Posted by jamesfrankel April 29th, 2008
This past weekend, Barbara Freedman, from Greenwich, CT, invited me to a live streaming broadcast of a session that she was presenting at PodCamp 2.0 in NYC. Although I have heard of live streaming video sites before, this was the first time I actually logged on to an event to watch. She used a website called UStream.tv to broadcast her session. I was amazed that the website allows anyone to create a virtual TV channel for FREE! I decided to set one up to see how difficult it was.
In short, this is one of the easiest things to set up – even easier than creating a blog! Simply sign up fr a free account, enter some preferences (what video camera and microphone your computer has) and you’re finished. You simply click “Broadcast Now” and the site does the rest. You can send out an invitation to your friends and/or contacts to watch your show live. The great thing about the site is that it archives your shows so that if people miss the live broadcast they can always watch the video at a later time.
I believe that this site has some pretty big implications for education. Teachers could broadcast their lessons to students who are not able to be in the classroom. Distance learning could be greatly enhanced by teachers recording actual lectures to students around the world. It is also a great way for students who attend the class to review what was covered later in the day or week. Conferences of all types could be broadcast over the web so that others could virtually attend (even if a small fee was charged). Students could create simple TV shows and/or podcasts as assessment opportunities. The possibilities are endless.
I urge you to check out the site, create a free account, and start streaming video today.
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Posted by jamesfrankel April 25th, 2008
TI:ME President-Elect and good friend of mine, Amy M Burns, has just joined the blogosphere and I would like everyone to take a moment to visit her blog and welcome her. Author of “Technology Integration in the Elementary Music Classroom“, Amy’s new blog – titled “Elementary Music/Music Technology Blog” will most certainly become a vital resource for elementary music educators who are looking for effective ways of integrating technology in to the music curriculum. She has already posted some great information, and I know that her expertise in elementary music education will make her blog THE place to go for great lesson ideas, tricks & tips, curricular integration strategies, and more!
Welcome Amy!
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Posted by jamesfrankel April 15th, 2008
Before reading any further, if you haven’t already seen the video, take a moment and watch a great video on YouTube called iBand. They have a few other videos as well that you might be interested in.
What do you think?
I believe that this is another example of how music is changing and how it is the students that we teach that will reshape the way music educators approach performance ensembles in the future. That might seem like a bold statement, but I am a firm believer that the technology shown in the video makes music making very inviting for students. While the tune might not be the best composition ever created, it shows how innovative kids can be. Take two iPhones and a Nintendo DS and Voila! you’ve got a band. Instead of fearing that traditional performing ensembles will die because of technology (a huge over reaction) I believe that music educators have an opportunity to bring performance experiences to many more students than those who are currently a member of a performing ensemble at school. Ask yourself how many students (what percentage) in your school are members of the band, chorus, or orchestra? 10%? 20%? 30%? Even the best music programs in America would be fortunate to have more than a 50% participation rate? What about the vast amount of students who will never have an opportunity to perform? Sure, you might have a Battle of the Bands once a year to showcase some of the millions of kids who play guitar, bass, drums or keyboard. I’ll bet that many of the students who are not performers at school are closet performers at home, using the same technology that the iBand uses. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to have every student performing? Do you think that technology could make that happen? Websites that offer free software downloads that contain music making opportunities level the playing field in terms of socioeconomic status. Are the iBand members musical even if they are not playing “instruments”?
I’d love to hear from you and your students. Perhaps you could show the students the video and get their reactions. Have them post their comments here! Are you an iBand fan?
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Posted by jamesfrankel April 12th, 2008
For those of you who have spent any time with me in the past three months, you know that I am a HUGE fan of the new Kaossilator from Korg. You can listen to some of the compositions that I have made with it as well as a recording of ten middle school students in what I call the Kaossilator Orkestra on my podcasting site.
Recently a friend of mine sent me a link to a fantastic album created by Gary Kibler from London called “The Yellow Album”. It is perhaps the best illustration of the music making capability of the KO1. What Gary has done is nothing short of miraculous. The KO1 is a dynamic phrase synthesizer that uses a touch pad to create music. There are no keys at all and it is not that easy to create a melody without any mistakes. Here is the description of the Yellow Album from Gary’s site:
“The Yellow Album” is the first full-length album produced and performed entirely on the Korg Kaossilator device. No other effects, EQ or sounds were added. The audio was digitally recorded directly off the unit and the only external editing performed involved simple volume balancing. The musical challenge was to attempt to make the two-bar loop limitation of the on-board phrase recorder sound less repetitious by playing the touchpad live, solo-style, over the loops during the recording.
I strongly recommend visiting his site and downloading the album today. It’s completely free, and it is really good!
I welcome your comments and suggestions.
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Posted by jamesfrankel March 6th, 2008
During my visit to Berklee College of Music yesterday, I was shown an amazing online resource that I believe is the only one of it’s kind. The Stan Getz Library is an online searchable database that allows you to enter any jazz musicians name and see all of the recordings they made not only as a leader, but all of the recordings that they played on as a sideman as well. If you enter “Paul Motian” for example, you get to a page with 73 listings. Each listing includes a click through to a full page about the album, including all of the standard record catalog listings, as well as all of the musicians that played on the recording (with each name being clickable once again to see all of the recordings they played on). I am a huge jazz fan, and have always loved the incredible network of musicians – each playing on so many other records. This community atmosphere has always been very interesting to me, especially when compared to the clan-like atmosphere in rock.
I strongly recommend checking out the catalog yourself. It is a great tool for jazz educators who are interested in both the history of jazz and finding great recordings to play for their students. Thank you Berklee!
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Posted by jamesfrankel February 3rd, 2008
Yesterday I had the pleasure of being interviewed by Robert Brannan, known as elderbob, for a very interesting project being run on a website called Musicbridges. Here is a brief description of what Musicbridges is trying to do:
The site is a webcasting network of musicians and music educators dedicated to helping those involved in music and technology explore, discuss, and collaborate covering topics on music gear, music in education, ways to successfully create global recordings, and music lessons. Musicbridges is part of Worldbridges. They are also the home of the 2008 EVO - Music in Education Course.
My interview, part of their music education course titled “I Got Rhythm – Music in the Classroom”, has been posted, and although the beginning is pretty rough (we recorded the entire interview over Skype and there were some network problems) I think there are some interesting points. While I was being interviewed there were a number of participants in a web chat who were interacting with me at the same time. They have their own Yahoo Discussion Group, which I have joined, and I am looking forward to seeing what happens with this. It was a great experience, and I urge other music educators to look into what these visionary people are doing.
I welcome your comments and suggestions.
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Posted by jamesfrankel December 12th, 2007
The folks at Garritan have produced a wonderful Christmas album that features their sound library for the past three years. I wrote an entry on this blog last year about the 3rd edition, and decided to share with you the 4th edition of the album this year. The album, which is free, has accompanying cover art and a label, and it can be purchased as a physical CD. The album cab either be streamed from the Garritan site, or you can download the tracks and listen to them on your favorite MP3 player. The album features the following songs:
1 ) I Saw Three Ships Medley by John Raybould
2 ) O Little Town of Bethlehem by Dan Kury
3) Christmastime by Gunther Bombe
4) Förunderligt och Märkligt by Ken Weissman
5) God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen by Randy Bowser
6) Carol of the Birds by Dan Powers
7) Ave Maria by Laurence Harvey
8.) Angels We Have Heard On High by Keith Walls
9) Come, O Come Emmanuel by Karen Peace
10) Silent Night by Tim Cohen
11) Hark! The Herald Angels Sing by Gary Shannon
12) The Shepherds’ Lonely Vigil by Jerry Wickham
13) O Come All Ye Faithful by Michael Bolt
14) Forest Green by Stefan Kristinsson
15) Sleep, O Sleep, My Lovely Child by Jack Cannon
16) Nations Awake by Matej Hrovat
17) Lieti Pastori by Fabio Vicentini
18) Deck the Halls by Toby Bresnahan
19) Christmas Festival Overture by Colton Provias
The album is terrific and it truly highlights the quality of sounds in the Garritan Sound Library. I strongly recommend downloading the album and adding it to your Christmas playlist.
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Posted by jamesfrankel December 3rd, 2007
Looking through my posts over the past 15 months, I couldn’t believe that I have never mentioned one of my favorite music technology blogs: MusTech.net. Perhaps the ultimate example of what can be done with the Web 2.0 environment, blog creator Joe Pisano has created a truly outstanding site, and I urge you all to visit and subscribe to it if you haven’t done so already. Joe also runs a fantastic podcasting site that is filled with well-produced podcasts on a wide variety of topics.
The site is filled with tons of great articles written by some fantastic educators who use technology in their teaching. There are also many examples of new blog features, including audio transcriptions of posts using Odiogo.com, the ability to print the site as a PDF file, mouse over previews, translations, and more. I log onto MusTech.net nearly every day to see what Joe is posting about. He has truly dedicated himself to pushing the music education/technology blog paradigm to new heights. Keep up the great work Joe!
I welcome your comments and suggestions.
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Posted by jamesfrankel November 28th, 2007
With all of the talk (largely from the media) about “Black Friday” and “Cyber Monday” – two days that mean nothing to me personally – I’d like to introduce you to a website that you should keep in mind during this holiday season. DonorsChoose.org is a fantastic site where teachers post requests for equipment for use in their classrooms. Donors can contribute whatever amount they would like towards a project or proposal of their choosing. I searched for “music technology” on the site this morning and found 241 proposals from teachers. Requests range from computer upgrades (some are still using computers with 256MB of RAM!) to an LCD Projector. Each proposal has a detailed description written by the teacher and a graphic display of the amount of funds received for the project. You can literally donate $1 or fund the entire project.
Funding is the main obstacle for most music teachers when it comes to implementing technology in their classrooms. I urge you to take a few minutes and a few dollars and help a teacher acquire the tools that they need to make music come to life in their classrooms. If you need technology in your classroom and don’t have the funds, take a moment to write up a proposal, post it on the site, and hope that donors fund your project.
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Posted by jamesfrankel November 26th, 2007
In the August 2007 edition of the TI:ME Email Newsletter, I wrote about a great new website called Indaba Music. The site is a great place for musicians to connect on a number of different levels. While MySpace is certainly a major source of free publicity for independent bands, Indaba Music has some other features that make it a bit more exciting in terms of the music making process. Here is the entry for the newsletter that explains everything (written by an Indaba Music representative):
Indaba Music is a community of musicians and music professionals exploring the possibilities of making music with people in different places, from new collaborators to old band mates. Indaba Music has created an online market for music creation and collaboration. For fans, Indaba provides unprecedented access to artists and to the creative process. In the past, music creation was bounded by geography and online opportunities were scarce. With Indaba Music, a singer in L.A. can find a guitarist in Seattle to record a track for a new song, the same singer can pay to have her album mixed and mastered by a professional engineer in Tokyo, or a rapper in Miami can find a New York producer to make a beat, and a DJ in Sweden can remix their collaboration. At just over 3 months old, the Indaba community is both broad and deep. The heart of Indaba collaboration is the Session. In a Session, the creator describes the project, uploads master recording tracks for reference, and invites others to collaborate in Indaba’s robust Session Console. Indaba recommends other members to work with by matching profile information with the needs and genres of the session. Sessions can be public and openly searchable or private and visible only to invited members. Members can establish terms and payment for work and rate the experience of collaborating with session members, enabling collaborators to build reputations for their work. Indaba Music does not claim any ownership rights to music created by members.
I strongly recommend visiting the site, creating a free account, and checking it out for yourself today.
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