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