If you’re anything like me, you start off every day with your routines - whatever they may be. For me, one of the very first things I do when I wake up is play Wordle. This word game, now owned and operated by the New York Times, was originally created by Josh Wardle, who coded the game as a birthday present for his partner. Since then, it has gone viral and millions of people play the game each day. Wordle, that is an online version of an old game show called Lingo, asks players to guess a five letter word and gives clues by coloring letters green (correct place) or yellow (correct letter - wrong place). Due it’s wild popularity, a LOT of spin off versions of the game have appeared, including Heardle - which was a music guessing game that was bought by Spotify and then shut down in May 0f 2023. But there is one version that is perfect for musicians - specifically choral musicians - called Byrdle. My dear friend and colleague Robin Hodson (a veteran choral performer and composer himself) first told me about Byrdle about a year ago. Byrdle is named after the famous composer William Byrd, and was created after a Twitter (X) account named QuireMemes asked someone if they could create it in January of 2022. Ask and ye shall receive! A coder named Robert Brignall created the FREE game, using a code base created by Mikha Davids. Here is how the game works:

Sometimes, the simplest tools are the perfect tools for building specific skills. Meet Rhythm Randomizer. It does exactly what you think: generates random rhythms for your students to clap, sing, play, etc. All you do is project the Rhythm Randomizer on your board for group practice, or send your students to their devices to work individually. While there is no assessment aspect of the tool, it’s still very cool. You can customize the exercises using the Settings tab, including tempo, pitch, metronome settings, measure count (1, 2, 4, or 8 measures), time signatures, and lots of different rhythms. Once you’ve selected all of your preferences, Rhythm Randomizer will display rhythmic examples on the screen. You can then select a new rhythm, playback the rhythm on the screen or add a metronome to help your students. You can even share your preferred settings with students. Just click Share Settings (when the Settings tab is open) and a unique URL for those settings can be shared with students.

I am a big fan of the hardware devices offered by Novation. I personally own both a Launchpad PRO and a Launchpad Mini. I have always felt that just offering students a keyboard as an interface with music production and creation software creates an inherent obstacle to creativity for students who have little or no keyboard skills. While it is certainly possible to teach those skills, I love it when students can just jump in the deep end right away and start creating and composing their own music. The Launchpad series of products gives students a tactile way to interface with whatever software they are using - assigning sounds, beats, loops, effects, and more to each button. Software titles like Ableton Live offer direct connections to the Launchpads - providing students with a grid in the software where they can easily assign audio to each pad. Up until recently, students who primarily use Chromebooks to make music have had a difficult time using devices with pads, as very little cloud based software works well with them - until now. The Launchpad Arcade - a FREE tool from Novation - allows you to quickly and easily connect a Launchpad to a Chromebook and have students create music right away. And it’s free.

Holy moly!!! I just found out from a colleague in the industry about a brand new venture called School Music License. I cannot overstate just how BIG a deal this is for licensing music for schools. Until now, if your school wanted to do any of the following things with a piece of copyrighted music: Stream your school concert videos online (YouTube, Vimeo), include song lyrics in a concert program or display them on a screen, showcase your school music program on a website or streaming platform, capture video of a dance recital, Winter Color Guard performance or sporting event that uses popular music recordings, and secure licensing for school band, choir, orchestra, and glee club concert videos, plus your marching band, recitals, pep rallies, gymnastics meets, and so much more!

While licensing for things like this already exist for corporations and houses of worship, up until now, the only way to do ANY of these things was to find out who the copyright holder was, contact them with a request to use their content, wait for an answer (sometimes for a LONG time), and then negotiate a fee to license the copyrighted work legally. With School Music License, you can do all of that quickly, easily, and affordably. I am THRILLED to see this model come to life, and applaud the team at GIA Publications for making it happen. BRAVO!

This November, I will be giving the Keynote Address at the AMIS Music Educators’ Conference in Zagreb, Croatia. My talk is titled Music Education at the Crossroads: The Impact of AI and Technology. I am REALLY looking forward to this one. The Association for Music in International Schools (AMIS) is dedicated to the promotion of excellence at all levels of music education in international schools. The International Schools scene is so interesting to me. Many of my former students at Teachers College Columbia University have gone into this world - teaching in amazing locations in the Middle East, Asia, Europe, South America, Africa, and beyond. I first attended and presented at an AMIS Conference back in 2015 in Aberdeen Scotland and I was blown away by both the music educators who had flown in from around the world to attend this event as well as the international school where the conference was hosted. I am so happy to be returning to an AMIS Conference - especially speaking about such a fascinating and important topic.

TED Talks are awesome. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment and Design, and TED Talks have been around since 1984. When they first started showing up online in the mid 2000’s, I was absolutely blown away by not only the fascinating topics that were covered by some of the world’s best presenters, I was also blown away by how polished these short, 10 to 20-minute presentations were. As someone who presents sessions and keynotes on a regular basis and obsesses over every detail of my slide deck, I know just how much these talks have been rehearsed, edited and practiced. The most popular TED Talk of all time is the one given by the late Sir Ken Robinson titled “Do Schools Kill Creativity?” While I LOVE his talk, my all-time favorite TED Talk ever given was by the late Richard Gill, a well-known and award winning music educator and conductor from Sydney, Australia. It was actually at a spin-off TEDx event, a local independently organized event that follows the same format of the original TED.

Each year we celebrate National Hispanic Heritage Month from September 15 through October 15th. The purpose of this lesson is to have students explore the lives of many Latinx & Hispanic musicians and/or composers of traditional, popular, and classical music. After learning about their assigned musicians and/or composers, students, working in groups, will create a 3-to-5-minute podcast that provides the listener with information about the musician or composer, their impact on music, and selected listening examples.

Yesterday was my 48th first day of school. I LOVE the first day of school. So many possibilities, a renewed sense of purpose, syllabus revamped, new students to interact with, all of it. I have had the privilege of teaching the music technology courses at Teachers College Columbia University for the past 24 years. It is truly an honor to be associated with the school that helped my career so much. I look forward to my Monday nights all week. After leaving public school teaching over 15 years ago, TC helps remind me on a weekly basis why I went into music education in the first place.

This past Wednesday evening, I had the pleasure of guest hosting a webinar with my dear friend from Focusrite, Dr. Lee Whitmore, along with two of California’s finest music educators, Anne Fennell from San Diego Unified Schools and Tony White from Los Angeles Unified School District about the unprecedented arts funding law passed in California recently, known as Prop 28. This incredible legislation permanently guarantees funding for arts educators, professional development, curriculum and equipment. As you can imagine, there are LOTS of questions swirling around while school districts wait for the funding to arrive. How much money did my district receive? Should I move to California to teach music? What certifications do teachers need? How can you request funding for equipment, curriculum or other program requests? The following recording of this webinar, which runs for about an hour, provides all of these answers and more. It was a wonderful informational webinar, and I hope that it is useful for California arts educators. Enjoy!

Every year around this time, I see lots of posts from various companies in the music education space that wish teachers a happy and successful school year. Many of them include a special thank you “gift”, which is usually a warm fuzzy video from the CEO or the entire staff. While these are all nice sentiments, I remember vividly when I was teaching saying “You want to give me a Back-To-School gift? Send me something tangible - something I can actually use with my students!” This year, in what will be the first of many, MusicFirst is giving away something incredible to their existing customers - FREE PDF copies of 3 compositions for band, chorus and string orchestra. What compositions? Where can I find these? Read on…

Today marks 30 years to the day since I began formally teaching in public schools back in 1993. I thought I would observe this occasion by reminiscing a bit and sharing some thoughts on my career (so far) in education. Be warned, some colorful language is included.

Unless you have been on a digital detox for the past 9 months or you happen to live under a rock, you have likely heard about ChatGPT. This generative AI language model has truly made a paradigm shifting impact on education and assessment. Just ask your students or children - they’ve likely been using this incredible tool to complete their homework assignments over the 2022-23 school year. I have spent countless hours trying out all types of prompts for ChatGPT, and investigating how it can be used for good in the classroom. To simply ban it is crazy. To me it would be like banning Google or even the Internet. AI technology will be in our lives for years to come. The innovations that are on the horizon are both exciting and terrifying. I am truly hopeful that education leaders will do everything they can to find ways to incorporate AI into education. There is zero doubt that the students in our classrooms today will be interacting with AI for the rest of their lives. With this is mind, many teachers I know have asked how they should be using AI language models like ChatGPT in their classrooms. I was very encouraged to read this morning that OpenAI has just released a really informative guide for teachers. Let’s take a look.

When I was teaching middle school students with GarageBand back in the 2000’s, I would always run into a problem about half way through the school year. Even though there were over a thousand loops for the students to choose from, they would always hit a wall around January, and ask me if there were any other loops they could use. The teacher in me always used this exact moment to try to steer students away from their reliance on pre-made loops and have them compose their own, either with a tool like O-Generator, or using the keyboard or step entry tool to create their own. In theory, this is a great idea. In reality, it was tough. To help out the situation, I bought all of the GarageBand Expansion Packs, which were cool but expensive - especially as I had to purchase them for every computer in my keyboard lab.

Sometimes new features fly under the radar when they are launched, and the brand new Sampler in Soundtrap is one of them. I can’t believe I just realized it was there!!! Holy %$#@ this thing is cool! With so many different ways to use it, the Sampler is something that you need to start using with your students right away. In this post I will go over what a Sampler actually does, as well as a step-by-step guide on how to use it.

I recently came across one of the most interesting examples of AI being used in music - the Beethoven X AI Project - a documentary film that traces the use of AI to help finish Beethoven’s unfinished 10th Symphony. Believe it or not, this is an “old” story - the premiere of the completed symphony was in October of 2021, but the implications are right at the forefront of many conversations about AI that I have had recently. A company called Playform and a team of machine learning experts and composer used AI to analyze the fragments of musical sketches that Beethoven left behind when he died and then compose a finished version of the Symphony 10 which was then performed by an orchestra. After I visited the site and heard the finished product, I wondered whether this was a stunt or an amazing example of AI in action. I’ll let you decide…

With the new school year upon us, I thought it would be a good time to show the top ten reasons why you should adopt MusicFirst Elementary into your K-5 music program. The incredible Amy M Burns is the elementary education consultant for MusicFirst, and she recently created a set of 10 wonderful, short videos that feature the various aspects of MusicFirst Elementary, and why she thinks so highly of the program. Here are those 10 videos. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do.

This Friday, August 25th (Thursday night ET) I have the great privilege of presenting a session titled Tech tools, Tips & Training for Music Educators on behalf of MusicEDNet at the EduTECH Congress & Expo in Melbourne, Australia. Unfortunately, I will only be there virtually, but I’m still excited to speak with educators in Australia. Over the past 15 years I have had the pleasure of traveling to and speaking at several conferences down under, and I truly love the approach to music, education and technology there.

Sight Reading Factory has been the leading tool for improving the sight reading skills of millions of students over the past decade. At MusicFirst, it is one of our most popular software titles since we first starting offering it back in 2014. Available as either a standalone title or integrated within the MusicFirst Classroom, Sight Reading Factory is an easy to use tool that generates music for students to sight read based on whatever parameters you set for them. It is simply amazing, and the thousands of school districts around the country that have been using it agree. Believe it or not, I found out about this software from my own daughter, who was preparing for her NYSSMA Solo Evaluation. I heard her singing in her room one evening and rushed up to her room to see what was happening. She told me that her teacher was making them use “SURF” to practice for their NYSSMA evaluations. I was blown away when she showed me how it worked. I called Don Crafton, Founder of SRF, the next day, and the rest is history.

We are THRILLED to announce that all of the Level One videos from the fantastic MusicProfessor are now available at no extra charge for ALL MusicFirst Classroom customers starting today! I announced this feature on this blog back in June, and our incredible content team has been working away to get them all in place for the start of the 2023-24 school year. This short post will show you where they live within the MusicFirst Classroom, what information the videos contain, and how you can share them with your students to help them improve their performance and understanding of a wide variety of instruments.

Last week, after months of development and careful thought, we launched the first ever integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into the MusicFirst Classroom and we are absolutely thrilled with the possibilities that it brings to our customers. And no, this isn’t an April Fools Day joke. The MusicFirst Assistant is an optional feature that allows teachers to enlist the aid of AI when coming up with ideas for lesson plans. The first of its kind integration in the music education sector, the MusicFirst Assistant has been seamlessly integrated into the lesson planning workflow of the MusicFirst Classroom. All existing MusicFirst Classroom customers can access this incredible feature right now. Here is how it works…