are really useful for music educators looking free, high quality, online teaching materials and customizable tools that can help create meaningful and personalized learning opportunities for students. Here’s a closer look at these three resources and how they can be used in music education, along with a mention of additional tools that further support music educators.

I was out in Madison, Wisconsin this week for the Wisconsin State Music Conference, and I had the pleasure of meeting one of our amazing customers, Guy Gregg - a high school band director at Oak Creek High School in suburban Milwaukee - who helped present a session on behalf of MusicFirst. Afterwards, we went to dinner and shared stories of teaching and music technology. Guy told me about an app that he uses with his music theory students called Bandle. I had never heard of it. When he described what it is and how he uses it I told him that I would be writing a blog post about it. Here it is!

SPOILER ALERT: don’t look below if you want to play the game today (10/25/24).

One of my colleagues, Robin Hodson, sent me a link to a fantastic new tool that he found online called Sodaphonic. This simple but powerful little tool allows you to do a bunch of things with audio - all in the browser - for free (though there is a freemium model that allows you to upgrade for $5/month). There are 3 tools included with Sodaphonic: an Editor that allows you to record and edit audio, Boombox which you can use to record you voice and share it instantly, and Format Flipper (my personal favorite) where you can convert audio files from mp3, ogg, flac, wma or wav. Sodaphonic isn’t a DAW, but it is a great audio editing suite that is easy to use. Here is a little more in depth review of each tool.

Are you looking for an exciting opportunity to engage your students in music composition and technology this fall? The Fall 2024 Electronic Music Showcase from Music-COMP is the perfect way to get your students inspired and involved! Whether your students are experienced composers or just beginning to explore the world of electronic music, this program offers something for everyone. I am on the Board for this incredible organization, and this event is something that I think you and your students will love. The best part? You don’t have to be from Vermont to participate!