More Music Technology - At Home!

A great way to expand music curriculum is with providing students access to great at-home websites they can use to continue exploring different concepts such as pitch names, orchestra families, ear training, and composition. I've used similar websites with my piano studio to help with note recognition on the staff and identifying keys on the piano. Most of the time, students will even pop in after school asking to play against me on the big board! There are a ton of different resources for kids to explore in all different skills - no worry about getting bored. Not to mention, its a fun way to let students review concepts as we come down to the final days of school.

Here's a list of some favorites I've used over the years:

Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra Safari: http://listeningadventures.carnegiehall.org/ypgto/index.aspx

Incredibox Vocal Arranging: http://www.incredibox.com/

Raindrop Melody Maker: http://www.lullatone.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/raindrop.swf

Opera Maker: http://creativekidseducationfoundation.org/kids/opera/base.htm

San Francisco Symphony: http://www.sfskids.org/

Dallas Symphony Kids: http://www.dsokids.com/

Note Name Speller: http://www.classicsforkids.com/games/notename/notename.html

Chuck Vanderchuck: http://pbskids.org/games/music/

Instrument Storage Room: http://www.sphinxkids.org/Instrument_Storage.html

Music Tech Teacher: http://www.musictechteacher.com/music_quizzes/music_quizzes.htm


Hope there's a website or two that's new to you to explore. Have fun!

iPads in the Music Room

3rd grade has been spending some time checking out the Garage Band app on the library iPads! They've been having a blast creating their own melodies with string sections, guitar riffs, and drum kit. A class favorite has Smart Drums where they can combine various instruments and experiment with what happens when they move and instrument closer to one of the settings like this: 

 Here's some of the ladies recording each other's compositions and then editing it in the Audio Recorder. 

The boys really have a knack for some keyboard chops!

Fifth grade students have been using an app called Animoto to create video presentations for their composer research project. They've spent several days researching all sorts of information about musicians ranging from Mozart and Beethoven to Bob Dylan to Carlos Santana and just about anyone in between! With this app, students have been collecting images that represent aspects of their musician such as portraits, awards, album covers, famous concerts, etc. Once they built a picture timeline of their musician's life, they needed to create effective captions to explain what each image represents. 

Here's a student brainstorming creative captions about the electric guitarist and rock musician, Jimi Hendrix!

Sample finished project about George Gershwin!