MUE6696: Technology Assisted Music Learning, Spring 2019

This week's module focused on creating music with technology, with a focus on composing music. Every module, I start by doing the assigned readings, which of course is the recommended sequence of assigned work for each week. The readings discussed what we would explore further through  Lynda.com  and  Soundtrap : digital audio and composition. Lynda provided a long, in depth look at various audio cables, connectors, speakers, microphones, analog and digital audio, MIDI (musical instrument digital interface), and digital audio workstations (DAWs). There was a lot of great information there, a lot of which will be beneficial for myself as I want to start recording our concerts this semester. We have recorded concerts in the past, but in only one of two ways: a video camera or an audio recorder. What I want to do is to be able to record our performances with high quality audio and video (as you can see from the YouTube video below, it has good audio, but no actual v...

This week, one of the big topics was improvisation in both our readings and in our discussion post. Improvisation is an interesting subject in music education as there are teachers who are big proponents of it, but there are even more teachers who neglect it. In both cases, it comes down to their experience with improvisation, and even more so, their experience with jazz, as in most public school settings, and even in some colleges, jazz is viewed as the only place for improvisation to happen. Bauer (2014) points out that improvisation is found "in many vernacular musics (rock, pop, folk), jazz, musics of non-Western cultures, and historically in some Western art musics, such as the cadenzas of concertos" (p. 51). Many of us forget or just do not realize that improvisation is utilized in these other musics and a big part of that comes down to what we were taught in our own educational upbringings. For several music educators, either a change in their curriculum or a widening ...

This was my first time using Noteflight, and much like MuseScore, this is a great, free source for music composition and arranging. Although the paid version may offer some extra features, for a free version, this does a great job. From my time working on the above project, I already like this better than Finale Notepad, a free version of Finale but much more limited than what you can do with this free version of Noteflight. One example, you cannot put rehearsal marks in Finale Notepad. Although the piece for this project did not have any rehearsal marks, the ability to add them is there. The only real issue I had in my time using Noteflight for this project was when entering the lyrics. There are five instances when a word lands on a sustained note that is tied to another note. Typing the word and pressing the dash key will indicate that the word is supposed to be held all the way through, but the dash did not always correctly indicate that. For example, the very last lyric comes...

This week began our eight-week journey into learning about new ways in which we can apply technology to assist us in our music teaching. One of our first activities was to introduce ourselves to the class using a web-based program called  Padlet . This application was rather unique. I liked the idea that you can share different things on the wall and whoever has access to it can comment. It is somewhat similar to  Facebook  or  Twitter  as you can more or less do the same things, it is just presented a little differently, and not mainstream like those are. In a way, it's somewhat similar to how  myspace  used to be as you can have your own custom background for your wall. Beyond this, however, I do not really see myself using Padlet with a class, though it is possible and I will keep my mind open to it. Our readings this week were basically an introduction. The first chapter summarized the various uses of technology in the world today. I did find it ...