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

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.

Big news in the Music Notation world today!

We have two announcements today that are of great interest to anyone who is an iPad toting musician!

The first one is from ThinkMusicTechnology.com, they have announced their kickstarter project. This gives all of us a real good sense of where they are in the development process of this app. I will let you for your own opinions on this project and the pricing tiers they have set up.

The best announcement today though comes from NoteFlight.com! Today they have announced that on January 24 they will release NoteFlight as an HTML5 web based service. For those of you that don’t understand what that means…

NoteFlight has been a flash based web app since it was released. That means it would not work on an iPad (without using a special browser and even then not that great). Now that NoteFlight is going to HTML5, NoteFlight will be able to work on an iPad or even an iPhone! Here is the link to the news release.

Noteflight has great pricing – there is a basic limited version for free and then it goes up from there. For those of us in the Educational World here is their pricing page. Their prices are about what I would normally spend to update Finale or Sibelius in any given school year.

In order for you to get a good idea of the possibilities of NoteFlight in a classroom you should go watch this video. Right now!

You can even do fun things like sync a YouTube Video with a NoteFlight score!

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

iPad’s and Notation in the Classroom

The realm of possibilities of musical notation on an iPad has drastically been interrupted this past week or so. Let me explain.

As of this moment there have been several notation apps that have appeared on the scene for iPad’s. Symphony Pro app was one of those apps. That app was demoed by the TechinMusicEd Blog here - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTFn-0QqQGo. As of now though Symphony Pro is not to be found on the app store and I also can not get their web site to load either! Notion is the other important music notation app for the iPad. If you have been following Notion Music as a company you will know that one of the reasons that Notion for iPad is so important (besides the fact that it worked) is that Notion has a desktop version of their app available as well. Notion for desktop was recently priced at a mere $99 as well! This is a huge development as the “two big” players in the world of music notation apps, Finale and Sibelius, cost considerably more.

Now, as a music educator who uses music notation apps constantly, you must understand that I have not been very “into” using any of the iPad apps to take care of any of my notating needs. The reason? Simple… 1)I don’t want to start work on my iPad and then have it only be only accessible on the iPad. 2)I have become very fluent in using Sibelius. 3)If I am going to use an app to do my work it HAS to make my life easier not harder!

or (this is the most exciting!)

4)The app has to do something my laptop can’t do!

ThinkMusicTechnology has all of a sudden shown up with a world upsetting promo video about a new music notation app. This promo video has really created a lot of buzz! Not all of it good either! If you have not seen this video – or even if you have – TechinMusicEd Blog has a great break down of the video and the amazing concepts it has thrown out there as new and innovative ideas that they are trying to develop into an actual app.

Tonight ThinkMusicTechnology has posted a new video about what they are doing with their new app. This video I believe is a clear response to some of the criticism/skepticism about the app they are clearly developing. Go take a look… I know I would LOVE to get this app along with an iPad into the hands of every single one of my students!