If you’ve never been to the NAMM Show out here in Anaheim, CA, you should definitely try to get to it at some point in your career. For those of us who have been here many times, like myself, it is the largest gathering of music products manufacturers in the United States and seemingly everyone in the music industry is here. It is part non-stop business meetings, part reunion, and part circus. Non-stop performances, crazy outfits and hairstyles, and a giant party in the lobbies of the Hilton and Marriott hotels.

Have you ever heard of a Theremin? If you ever heard Good Vibrations by The Beach Boys or have watched sci-fi films from the 1950’s, you’ve certainly heard one (technically the Beach Boys used an Electro Theremin). The Theremin is considered the first electronic instrument and it as a fascinating history. Invented by Russian physicist Leon Theremin in 1919, the instrument is played without being touched by the performer. It is the only musical instrument that you don’t touch to make a sound - it has just two metal antennas which can sense the position of the player’s hands and control the pitch with one hand, and volume with the other.

Like I mentioned with Auralia and teaching intonation a few posts ago, sometimes just ONE exercise or function is reason enough to purchase a software title for use with your students. I would argue that the Rhythm Counting exercises in Musition are reason enough to integrate MusitionFirst into your instruction with any performance ensemble.

If you know about Edpuzzle then you know how powerful of a tool it is. If you don’t, you need to integrate this incredible FREE tool into your teaching if you use video as a part of your instruction.

It’s April - that means that it’s time for the Cherry Blossoms to bloom. Here is a lesson plan that I wrote back when I was teaching that introduces students to the Japanese folksong, Sakura. The students are asked to learn more about the history of the song, listen to a recording, then post a reflection/response. Afterwards, students will use a notation program to compose a rhythmic accompaniment to the melody of Sakura. Hope this lesson plan is useful!

This post contains a list of online resources that can help you and your students celebrate JAM.

Here is a very simple, but VERY important tip if you’d like to prolong the life of your powered speakers as long as possible: Last On - First Off (LOFO). What does that mean? Always turn your speakers on LAST in the sequence of powering up your computer and hardware devices, and always turn the off FIRST when powering down.

Have you ever stood up in front of you instrumental ensemble and said to yourself, “There MUST be a better way!!!” Tired of your students not practicing? Not prepared to play the repertoire you’ve so carefully picked out for them? Tired of standing up on the podium and working on the basics rather than actually making music? Tired of getting ready to leave for the day and seeing ALL of those instruments sitting in the instrument storage closet rather than with your students bringing them home to practice?

How many times have you had the pleasure of having single page PDFs - perhaps of a musical score - or forms that have been handed in by students - and you’ve thought to yourself “I really would love to put all of these PDFs in one file so that I could arrange them in the correct order!”. I have - MANY times. While PDFs are really great for a variety of reasons, they are different than word processing files. They are essentially images and can be a little difficult to deal with unless you have Adobe Acrobat Pro.

At the NAMM Show in Anaheim this year, there will be a recognition and celebration of one of the most unique things about the music industry - the 40th anniversary of the invention of MIDI - Musical Instrument Digital Interface. While it may not sound like a big deal - it is. In a highly competitive industry, MIDI is one of the only things that ALL hardware and computer manufacturers have agreed on - adopting a single standard that is used by all MIDI enabled instruments, software and hardware. MIDI is everywhere.

Sometimes the only reason that you need to purchase a piece of software is ONE exercise or function. For me, it was the Tuning exercise in Auralia from Rising Software.

You can use Scratch to have students code their own interactive stories, animations, and games. In the process, they learn to think creatively, reason systematically, and work collaboratively . Educators are integrating Scratch across many different subject areas and age groups.

Last week I showed the entire process from recording a podcast in Soundtrap to posting the episode on SoundCloud and distributing the podcast on Spotify. This post includes a 32-minute video tutorial that I hope you find useful.

Back in 2016, I was invited to Washington DC to attend the launch of an amazing project, sponsored by the US Department of Education, the Herbie Hancock Institute of Jazz, and the musedlab from the NYU Music Experience Design department. called Math, Science, Music. Essentially it is a collection of projects that focus on STEM integration, including projects by my dear friends Gena Greher from UMass Lowell and Alex Ruthmann from NYU. There are 11 projects altogether and they are all really well designed.

Join me for Connecticut Music Technology Day, a FREE in-person event designed specifically for K-12 music educators and administrators, sponsored by MusicFirst, Novation, and Focusrite!

In honor of Modest Mussorgsky’s birthday (born March 21, 1839 in Russia), here is a collection of. some of my favorite teaching resources for his most famous work, Pictures at an Exhibition. I hope you find them useful!

One of my all-time favorite DVDs that I used to show my students was Animusic. There were two editions of the DVDs - Animusic and Animusic 2 - and my students would sit there mesmerized at the incredible computer graphics that were magically synced to the really cool music for each track.

I am excited to announce that I will be heading back to Villanova University this summer to teach a music technology course on behalf of the University of the Arts Summer Music Studies Program on behalf of MusicFirst Summer Teacher Academy. It’s been almost 10 years since I’ve taught a week long summer course at Villanova and I’m thrilled to be back!

I recently did some research into microphone and interface solutions that are built specifically for podcasting and came across an amazing product line from Focusrite called the Vocaster. Wow. I immediately loved the design and simplicity of the two units and decided to take them for a test drive. I love them. In fact I love them so much, I decided to write a podcasting curriculum that featured them and started reselling them at MusicFirst. They are IDEAL for music education. Here’s why.

To help celebrate Pi Day (March 14th - 3/14), here is a very easy lesson plan to get your students composing in Noteflight using the first 10 digits of Pi. This lesson is one of thousands from the MusicFirst Classroom Content Library. If you are a MusicFirst Classroom subscriber, just add shared/view/lesson/8276# to the end of your site URL to access the full lesson plan.