PlanBook Touch for iPad seems like it just might do the trick. The iPad app works with the Mac app and those both sync to DropBox. The app also lets me track standards that I am addressing. (more about this in a moment) The Mac app also allows for integration with iCal – I have not explored this so I’m not sure how it works and to what benefit it would be.

The Standards portion of the app is interesting in the fact that I can have all the standards in one place, alongside my lesson plans and it will allow me to track which ones I’m over teaching or under teaching. The only thing is that unless someone has all the standards already in a CSV file, I’m going to have to go through and manually enter each one.

With this app it seems to be a pretty easy job to display the daily agenda onto the projector screen for the kids to see so they can be prepared for that days rehearsal.

I’m wondering what other iPad toting teachers are doing right now as a solution to lesson planning and sharing lesson plans with the students/teachers. Does anyone have a good workflow that is working for them right now? What apps are you using?

How about music in our student’s lives? How about the way they are creating, consuming and listening to music? That has changed in so many ways!

Watch this video. It is a video of Jason Derulo – It Girl (iPad remix feat. Freddie Cosmo). I had no idea who the guys are in the video – who is singing or what the song is until I saw the video.  Tell me there isn’t a spot in music education for this type of music creativity class!

I guarantee you there are a bunch of students in your school who are creating music on a daily basis who are never going to set foot in your band or choir room! I had a discussion with another musician the other day in a music store about this. His comment was that the best drummers he has ever played with were the ones that had received some form of music training under a competent music director/teacher. Why can’t we have non-traditional music classes in our schools? Is it because we can not afford them? Schools are cutting back, I understand that. If we are supposed to be doing what is best for all the students though, can we afford NOT to offer these types of classes?

The $49 is a bit mis-leading as you of course need an iPad as well as a USB audio interface. But the thought of what this adds up to in price and capability to what we were able to get 10 years is a staggering difference!

Auria App is from WaveMachine Labs and with the ability to play 48 mono or stereo 24bit/44.1 kHz tracks simultaneously, record up to 24 of those tracks simultaneously (through any supported USB multichannel audio interface), and edit and mix with familiar tools and full parameter automation, it’s clear Auria sets a new standard for iPad multitracking.

Here is a video of the software from YouTube

Of course there are other apps out there right now that let us record into our iPads – but the Auria App is the first to allow 24 tracks of simultaneous recording!

Now we just have to find a digital mixer – or at least a mixer that is compliant with the iPad camera connection kit! Of course if I’m recording 24 tracks of audio onto my iPad what am I going to use to read my music off from? I just might have to steal my original back from my wife iPad…. (anyone got any idea of how THAT’s going to go?) Maybe she’ll just let me by the iPad3!

If the thought of recording 24 tracks is a bit daunting to you – remember that there are several new iPad audio/midi docks/interfaces that are perfect for just recording several tracks at a time. The Alesis iO Dock is not new news but the Behringer iStudio  and the StudioConnect from Griffin are both new.

Apple’s GarageBand - which works on iPad/iPhone/Computer ,

Studio Track  from Sonoma WireWorks (8tracks of audio),

Amplitube 2 for iPad -(8 tracks of audio) (Really great for guitar players with all sorts of amp simulations and such),

MultiTrack DAW from HarmonicDog – (8 tracks simultaneous recording),

Studio.HD from SoundTrend LLC

Are you looking for a way to incorporate your iPad into your live sound? Looking for new ways to mic up your Jazz Band or Choir? I know I want a new way to take advantage of the iPads portability and processing strength in ways I’ve not been able to. I want a great new way to use my iPad in conjunction with my sound system, both in the band room as well as when we are live. Live sound is always a hassle to some extent, trying to haul equipment and find someone to run it and then the sound board is in the back of the room and you, the director, are up front. Well,  NAMM 2012 has brought lots of exciting new gear announcements that incorporate the iPad and iPod’s. I have been looking at a new sound board for my band program these past few weeks and these announcements have caught my attention. There are several new sound boards that change the way we use sound boards. These sound boards utilize an iPad in one way or another.

I found information on two boards that did not include a release time or a price, those two boards are listed last. I did find one video review of the Mackie DL1608 Board (Find it here) that told me the price – $999, and they said the release time frame is quarter 2. For what this thing is doing that is amazing!
I could not find a price anywhere for the bottom two mixers.

The information from Mackie is the best put together of these three. A word of warning though, if you are not familiar with Mackie and the way they write their material, it’s going to be an interesting trip for you!

Mackie DL 1608 from Mackie  - go here for video and more pics from the Mackie website. Here is a video at the Mackie booth – the guy is showing it off and talking about it. He also mentions the price in this video – $999

Highlights - The Mackie DL1608™ redefines live mixing by combining the proven power of a full-featured digital mixer with the unmatched ease and mobility of an iPad.® With 16 boutique-quality Onyx mic preamps and the performance of 24bit Cirrus Logic® AD/DA converters, you have unparalleled sound quality. Seamless wired to wireless iPad control means you can mix from anywhere in the venue. This gives you the mobile freedom to control not only the mix, but also powerful plug-ins like EQ, dynamics, effects and more. The sleek DL1608 even supports up to 10 iPads.

What really is showing their innovation -

• Control the mix from anywhere with an iPad
• Great Preamps
• Great built-in Processing – like 4 band EQ, compression and gate plug-ins. Reverb, tap delay and 31-band graphic EQ and compressor/limiter on the main and aux outs.
• Suports up to 10 iPads – Give each band member the ability to adjust their own monitors.
• Total snapshot recall
• Chanel presets like kick drum, bass, guitar, keyboard and more.
• Record from the main mix right to your iPad
• Integrate music from any other app, like GarageBand without using up one of the mixers 16 channels while the iPad is docked.
• Channel Images – gone are the days of masking tape and handwriting who is on each channel!

I like that it appears that you do not have to leave the iPad docked for the entire show.
XENYX iX2442USB from Behringer – There are 16, 24 and 32 channel versions of this one -

MasterLink 24 with dock for iPad – from Alto Professional

24-CHANNEL MIXER WITH DOCK FOR IPAD

• Seamlessly integrates iPad with fitted enclosure, 30-pin dock and exclusive software
• Works with iPad and iPad 2
• Process and record your main mix with Alto Professional’s Live Drive App*
• Dedicated analyzer/talkback microphone input
• 24 input channels: 16 Mono, 4 Stereo
• 16 high-headroom low-noise microphone preamps
• Three-band EQ with sweepable mid-frequency on all mono channels
• 16 independent channel compressors for dynamic control
• Built-in Alesis digital effects processor with reverb, delay, chorus and more
• Four aux sends with aux one and two configurable as “post” or “pre” fader
• Four-bus operation, offering main and monitor mix separation
• Real-time audio analysis*
• 12-band parametric EQ*
• Compressor/limiter*
• Two-channel audio recording capability*
• Built-in programmable SPL meter*

Here’s what I think….

Apple just changed everything! I think that Apple just gave any school with access to an Apple computer and iPads an amazing new tool. I don’t think that the biggest impact should be that schools will buying textbooks in new formats, with amazing new interactivity. I think that what Apple has given schools is a tool with which teachers can create their own, personalized learning material and that students can create their own eBooks with. Students should be using this software to create lessons about what they are learning, lessons will help them really learn what they are working on. I can see a student taking the material from class, creating an eBook/iBook with that material and ending up with an end product that they are very proud of. An end product that has created a chance for them to take apart and reassemble classwork that could have been boring otherwise, in such a manner that they now actually have higher levels of retention and comprehension.

I see teachers creating exciting new materials that will grab students attention. Teachers will be creating lessons in ways never before possible.

iBooks, iTunesU and the iBooks Authoring App are significant, very significant!

Now, what about the schools without access to a mac for teachers and students to create with? Ummm… well current technology is going to be replaced at some point in time right? This announcement today may change all those Dells to Apples! (Do I dare to dream?)

My Target visits always start in the Bose Headphone’s section as I listen to the headphones I will some day buy. Then on to the iPad section a look through the headphones they have on sale. Then I headed over to the First Act Music section – I know, I know…. I go there because this is where the clearance section is as well! Tonight though I found two very exciting bargains for any music person! You too should be on your way to Target tonight or tomorrow because these deals are not going to last!

The first deal I found was a First Act USB Keyboard Controller. 54 keys, 128 Instrument Sounds, 100 play-Along Rhythms and then I saw it…..!  FULL USB-MIDI SUPPORT! At full normal price, $68, I would have looked but not been interested. But this is on sale right now for $20!

The second deal I found was the Q2U Recording Pak. This contains a USB/XLR Microphone with HP20 Headphones as well as CakeWalk Music Creator LE software, plus a XLR mic cable, USB cable and desktop mic stand! This set usually goes for $71.99. I had actually thought about buying this in the past – I mean this time we are talking about Samson not First Act! Tonight it was on sale for $21.99!  I grabbed it! In fact I think I am going to go to a couple of other Targets and see if I can one more!

Now the only issue that I was worried about was if these two items would work with my iPad. I knew they would work with my laptop. I wanted the keyboard so I could have something smallish to use for input into Sibelius. I have plenty of real full sized keyboards that I can use as well but I’ve been considering a smaller, usb powered keyboard for a year or so now. Quick and easy and smaller!

I got home, of course I had to sit and eat Taco Bell with the girls and Wife but that was fine, I mean I was hungry too you know! Found my camera connector kit that my wife had borrowed last weekend so she could load photo’s onto her iPad while at her Dad’s. In my office I unpacked the keyboard first. My first impression was – “Whoa! This feels VERY light and kind of cheap.” I kind of expected that though. Then I tried plugging it in, nothing. I had to go find 4 AA batteries. I finally persuaded my son to loan me 4 from their Wii controllers. I had hoped for USB powered but no such luck. After putting batteries in and hooking the USB cord up to the computer, I started up GarageBand. It Worked!!! Sweet. I then tried it with the iPad, GarageBand and the Camera Connector Kit. That worked as well!

Next, the microphone. My first impression of the mic was opposite of the keyboard. The mic felt pretty good, much better construction. The USB cord went into the iPad Camera Kit, and the headphones (that came with the mic – remember?) then got plugged into the bottom of the mic. As soon as the mic was plugged into the iPad the green light came on, I smiled! Even without the GarageBand App running I could immediately hear myself talking into the mic. There are little volume buttons on the bottom of the mic  - those only adjust the volume of the iPad though – not how much mic you hear in the headphones, unless GarageBand running. Then GarageBand takes over and those buttons on the mic change mic level as well.

In short everything worked as I had hoped it would. The First Act Keyboard had a few notes hang on it…. but hey 20 bucks! The mic sounds really pretty good, the headphones work but they are not going to replace my regular headphones (even though my regular headphones are not Bose)

For the price – you can not loose. Here is a sample recording of just my voice using this mic. (I had to upload the sample to SoundCloud. I guess WordPress doesn’t allow for us free WordPress users to upload mp3′s – oh well. If you are not familiar with SoundCloud this will give you a chance to see a little of that.)

Oh yeah… One more thing… the software that came with the mic (actually both the mic and keyboard had free software) is I’m sure nothing even close to GarageBand but it has to be better than nothing! I’ve been using my band room computers to record 8th graders re-telling fairy tales. I have 3 macs – they all used GarageBand. We used my iPad and iPhone running GarageBand as well. I have one Dell computer though that I had no audio recording software on. I’m going to give this CakeWalk to the Tech Department and get them to load it up so we try using it the next time around. I have 4 or 5 students in that class who I think I’ve convinced to purchase iMovie so they can use their iPod Touches when we do the next round of story telling. The next round will be acting out a fairy tale as well as composing some music to put in their movies. It should be fun! I think I will use my new microphone too!

Now – go to Target and spend a few dollars – I don’t think you can go wrong on this mic – I’m pretty sure there is nothing else even close to this quality for $21.99!

I also noticed that iTunes suddenly had two of the songs listed with the incorrect times on them. Instead of being 4 or 5 minutes in length, they were now listed as being 29 or 30 minutes long! I thought maybe this was just an error, so I clicked the play button in iTunes. They actually played fine for the length of the actual tune but then iTunes kept playing, in silence, for the rest of the 30 minutes! I dragged the song out of iTunes and opened the mp3 in several other programs, QuickTimes, SoundStudio and Audacity. No other program had issues with the length. So I figured that possibly these mp3′s were corrupt in some way or another.

SOLUTION
I went back into iTunes, went into my preferences, and made sure that my import settings were set for AAC. I then  went back into the iTunes library, selected several of the songs that were ineligible, and created an AAC version of the song. After iTunes had updated my iTunes Match results these songs became eligible! They were now marked as being Matched! I went through and did all the other songs in this album and they are now all Matched. If you take a look at the screenshot from below you can see where some of the files are mp3′s still and are marked ineligible, whereas other songs have been converted into aac’s and are now Matched. You can also see that after going through this process of converting the files you will need to wait for iTunes to re-post the iTunes Match results – or you can force iTunes to update by going to the store menu and selecting update iTunes Match. After getting the results you want… Matched files… then you will of course want to go through and delete the bad files. If you want to make sure to get the best file possible after getting your tunes Matched in the Cloud then you will want to follow my previous post where I talked about how to get iTune Match’s better file.

This could be a huge issue. For instance, I have songs that I have recorded accompaniment tracks for the choir for, using my keyboard and laptop at home in my studio. Those are songs that I would obviously like to be able to have on my iPad so that when I am at school I can use them. For some reason some of these accompaniments that I have created are in that list of ineligible songs.

The solution I found was easy enough. I simply put those songs into a playlist, burned a CD of them, deleted them from my library, and then imported that CD of songs back into my library. Issue gone. You could get into a pickle though if you need a certain song FAST and it is on your ineligible list though so it would be a good idea to make a SmartPlaylist of all songs that are ineligible for iTunesMatch and check through so you know what all is on that list.

Good luck with your conversion to the Cloud… it will be a journey full of twists!