Did you know that OpenAI - the creator of ChatGPT - has SO many additional tools and and custom versions built around ChatGPT? These tools include things like DALL-E (which I have mentioned in a previous post), writing tools, productivity tools, creative tools and education tools. The list is growing all the time and if you have enough programming skills of your own, you can even make your own custom GPT. I’ve picked out a selection of some of my favorite GPTs, and I strongly recommend checking out the entire list on your own. So in no particular order - here they are!

March is Women’s History Month so I thought I would provide a bunch of terrific online resources, specifically focused on women in music, to help you celebrate this month with your students. I hope you find all of these resources useful!

I know that some of you will read the title of this post and either laugh or get annoyed. I KNOW that there aren’t enough hours in the day. I KNOW that the last thing you will want to do either on your free period or at home is do more school work. I KNOW that most music teachers skip this step entirely for a wide variety of reasons. I also KNOW that if you do any of the projects that you assign your students - ESPECIALLY music technology projects - either alongside them or before they even get started, the results that the students produce will likely be vastly better than if you don’t. Here’s what I mean…

For the past two months, I have been on the road at music educator conferences around the US and UK. I have had the opportunity to speak with hundreds of music teachers, as well as present and attend numerous sessions on the various offerings that we have at MusicFirst for K-20 music educators. A few products have stood out from the crowd this season, and none more so than MusicFirst Elementary. We are so incredibly fortunate to have Amy Burns on our team as our ambassador for the product, and I have had the chance to sit in on quite a few of her sessions where she demonstrates the many reasons for K-5 music teachers to consider adopting MusicFirst Elementary for their classrooms. Amy provides countless examples of exactly why and how she uses this unique curriculum with her students, and over the past two months, five distinct reasons have risen to the top. Here are 5 of the top reasons that you should consider making MusicFirst Elementary your K-5 music curriculum this Fall.

I am on my way back home from London this morning after spending two exciting days at the Music & Drama Education Expo - one of my favorite events of the year. This is the largest conference for music educators in the UK and MusicFirst UK has been exhibiting and presenting sessions since the very beginning. This year was a very exciting one on the stand at the show. We had our full UK staff in attendance, including Richard Payne, Naomi Cook, and Matt Allen, as well as one of our UK Ambassador, James Manwaring, and my dear friend Marcel Pusey from OGenPlus - the completed updated and improved version of O-Generator - launching this April. I always enjoy spending time with my UK staff as well as meeting with our amazing customers.

In preparation for my music tech class at Montclair State University, I was researching tools for audio editing. Specifically, I was looking for other options than Audacity (which is an amazing, locally installed application), and even more specifically, FREE online options. After some searching, I found an amazing option called AudioMass. I absolutely LOVE this one, and I can’t believe it took me this long to find it. If you are looking for a powerful audio editing tool from Chromebooks (or any device), THIS IS IT! Here is a closer look at its features.

Here’s another very cool AI-powered music tool: NSynth Sound Maker. It’s a Google Experiment with help from NSynth which is very different than other types of synthesizers. Rather than replying on things like oscillators, filters, envelopes and amplifiers, NSynth uses machine learning to create sounds from a dataset that includes over 300,000 individual notes from over 1,000 different instruments. You can check out the dataset here. NSynth Sound Maker is a very simple instrument that allows users to combine two different sounds, with a mixer that allows you to crossfade between the two sounds to get more or less of one in the mix. You can trigger the sounds using your QWERTY keyboard, or a MIDI keyboard if you have one.

In this lesson, students will:

• Learn about J.S. Bach.

• Watch video and respond to a performance by Yo Yo Ma.

• Create a melody using Google doodle, then allow Google's A.I. feature to harmonize it.

• Download the MIDI file of the harmonization.

• Open the MIDI file in Flat and edit/add to it.

If you use Soundtrap for Education with your students, there is an AMAZING resource that was created by the folks at Soundtrap called the Soundtrap Student Course. This collection of 23 engaging videos will get your students up to speed on every aspect of this incredible online digital audio workstation. You might also enjoy it yourself - especially if you are new to the software. That said, there is a Soundtrap for Education Certified Educator Course that consists of 76 videos that you can get certified from upon successfully passing the test at the end of the series. You can use this series of videos as a self-paced, learner led exploration, or you can incorporate it into your teaching. However you are using Soundtrap for Education with your students, this course is MUST SEE TV.

I was speaking with my new friend Sean Longstreet this morning, and he told me about an incredible AI tool called MelodyStudio - an amazing platform for songwriters and creators that uses a powerful AI-tool to help you create melodies for lyrics that you’ve written, as well as many other pretty cool functions. I decided to give it a try, signed up for a free preview account, and types in lyrics to a song that I wrote in college to see what would happen. I am pretty impressed. Before diving in, check out this video that provides a comprehensive overview of the product.

Last night I had the pleasure of co-hosting a webinar with Mason Hilligoss from Flat for Education where we highlighted five different ways to integrate Flat for Education into any K-12 music program. The webinar was streamed on a variety of different platforms and was attended by hundreds of music educators. To watch the webinar, click the video below.

This week I was in San Antonio, Texas for the annual TMEA Conference. I have coming here since 1997 and it is probably the highlight of the annual conference season. Pretty much ALL of my music technology family is here, as well as 25,000 other music educators and their students from around the state. This year, the MusicFirst booth was VERY busy - bustling with energy around our elementary offering, MusicFirst Elementary, our TIA Assessment solution, and the many amazing software programs that are available for performance ensembles, music theory, general music, composition, mariachi, and more. It was a GREAT show for us.

I know that this is a music technology blog and that I don’t usually do reviews, but I recently had the pleasure of watching an amazing documentary on Netflix titled The Greatest Night in Pop and I LOVED it. The documentary captures one incredible night in January of 1985 when dozens of the 80’s biggest music stars gathered late at night in Los Angeles after the AMA Awards Show to record We Are The World - a song that benefited people in Ethiopia who were experiencing a terrible famine at the time. What I loved most about the documentary, and the reason I felt that I needed to share the review here on this blog, is that the focus of the film is the process of writing and recording one song. It is simply wonderful and as someone who was 15 years old at the time, I vividly remember when it was released. Here is the official trailer:

PracticeFirst, powered by the amazing assessment algorithm created by MatchMySound, is a music learning application that gives teachers and students the tools that they need to improve their performance skills. It is perfect for ANY performance ensemble: band, chorus, orchestra, modern band, jazz ensemble, Mariachi, and more. PracticeFirst uses AI to provide immediate and intuitive practice feedback, assessing rhythm, pitch, intonation, and duration. The assessment rigor can be easily adjusted from "Easy" to "Hard," so that you're challenged but never frustrated.  At MusicFirst we are often asked how PracticeFirst compares to another performance assessment product. The following 5 reasons should provide you with all you need to consider adopting PracticeFirst into your music program:

In preparation for my Music Tech class at Montclair State University on microphones, mixers and live sound, I came across an absolutely INCREDIBLE website called Audio Test Kitchen that allows you to hear how hundreds of microphones sound when used in a recording. WOW. This free website is a MUST for anyone thinking of purchasing a microphone and for anyone who teaches the basics of recording and microphones. Almost every brand and model of microphone is represented and the ability to hear them all side by side is a HUGE advantage when you’re thinking of purchasing a microphone for a specific situation. Here’s how it works…

Sometimes you find a site that is music technology oriented and you say out loud “Now this is fun!”. Meet SynthCu.be! This FREE online music making tool is a lot more game-like than a functional synth, but it a LOT of fun. Based on the Rubik’s Cube, the 6 sides of the cube have 9 “spots” per side. Each spot is a different color and each color is a different synth sound. While the object is to “solve” the Rubik’s Cube-style puzzle, by clicking on each side and rotating it until all of the colors on each side “match” much like you would with a real Rubik’s Cube, you get to make music along the way.

This week I was out in Sacramento, California on behalf of MusicFirst at the 2024 CASMEC Conference. I have been to past events quite a few times and always love interacting with music teachers, customers, and friends while I’m here. This year I presented a session titled Tech for the Over-Scheduled Music Educator, and had the opportunity to hang out in the MusicFirst booth with my good friends and colleagues, Matt Ferry and Paul Flecther, Founder and CEO of Charanga Music - the company behind MusicFirst Elementary. Previously CASMEC was held in Fresno, so the change of location and the palpable energy in the exhibit hall (thanks to the folks at West Music handing out free recorders to hundreds of students who were participating in various All State Ensembles) made for a great (albeit noisy) show.

I recently came across a terrific site for guitar players called GuitarApp. The company behind the app is based in Dublin and they have created a collection of wonderful FREE tools to help teachers and students not only learn the guitar, but become more engaged while doing so.

As part of my preparation for class on teaching synthesis, I came across a website that I completely forgot about. The Roland 50 Studio site is an amazing FREE site that includes some of the most iconic Roland instruments in celebration of their 50th Anniversary in 2022. A few years ago, this site started out in 2020 as a way to play the virtual versions of the Roland TR-808 Drum Machine and the TB-303 bass synth. It was created by Yuri Suzuki and Roland engineers. For the 50th Anniversary, they added the SH-101 (a synth), SP-404 (a sampler), the TR-606, TR-707 and TR-909 (drum machines) - all for free. If you are not familiar with these Roland products from the 1980’s, they really were innovative and wildly popular. I personally owned the TR-505 - I wish it was included! Here is a short video that provides an overview of the site:

This week in my class at Montclair State University, I will be teaching my students the Basics of Music Synthesis - one of my all-time favorite topics. Back in 1984, my Mom bought me my very first synthesizer - a Roland Juno-106. The salesperson at Sam Ash also had her buy me an amazing set of books by Roland simply called “The Synthesizer”. I read them cover to cover. I didn’t necessarily understand what I was reading but I knew one thing - I wanted to know much, much more. I have had many synthesizers since then and I love the science behind how they make sound. I put together a LONG list of resources for my class tonight, and I thought I would share them with you.