Creating Music with iPad apps and Logic

FaceBook Music Page

One of the areas I have not taken the time to fully explore is creating music with my iPad. I use the iPad daily for reading PDF music, organizational details, reading news and pictures to name a few things. What I have not done nearly enough of is create music with it! I have downloaded a ton of instrument apps and played with them! There are some awesome new ways to create and interact with music!

This weekend I started digging in and seeing what happened. In no way will I ever claim that the results of this experimentation is amazing as I am not a composer! In fact you may listen to just the first few seconds and decide you’ve had enough! That’s all right! I just had fun trying out all sorts of sounds, noises and messing with what is at my finger tips!

NEW CAPABILITIES
One of the very interesting things happening right now in the world of music apps is the way in which you interact with the music being created. Traditionally for instance when I play piano I don’t have many options… push the key and the note sounds. When playing my euphonium…. blow through the horn and I get a sound. These sounds all are pretty much the same every time. If I want to control the sound coming out of my euphonium I can change the embouchure and airflow along with maybe singing/humming while playing. On that piano I can get louder and softer and that’s about it (unless I get all John Cage on the piano!)

Now that world of what is possible is blown wide open and only limited by the developers imagination. Of course those developers get tons of ideas from the community that is using their app too. (One of the amazing side effects of the iOS musician community is that developers are willing to listen to their users and try new ideas in the apps!)

For instance – in the Animoog app I was playing with…. I tap the key and a note sounds but that sound can instantly be changed by moving my finger up and down on that one key. Plus I’ve got all sorts of knobs and X/Y pads right there to mess with too! The sound I’m creating is in no way static – I become a huge part of the creative process and decisions of what comes out of the speakers! It is so much fun too! In GeoSynth I am no longer stuck in the tuning of the traditional piano – chromatic. I can adjust to all sorts of quarter tones and microtones! In MorphWiz, as well as almost any of the other apps, I can select one specific scale to play with.  The abilities to slide between pitches is easily done and programed. Effects galore, sounds you’ve never dreamed of and the capability to record, loop and create!

Music Creation Apps

EQUIPMENT AND APPS
I am using my MacBookPro with LogicPro to record everything into. The iPad is simply using an 1/8″ cable from the headphone jack into the built-in input on the side of the MacBook. I have an Akai SynthStaion 25 that I picked up for $25 on Black Friday! In the 2 songs posted from this weekend all you hear is from Logic or an app. The Apps I used were MorphWiz, GeoSynth and SampleWiz all from Jordan Rudess the keyboard player from Dream Theater. Animoog and LaunchKey were the only other two apps I used this weekend. I should have used Impaktor or DrumJam but I forgot they were sitting on the next screen!

I also have had a Roland Fantom X8 for a long time now. You will not hear the x8 in the two newest songs though at all. If you are so kind as to listen to some of the music I’ve uploaded before this weekend you will hear lots of the X8 as that was the tech I used for years! I still do.

Now if you want to go old school and hear some of the tech that really got me excited about using electronic equipment to create music then take a listen to the four tracks I uploaded from Common Bond – this was a group I was in while in college in ’86-91. We were using Ensoniq keyboards and Roland drum Machines that “blew us away” back then!  I remember wishing for control of my keyboard sounds back then like we have today! It was a pain to even get the volume to be recorded into the Ensoniq sequencer! So much fun was had recording in the “OutHouse” (it was really a garage). A few of us would spend too many hours in there as well as the recording studio at the school – That allowed us to record 8 tracks of audio! That’s how come I even have recordings of Common Bond – well I take that back…. My Mom did use her old Panasonic tape recorder in the front pew of a few of our concerts! She was excited about being able to do THAT! Do you remember those? A little rectangle black tape deck with one speaker – it recorded in mono! She had great fun using THAT new tech back in her day!

IT’S ALL ABOUT HAVING FUN!
As I write this the theme of “HAVING FUN” keeps coming up! My Mom with her little, mono, tape recorder –  my buddies and I in college using the first keyboard that could record and playback 8 notes at a time – now creating music with an iPad and computer!

That brings me to my wrap up… please realize that ALL of the tracks on my ReverbNation/FaceBook page are there just because I was messing around enjoying myself! I know there are mistakes…. so what! I enjoyed myself and I hope you will enjoy listening a bit to them!

STUDENTS AND OUR CLASSES
We should be trying our hardest to inspire our students to just sit and create as well! Like when they were kids with a crayon and blank piece of paper! We should be inspiring our administration to support this idea as well! Even in these days of budget cuts – If our kids were doing more with being musically creative instead of merely recreating what someone else has already done I think our nation would be in better shape and our test scores would go through the roof!

THE MUSIC
Now for what you have been looking for all along… the music. You can find it on ReverbNation or my FaceBook page (both of which I am not paying for by the way… hmmm…. what implications does THAT have for our students?)

Safterry – created with Logic and iPad apps

Messed up E – created with Logic and iPad apps

 

Music Resources iPad app Give-Away

Music Resources is an iPad app that is full of pre-designed music theory worksheets and handouts that you can print for your students. (here is the Web site with a video and more details)  There are all sorts of different categories from blank staff paper to chords, flash cards, games and puzzles to worksheets dealing with Keys and Scales. I love the fact that they included rudiments that I can print for my percussion kids too! There are Practice Theory Exams and many more!

All of these can be printed right from your iPad assuming you have a way to utilize AirPrint. In fact if you are using a mac and have not seen Printopia you really need to take a look at this excellent resource that allows you to AirPrint from your iPad to a printer that is available via that mac running Printopia.  Seeings as how your iPad is accessing this via the wi-fi network that means I can leave my computer running Printopia on my Desk in my Band Room office and I can still print from  anywhere else in the school! Printopia offers several other options as well, like printing to PDF on my Desktop or sending to DropBox even!

But I get sidetracked way too easy! the developer of Music Resources has given us some promo codes to give away to the first people to grab them! This is a great resource to have available to any music teacher! If you are the lucky person that gets the promo code…. just pass the word on to others about the app please!

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iPad Music Theory Apps to use in the Classroom

Since Chromatik was so kind as to run a promotion to donate an iPad to our Band Room I have been looking for apps to use on this new iPad.

As I go through the huge sea of apps I will post about apps I think have promise or apps that the students benefit from.

Scales Tutor is one app that I found promising.  This app is free today too by the way! (Feb 19, 2013). This is their website

SUMMARY
There is one feature built into this app that is a huge benefit to music teachers handing an iPad to a student and needing to look at how much that student learned later. Scales Tutor presents the user with information on key signatures and scales. There are three options – study, practice and test. The main areas available are Major Keys, Minor Keys, Flats Keys and Sharp Keys and then there are also Flash Cards.

THE BAD
I do have to say right up front that I almost took this app and deleted it from my iPad because I found two critical areas that are very annoying! Every thing on the screen is very tiny! As I present from my iPad onto a projector in my band room I can not imagine my students being able to read many pieces of information presented to them from a distance. The most critical annoyance was the user interface – when in the practice mode you are asked to place notes, flats or shapes on a staff. This process is difficult. They tried to make it easier by placing little arrows below the staff to move the note up or down but even those arrows are a bit non-responsive. I found myself constantly having to tap two or three times to get the response I wanted. Now this might be because I have large fingers – I have not tried this app with students.

THE GOOD
The good news is that I did find a feature in this app that I do not find usually – In the testing section you need to type in your name. After taking the test your name and score is then stored for later reference! The other good news is that everything covered in this app is accurate and to the point. It is presented in a fairly clear manner. In fact I found a few ways in which they present information that I might use myself!

Also good… You can pick which clef you want Treble or Bass or the Grand Staff. The app also allows you to pick exactly what you want to focus on – for example… just the first 4 sharps keys or just just the key signature or Scales with Keys.

AGE LEVEL/GRADE LEVEL
More Middle to High School

Here is a screen shot…. This app is free today too by the way! (Feb 19, 2013)

iPad in the Elementary Music Classroom

I have two iPads now that I am using in my teaching. One of which I have started letting my 1st graders use on a daily basis. We are working on reading rhythms so that we can play the drums in our spring concert the end of April. So I loaded up RhythmCat Lite and we have been having a blast! In fact they like it so much that I bought the RhythmCatPro version.

Another app we have been using is FlashNote Derby. This app allows me to pick the notes on the staff that I want the students to learn the names of. Then we start…. there are two horses on screen that race while the kids pick which note it is that is being shown. I have one kid man the iPad while the rest of the class helps out by saying which note it is. Of course the student at the iPad has to use their own knowledge along with what the class is telling them the answer is and decide the final answer – things get intense! It really cracks me up when they start yelling out answers BEFORE there is even a question up on the screen. They settle in though quickly and stop just guessing!

I’ve included a video to show you how the FlashNote app captures the students attention at the end of the blog post here.

I do have to say that I’ve also had to figure out a way in which to keep track of who has taken their turn on the iPad – This is a HUGE deal with 1st graders! (I guess I can understand why!) So I started using ClassDojo with the 1st graders as well as my Band Students. If you have not seen ClassDojo it is a great app to keep track of all sorts of thing – quickly and without wasting time. You set up your list of names, then you set up your list of things you want to keep track of and then you start giving points. A few words of warning here – There is an iOS app out – it is ONLY FOR TEACHERS! This is the app I use all the time in class. There is also set up that needs to happen FROM THE WEB SITE! I strongly encourage you to tryout their preset list of actions to give points for but then quickly make that list your own (or let your students help you create the list)

The 1st graders are doing great with these rhythms in RhythmCat that include Whole notes, half notes and quarter notes. The quarter rest is really throwing them for a loop though! Anyways… here is the video link to the students using FlashNote Derby.. enjoy….

iPad helping take care of school business!

As we were sitting in our Music Teacher Professional Development the other day another teacher noticed my iPad stand on my folio cabinet and proceeded to ask what it was there for. So here it is….

In my search for iPad apps to help with the record keeping details of teaching, I had downloaded Attendance2 a long time ago. Then I laid it to the side and dug into some other apps.

Then ChoirGuy posted this a few days ago. It’s all about the new ability in Attendance2 to read QR and Bar Codes. Brilliant! Since his post Attendance2 has been updated to be able to scan the codes from either the front OR back camera on the iPad.

I quickly followed his example and printed out the Bar Codes  - They upload to DropBox and then from there I dumped them into a Pages document. I shrunk each QR code down to .75 inches wide and am able to get about 90 on one page! The app has no problem reading them when they are this small. My students stuck them on their music folders and simply scan themselves in as they enter class. This also assures that they will have their music folder with them at their seats – they should then have all of our notes, music theory info, scales, music history notes and other things that we keep at all times in those folders. It doesn’t take my high schoolers hardly any extra time to do this attendance this way. It’s a bit more time consuming for 5th grade but worth it. Worth it because at the appointed time I grab the iPad – take about 3 seconds and look for red names (those are the absent ones) double check to make sure and mark it!

Attendance2 has some videos online here

NoteFlight on iPad

Just a note about NoteFlight! It doesn’t work if you have Private Browsing turned on for Safari on the iPad!

This drove me nuts for a while tonight – I was sure it was NoteFlight that I had used on my iPad but it would not work – the score would load but I could not edit it! I even had to come back to my own blog, use the search feature over on the right and make sure I was on the correct website!

Also, if you have not seen SymphonyPro and were looking for it… don’t bother! Read this from techinmusiced

Using the ShowYou App – Sending video links to your account

Back in October I wrote a post about using the ShowYou app to keep a collection of videos from YouTube that I want to share with my classes.

Here is an update on how I send videos links to my account. It gets a bit confusing and if you don’t do it correctly you may not even notice until you have navigated away from that video and if you are like me some days I can’t find that video again for nothing!

You must have your email associated with your ShowYou account

This is where your email is in the setting section of the app

 

Then you most know the email that you send YouTube video links to -

 

Then I used this share@showyou.com email to send a link of the YouTube webpage with the video on it that I wanted to share with my class later. I actually created a fake person in my address book named Share Person with the share@showyou.com email. That way all I have to remember is when I send an email I type in the fake name of Share and the email gets filled in automatically!

Of course I frequently find my self sending the email from the wrong email account (not email account I have on record at ShowYou.com) at that point in time ShowYou sends me a nice little email response saying this…

Oops! Wrong email!

Hope this helps you in your process of using the Showyou app!

SmartMusic for free! (If you are a new customer)

If you are not a SmartMusic customer yet y really need to take advantage of this deal! MakeMusic is offering new customers a chance for a year of free SmartMusic! All you need to do is attend three online clinics. See the link below for information….

SmartMusc free for a year

If you didn't know already, SmartMusic will be arriving for iPads this spring!

If you would like to visit the MakeMusic website and simply read up on what SmartMusic is all about here is the link to do that. Of course if you are a music educator and don't know what SmartMusic is then you need to go do this! It's free…. What better way to explore the possibilities!

 

 

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Chromatik in the Band Room

No, no, I am not talking about the chromatic scale! I m talking about the online music website for “learning music together”. Well, that’s what THEY say on their web site! Practice, Share, Record and Collect your music online – those are the highlights of what this site is about.

What Chromatik allows us musicians to do is to put our PDF sheet music online and access it from a web browser. Once that PDF Sheet Music is online then you are able to view and practice with that acting as your sheet music instead of actual paper music. But it does get better than this! As you practice you are also able to record yourself! After recording your self you can share your recordings with other people. Another possibility is that you can create playlists of your PDF Sheet Music and share those playlists with others. So that way we can all work on that music in an online environment and give each other feedback on how we are doing. Here is the link to their information page that just so happens to have a video on it – we all like a little TV right?

Of course, since I am tech minded and always searching for new and different ways to teach and learn music, I am starting to use this web site with my band students. So here starts my journey of sharing about this process online! Look forward to more posts about this resource over the rest of this school year!

First thing I would like to share is the best method I have discovered for uploading my files to the Chromatik web site.

BACKGROUND: All of my Band Music I am digitizing slowly. Each piece we play gets scanned and stored in our digital music library. I end up with two PDF files, one for the score and another for the parts. Each file actually contains the words – “Score” or “Parts” in the filename. This makes it very simple to do a spotlight search, find the appropriate file and make use of that file.

WHAT NOT TO DO: The first things I have discovered that is a horrible, horrible situation is for me to take that PDF file with ALL the band parts and upload that file to Chromatik. when I try to access that PDF (even though it is usually only a 3-4 megabyte file) it is painfully slow to deal with online. I am not sure if it is an issue with the file size or because there are so many pages involved. Either way… don’t do it! I’m sure this situation will only improve over time.

WHAT DOES WORK: I upload each part individually as a separate PDF file. This means that I open the Parts PDF in preview, I am working on a mac here but the process and ideas are the same for windows. Then I select the flute pages and drag them out into the finder to create a new PDF with only the flute part in it. I then do the same for the Clarinet part and so on until I have a new PDF for each instrument. This is a bit of a hassle but in reality it only takes about 5-10 minutes max to drag each part out and re-name it so I know which PDF contains which instrument. Then each PDF gets added to my library in Chromatik.

TRICK: This is the part where you need to pay attention folks! Chromatik does not make it obvious as to the best practice in this process. I did discover though, by accident, that I can have ALL the different instruments show up in my Chromatik library under ONE Piece Name vs every PDF showing up and creating a VERY long list! See the screenshot below… you see that I had uploaded Five Good Natured Variations BEFORE I discovered this process. I had a whole bunch of PDF’s showing up (with the instrument as a part of the title) creating a very long list in my library (I was already DREADING having very many pieces in my library because of this issue – Management was going to be a nightmare!)

Example of each individual PDF vs All PDF’s listed under one song title

Then I discovered that all I had to do was give each part the exact same Piece Name as I uploaded them to my library and then Chromatik created a folder for me and listed all the different parts under one Piece Name! This process was a bit hit and miss though – sometimes I had to type in the Piece Name twice to get Chromatik to pick up on the fact that this was a piece that was already in my library. Once Chromatik did pick up on that fact the name of the Author automatically popped into that field. Then I had to pick which part I was uploading. Then all the parts show up in my Library as a drop down menu list under the Piece Title as you see in the above screenshot for Variation Overture.

Here is a screenshot of the uploading process – you can see that I typed in the Piece Title and then Chromatik input the Author Name (that’s why it is a darker grey)

Naming uploads

There will be more to come as I work through figuring out this web site.

I am fully behind the ideas they are working to implement here. I also realize that this is in the early stages of it’s life. That is why I am willing to overlook some of the annoying issues I have run into. Things like it NOT being obvious of how to upload music and there not being a guide that describes the process. Or the fact that I cannot re-order the playlists, the fact that I have NO idea how they figure out the order in which pieces show up in your music library after you download them and the fact that it is a bit slow at times.

The service is free! Plus is you are a school they will donate a FREE iPad2 if you implement this at your school and get 100 students to sign up! Of course one of the reasons I am using this service is because they also have an iPad app, which is also free.

Rhythm apps for teaching music

There have been several apps that help practice and learn rhythm concepts the past few months.

MyRhythm, from Gregory Burk, is an app that helps you practice your rhythmic skills, co-ordination, listening skills and memory. MyRhythm is full of features that anyone from a non-musically trained person to someone who is is music classes will appreciate. The app does not use traditional musical notation to show rhythms. It simply uses a grid of dots that are filled in, or not, to indicate whether you should be tapping the large pads in time with the groove that is being played.

When you start up the app there three main modes you can go into… 1)Challenge Mode 2)Study Mode and 3)Creative Mode. The screen shot you see to the right is about the same in any of the three modes. In challenge mode you listen to and watch a pattern being played then the little violet and blue dots are all taken away and you have to play back what you just heard. It’s an answer and call mode in other words. In the Study mode the idea is the same except that the violet and blue dots do not go away and you can still see them and you do not get to listen to the rhythm being played first. Then in the creative mode you are able to create your own rhythms. It is in this mode that you can do another time signature besides 4/4. In the other modes all I found were 2 measures of 4/4. Of course no where is there ever any mention of time signatures in this app. There are four levels of difficulty to play around with. No matter which level you are in the timing algorithms being used to decide whether or not you are playing the correct rhythms are very strict! It is not good enough to simply hit that pad “close” to the rhythm! You have to really get into the groove and sub-divide so you are accurate! Mentioning grooves…. there are options to play along with simply a metronome or a very long list of different grooves at different tempos. Gregory did a great job of making sure there was enough variety here to keep you interested and challenged for a long time!

option settings for MyRhythm

I like the fact that there are many options in this app…. the different grooves, the call and answer, the creativity section, the ability to change several levels, the choice of what sound you hear when you tap the pads and how easy it is to quickly tap the new rhythm button to try the next rhythm. Even as a band director I like the co-ordination skills this builds even though my kids don’t always need to use two hands to play rhythms in class. I think students will find plenty in this app to keep them interested. There is an iPod/iPhone version of the app as well.

I don’t like that this app only deals with 8th notes. As a music educator I don’t like that music notation is not used and yet at them same time I think there is a place for this type of graphic notation in a music class. Another slight issue I have is that I am pretty skilled at rhythm and I have to work really hard to get all the notes green! Now, maybe this is because I’m not as good as I think I am at rhythm BUT I KNOW what I am going to hear from the kids! No, seriously though, I do believe the app has a little bit of issue “hearing” correctly played rhythms sometimes.

Wish list – I do wish there was a way for my students to keep score of their progress as they work with this app.

green and red dots on MyRhythm