Resource: Music Will Homepage
I spent a lot of time with my good friend Dr. Bryan Powell this past weekend at the EMEA 2024 Conference. Bryan is the Chief Program Officer at Music Will - one of my favorite music education organizations (formerly Little Kids Rock). At the conference, Bryan presented some terrific sessions that highlighted the work that Music Will does in bringing the concept of Modern Band to schools across the world. I have always known about the amazing work that this organization does, but never really took a deep dive into the available resources on their homepage. What an amazing resource for teachers.
Dr. Bryan Powell presenting the Keynote Adress @ EMEA 2024 in Stuttgart, Germany
The Music Will homepage has TONS of FREE resources to help you get a Modern band program up and running in your school. Aside from the amazing advocacy and research data that is shared to help you “justify” getting a MB program started at your school, there are lots of great classroom-ready resources available. Start off by clicking on the Educators drop down menu. Here you’ll find Get Started, Higher Education, and Public Resources. The Get Started section is what I recommend checking out first. Here you will find information on the man y professional development opportunities that Music Will provides (including the Music Will Academy), but if you scroll down to the bottom of the page, you find two wonderful resources: JamZone and Downloadable Teacher Resources.
The JamZone has three sections: Learn a Song, Take a Lesson, and Practice. The Learn a Song section is incredible - my favorite part of the site. It has the chord progressions to HUNDREDS of songs that your students will LOVE to learn and play. You can search many different ways which is extremely useful when you have groups of students with varying abilities.
The Take a Lesson section has HUNDREDS of well made tutorial videos that show students how to play a wide variety of Modern Band instruments. The videos are all fun, informative, and short enough to keep younger students engaged.
The Practice section has some great skill building exercises for guitar, keyboard, drums, and modern band. When you are inside the JamZone, you’ll also find a section called Jam Along, which has lots of “sound alike” tracks to many popular songs so that students can play along when they are practicing at home. Really cool stuff.
The Downloadable Resources section of the site has tons of PDF files that you can download for FREE, including PD workshops, Piano Jam Cards, Classroom Posters, Lesson Plans from the Rock and Roll Forever organization, and much, much more.
I LOVE this website and if you have any interest in exploring Modern Band - or if you’re already rocking with your kids, I highly recommend registering with this site and taking advantage of all of these wonderful resources. Of course, just like many non profit organizations, Music Will relies heavily on donations. I urge you to consider supporting this amazing organization.