So Happy Together...

Don't you wish everyone had the same relationship with music as Steve does? He just looks so euphoric when he performs: Me and My Cello - Happy Together - Cello Cover

Radpstsgiu YouTube Channel

Here is a YouTube channel that contains full performances of major musical works. What a great resource for our students to be able to experience what a live performance would be like in the classroom. Radostguy YouTube Channel

A YouTube Video About Chords

This is a fantastic video that may help students understand music theory and chords in particular. I wish I had found this when I was teaching my middle school general music students about chords last year! How Basic Chords Work

Incorporating Guitar Hero in to Music Education

Here is a podcast and article on a PSU professor who incorporated Guitar Hero into her beginning Guitar class. I LOVE the idea of having the students do a project where they create a Guitar Hero song using the game's "Music Composer Mode." I think this would be a fantastic way to connect to our students! Guitar Hero and Music Education

Apps for Music Educators

This is a great sight that has a gargantuan listing of apps that music educators can use on various devices. I had no idea that there were so many! http://musicianswithapps.com/

MuseScore Layout and Formatting

Here is another MuseScore tutorial that teaches about layout and formatting issues and how to correct them: MuseScore in 10 Easy Steps: Part 10B. It shows you how to make staves smaller, adjust the page margins, change the distance between staves, etc.

For Fun

5 Piano Guys, 1 Piano

Pretty sweet!

New York Philharmonic Kids

This is a site that I have used with 4th and 5th grade general music students: New York Philharmonic Kids. The site has a game room, a composer's gallery which gives info on various composers (including a recording of a composition that they wrote), an instrument storage room which gives kids info and recordings of various instruments, and other cool things. I gave the kids a worksheet to complete which had them write the composers name, birthday, deathday, identify which musical era they composed in, what their main instrument was, and three interesting facts about their lives. The kids really enjoyed navigating the site and when they were done studying two composers, they were allowed to play in the game room. We did a similar day for the instrument storage room.

Learning Tools

The fiddleman.com website is where I go for reference and free violin lessons. This section has a rhythm game that my elementary students enjoyed playing when I took them to the computer lab this year. It can even be used for general music students as well. There is also a violin fingering game and an intonation game which I have not used in my classroom yet. Practice and Tuning Tools

Teaching and Learning Violin/Viola Vibrato

For those of us who teach orchestra but are not violinists or violists, I found a helpful video on the beginning steps of learning to use vibrato on the violin and viola. Using this method to teach students may also be helpful as well. Using and teaching vibrato on these two instruments is something that I struggle with all the time! Learning Violin & Viola Arm Vibrato - Part 1 & Learning Violin & Viola Arm Vibrato - Part 2

Noteflight assignment

Here is the link to "A Bicycle Built for Two" Noteflight

I found this software a little less intuitive than MuseScore. This may simply be because I learned how to use music notation software on Sibelius and MuseScore is very similar to Sibelius. I think that MuseScore is easier to use and has more options as far as instrumentation goes. I was a little disappointed that "voice" wasn't an option for an instrument for the free version. To substitute, I had to use the flute and change the instrument name. One feature that I do like about noteflight is that it's easier to share your scores than on MuseScore. This would make it very easy for students to turn their projects in and for students to view their peers work. Also, you don't have to worry about losing your work since it is saved to the internet. You can access your work from anywhere. I think this software would be great to use with my classes since I don't have any student computers in my classroom and we would need to use the computer lab. That way, I don't have to worry about downloading MuseScore on all of the computers in the lab and I don't have to get permission to do so.

Why Music Matters

Well, we all know why music matters... but our administrators and school boards may not. I find Jack Stamps rhetoric one of the most powerful: Jack Stamp - Why Music Matters

He provides evidence to "non-musical" decision makers why music is not an easy subject, contrary to popular belief.

Listening Map in Video Form

Here is a youtube video that shows a video listening map from Tchaikovsky's "March" from "The Nutcracker." Listening Map in Video Form When I took the General Music Methods course, creating my own listening map was one of the most enjoyable experiences of my grad degree so far. This past year, I had my sixth grade general music students also create their own listening maps with much success. Having students create a video for their listening map would be a cool technological twist that I think students would enjoy.

More from The Piano Guys

For fun:

The Piano Guys performing the Harry Potter Theme

This inspires me to go practice my mad piano skillz! Or maybe it just intimidates me. Not sure which haha

Info for Making Music Videos

Creating a Music Video

I thought that this site gave pretty good guidelines for how to make a music video. In high school, I took a music technology class and we got to make a radio add to promote a band who would perform soon. It was pretty cool working with the technology. I think that having students make a music video would take this a step further. I could see a lot of my students getting really excited over the prospect! I'll need to make my own first to test it.

Some Music Technology Lesson Ideas

Here is a good resource  for a few music technology lesson plans, courteous of the Cape Breton-Victoria Fine Arts Department. Unfortunately, a few of the links are broken (the PowerPoint lessons). In the "AB Forms" lesson, I think that we could make a general music lesson plan for learning to use music notation software out of any song in a book. That would be a great starting point before the students learn how to compose using the software. The students might simply copy the melody from the book into the software.

http://www.cbv.ns.ca/finearts/archive/music_technology.htm

Jazz Lesson Ideas

This website gives full lesson plans that music educators can use to help students learn about jazz music. It was very helpful for my general music students when they learned about jazz back in March. It also has language arts, social studies, and math lessons in the event that you can get teachers from other subject areas to jump on board. I was also thinking that it would be a good lesson to teach kids about the blues progression and perhaps do some composition in the blues style.

http://www.pbs.org/jazz/classroom/

This video is pretty cool! I think it would be pretty awesome to be able to have students to make music videos like this one.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BgAlQuqzl8o