Recap: Music & Drama Education Expo

One of my favorite shows of the year for MusicFirst is the Music & Drama Education Expo in London, England,. It’s been 3 years since I have been here in person, for obvious reasons, and it was GREAT to be back. It is a FREE show for all attendees so there are LOTS of teachers here, and almost every company in the music education space here in the UK are in attendance.

First, it is always wonderful to catch up with everyone on the MusicFirst UK team and our UK partners. Richard Payne and Matt Allen are both amazing advocates for technology in music education and they keep everything running over here with almost half of the secondary schools in the UK using our various solutions to help teach their students. We also had the honor of having the one and only James Manwaring present a session for us on how he uses Focus On Sound, Noteflight, Flat & Soundtrap with his students at the Windsor Learning Partnership

Second, I love reconnecting with Dr. Simon Foxall, inventor of Focus On Sound - one of the most popular products in the UK market. He is a brilliant educator and software designer. Simon was a senior examiner and music educator for many years. His PhD was focused on the use of computers in testing music and linguistic ability - very similar to mine. He is brilliant and he used his many years of music teaching experience to create a beautiful piece of software that every music teacher should use in their teaching.

Third, I always love catching up with Marcel Pusey & Mark Welland from O-Music - creators of O-Generator. O-Gen, as I lovingly call it, is one of my all-time favorite pieces of software. I’ll be doing a separate blog post about this software in an upcoming post, but for me, it is the easiest way to get students with little or no musical background to start making music. For more advanced students, it was the best way for students to create their own loops to be used in other programs. There are some exciting things happening at O-Gen right now, and I can’t wait to tell you all about it :)

Fourth, I always love catching up with Paul Fletcher and Mark Burke from Charanga - by far the most popular learning platform for primary and secondary music students in the UK. Paul & Mark are a FORCE here in the UK and their success is due largely to their incredible team of developers and content writers. I love this company and think that amazing things are on the horizon for them.

Lastly, it was lovely to catch up with Peter Lee and Tim Wilson from Rising Software - our amazing partners from Down Under. Rising makes Auralia & Musition - the most popular software around for ear training and music theory. Believe it or not, they are celebrating their 30th Anniversary this year - an amazing achievement in the software market. Peter and Tim are wonderful musicians and even better people. An added bonus was running into my dear friend Michael Avery, the genius behind Groovy Music. It was wonderful to see Michael, albeit briefly, and I love the work that he has done and is doing now for MusicFirst.