This past Wednesday evening, I had the pleasure of guest hosting a webinar with my dear friend from Focusrite, Dr. Lee Whitmore, along with two of California’s finest music educators, Anne Fennell from San Diego Unified Schools and Tony White from Los Angeles Unified School District about the unprecedented arts funding law passed in California recently, known as Prop 28. This incredible legislation permanently guarantees funding for arts educators, professional development, curriculum and equipment. As you can imagine, there are LOTS of questions swirling around while school districts wait for the funding to arrive. How much money did my district receive? Should I move to California to teach music? What certifications do teachers need? How can you request funding for equipment, curriculum or other program requests? The following recording of this webinar, which runs for about an hour, provides all of these answers and more. It was a wonderful informational webinar, and I hope that it is useful for California arts educators. Enjoy!

Every year around this time, I see lots of posts from various companies in the music education space that wish teachers a happy and successful school year. Many of them include a special thank you “gift”, which is usually a warm fuzzy video from the CEO or the entire staff. While these are all nice sentiments, I remember vividly when I was teaching saying “You want to give me a Back-To-School gift? Send me something tangible - something I can actually use with my students!” This year, in what will be the first of many, MusicFirst is giving away something incredible to their existing customers - FREE PDF copies of 3 compositions for band, chorus and string orchestra. What compositions? Where can I find these? Read on…

Today marks 30 years to the day since I began formally teaching in public schools back in 1993. I thought I would observe this occasion by reminiscing a bit and sharing some thoughts on my career (so far) in education. Be warned, some colorful language is included.

Unless you have been on a digital detox for the past 9 months or you happen to live under a rock, you have likely heard about ChatGPT. This generative AI language model has truly made a paradigm shifting impact on education and assessment. Just ask your students or children - they’ve likely been using this incredible tool to complete their homework assignments over the 2022-23 school year. I have spent countless hours trying out all types of prompts for ChatGPT, and investigating how it can be used for good in the classroom. To simply ban it is crazy. To me it would be like banning Google or even the Internet. AI technology will be in our lives for years to come. The innovations that are on the horizon are both exciting and terrifying. I am truly hopeful that education leaders will do everything they can to find ways to incorporate AI into education. There is zero doubt that the students in our classrooms today will be interacting with AI for the rest of their lives. With this is mind, many teachers I know have asked how they should be using AI language models like ChatGPT in their classrooms. I was very encouraged to read this morning that OpenAI has just released a really informative guide for teachers. Let’s take a look.

When I was teaching middle school students with GarageBand back in the 2000’s, I would always run into a problem about half way through the school year. Even though there were over a thousand loops for the students to choose from, they would always hit a wall around January, and ask me if there were any other loops they could use. The teacher in me always used this exact moment to try to steer students away from their reliance on pre-made loops and have them compose their own, either with a tool like O-Generator, or using the keyboard or step entry tool to create their own. In theory, this is a great idea. In reality, it was tough. To help out the situation, I bought all of the GarageBand Expansion Packs, which were cool but expensive - especially as I had to purchase them for every computer in my keyboard lab.

Sometimes new features fly under the radar when they are launched, and the brand new Sampler in Soundtrap is one of them. I can’t believe I just realized it was there!!! Holy %$#@ this thing is cool! With so many different ways to use it, the Sampler is something that you need to start using with your students right away. In this post I will go over what a Sampler actually does, as well as a step-by-step guide on how to use it.

I recently came across one of the most interesting examples of AI being used in music - the Beethoven X AI Project - a documentary film that traces the use of AI to help finish Beethoven’s unfinished 10th Symphony. Believe it or not, this is an “old” story - the premiere of the completed symphony was in October of 2021, but the implications are right at the forefront of many conversations about AI that I have had recently. A company called Playform and a team of machine learning experts and composer used AI to analyze the fragments of musical sketches that Beethoven left behind when he died and then compose a finished version of the Symphony 10 which was then performed by an orchestra. After I visited the site and heard the finished product, I wondered whether this was a stunt or an amazing example of AI in action. I’ll let you decide…

With the new school year upon us, I thought it would be a good time to show the top ten reasons why you should adopt MusicFirst Elementary into your K-5 music program. The incredible Amy M Burns is the elementary education consultant for MusicFirst, and she recently created a set of 10 wonderful, short videos that feature the various aspects of MusicFirst Elementary, and why she thinks so highly of the program. Here are those 10 videos. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do.

This Friday, August 25th (Thursday night ET) I have the great privilege of presenting a session titled Tech tools, Tips & Training for Music Educators on behalf of MusicEDNet at the EduTECH Congress & Expo in Melbourne, Australia. Unfortunately, I will only be there virtually, but I’m still excited to speak with educators in Australia. Over the past 15 years I have had the pleasure of traveling to and speaking at several conferences down under, and I truly love the approach to music, education and technology there.

Sight Reading Factory has been the leading tool for improving the sight reading skills of millions of students over the past decade. At MusicFirst, it is one of our most popular software titles since we first starting offering it back in 2014. Available as either a standalone title or integrated within the MusicFirst Classroom, Sight Reading Factory is an easy to use tool that generates music for students to sight read based on whatever parameters you set for them. It is simply amazing, and the thousands of school districts around the country that have been using it agree. Believe it or not, I found out about this software from my own daughter, who was preparing for her NYSSMA Solo Evaluation. I heard her singing in her room one evening and rushed up to her room to see what was happening. She told me that her teacher was making them use “SURF” to practice for their NYSSMA evaluations. I was blown away when she showed me how it worked. I called Don Crafton, Founder of SRF, the next day, and the rest is history.

We are THRILLED to announce that all of the Level One videos from the fantastic MusicProfessor are now available at no extra charge for ALL MusicFirst Classroom customers starting today! I announced this feature on this blog back in June, and our incredible content team has been working away to get them all in place for the start of the 2023-24 school year. This short post will show you where they live within the MusicFirst Classroom, what information the videos contain, and how you can share them with your students to help them improve their performance and understanding of a wide variety of instruments.

Last week, after months of development and careful thought, we launched the first ever integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into the MusicFirst Classroom and we are absolutely thrilled with the possibilities that it brings to our customers. And no, this isn’t an April Fools Day joke. The MusicFirst Assistant is an optional feature that allows teachers to enlist the aid of AI when coming up with ideas for lesson plans. The first of its kind integration in the music education sector, the MusicFirst Assistant has been seamlessly integrated into the lesson planning workflow of the MusicFirst Classroom. All existing MusicFirst Classroom customers can access this incredible feature right now. Here is how it works…

This post may seem slightly heretical coming from the Founder & Director of an Ed Tech company, but in my opinion, we all need to start unplugging our devices and living in the real world for at least a few hours a day. Known as a “digital detox”, you don’t realize just how much our devices have invaded our lives until you leave it behind - either intentionally or unintentionally. Technology is necessary and vital in our working lives - but does it have the same place in our personal lives? Yesterday I had one of those experiences that made me realize two things - I am 100% addicted to my phone, and I can actually function for a few hours without it.

This week I had the pleasure of attending the Southwest Music Summer Exhibition in San Antonio, Texas on behalf of MusicFirst. Formerly known as the Texas Bandmasters Association show, along with TCDA and TODA, this show is a great way to meet the amazing music educators of Texas and showcase all of the new products and features of your products. While brutally HOT outside (everyday was over 100 degrees), the sessions and exhibit hall are nice and cool and filled with music for the entire weekend.

We hope you’re having a great summer and are as excited as we are for the upcoming school year. Our team at MusicFirst has been hard at work behind the scenes, and we’re delighted to share some exciting new features, updates, and content!

More terrific news from PracticeFirst! We have now added the Musical Mastery series of method books for beginning band. Written by a team of current middle school, high school, and university band directors, this innovative and unique method book offers a very different but highly effective approach. Each student book is individually created to cover comprehensive instrument specific instruction for woodwind and brass instruments. The corresponding teacher's editions include detailed pedagogy, scope and sequence, troubleshooting information, and much more.

There is NOTHING in the world more enjoyable to me than live music. Over the past few weeks I have had the pleasure of attending 10 concerts - 9 Dead & Company shows and 1 Goose show. I’ve got 7 more shows this summer - 5 Phish shows, 1 Dave Matthews Band, and the Outlaw Festival. It’s why I’ve been absent from the blog for a few weeks. I live for live music. But why?

MusicFirst is extremely excited to announce, in partnership with GIA Publications, the release of Habits of a Successful Beginner Mariachi Músico, written by the amazing duo of John Nieto and Scott Rush - available as INCLUDED content in PracticeFirst and the MusicFirst Classroom for all current sibscribers as of July 1, 2023. This method book, developed over many years by expert mariachi educator John Nieto, includes 164 sequenced exercises to build fundamentals in a beginner mariachi program. As a teacher, you can easily access, assign, and automatically assess exercises from this method. 

It’s true! Incredibox - a longtime favorite of thousands of music educators and their students - has recently released Incredibox for Schools - built specifically for teachers to use with their students. This education version has a few BIG differences, including the ability to create classes, add students for a secure and private login, have students save their work for teachers to review, access to all 9 of the arrangements, they no longer have exposed nipples, and most importantly - it is NOT free. 100 students will cost you $345.60. Is it worth it? Let’s see…

Earlier today, MusicFirst UK ran their second online Masterclass event, this time celebrating all different types of student compositions from around the UK. The event was hosted by YolanDa Brown OBE - a very well-known, award-winning saxophonist, broadcaster and author from the UK and the student work that was featured was simply outstanding.