Use OnSong – many worship leaders and groups use this.
SOOOOOO many features…. from creating your own charts, downloading charts, integration with SongSelect and Planning Center to running lights or displaying lyrics!
OnSong –
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Category: Uncategorized
AirPlay from iOS to MacBook
Well that was an interesting thing that happened my first day back to school!
I normally have an Apple TV hooked up so I can mirror my iPad to the screen in my room. It wasn’t there today…. bummer.
My iMac from 2008 that I’ve used for 9 year in the band room as my main computer hooked up to the screen stopped working… bummer. Just shut off and won’t turn on.
So I grabbed my MacBook. On my MacBook I’ve used AirServer and Reflector in the past to mirror my iPad/iPhone to the computer and then have that show up on the screen in the classroom. I’ve purchased both apps because I think they are just wonderful. Our school network is wonky though and sometimes one works and other times the other one works. Which again led me to purchasing both apps. The cost vs the cost of an Apple TV is a tad less.
But today for some reason I hit the AirPlay icon on my iPad to see what showed up before eI had either of those two apps running and I saw my MacBook. So I selected that option and boom – my iPad showed up on my MackBook but in a totally unexpected app!
5KPlayer was the app that took my AirPlay request and hosted it! I can not even remember why in the world I downloaded 5K Player and honestly I find it extremely obnoxious because it hijacked all my movie files and has become the default app to open all movies in. I would rather use Quicktime.
But wow… if 5K Player will allow for me to AirPlay for FREE – well that’s pretty cool! oh… bonus – it will do a screen recording of your iOS device that is AirPlaying to your Mac!
I will say that actually getting the download is a trip down frustration lane as it bumps you over to cnet’s website – and the stupid MacKeeper download button is right there so be careful. Please make sure you know what you are actually downloading!
Last Chance for the Summer Korg Sales
If you have not taken advantage of the summer sales going on with the Korg apps you are running out of time!
As music teachers there are certain apps that I just absolutely think everyone of us can make use of and Korg has a few of those. Then there are those apps that as music educators and as musicians we should find absolutely astounding that we have available to us at these prices and Korg has a ton of those apps too!
Let’s start with the ones that music educators for sure can make immediate use of….
Korg Module – on sale for just $19.99
The IAP sound pack purchases are also on sale! This app is just an outstanding source of sounds. If you ever need amazing piano, electronic piano, strings or pads then this is one solution. Hook up any external MIDI keyboard and you have access to outstanding and quality sounds coming out of your speakers! Or use in conjunction with Korg Gadget or Cubasis to play accompaniments from previously sequenced recordings. I love the sounds you get with the initial purchase but the add on sound packs I would also suggest you listen to are the Ivory Keys ($15.99) and the Orchestral Dreams ($9.99)
As Korg Module can be run from your iPad or your iPhone – just imagine the capabilities of carrying the sound source in your phone and a nice light weight keyboard under one arm. Or better yet just carrying your phone and pugging whatever keyboard you have in front of you into that and having all the same sounds available to you! I know my 88 weighted keyboard from Roland is a monster to lug around! My phone is in my pocket!
Korg iM1 – on sale for just $14.99 is another app that most of us would have spent well over a thousand dollars in the past for as this is basically a Korg M1 inside your iPad! What an outstanding synth with sounds you hear in so many recordings!
Other apps that are just plain outright cool and sound great….
Fathers Day Music App Sales
It is Fathers Day Weekend here in the USA! As a father of 6 amazing kids I enjoy this weekend! We have munch to be thankful for. One of those items is the music we have in our lives! Now we can make even more great music with these app sales!
If you don’t celebrate Fathers Day you can STILL enjoy the sales!
First up – if you want an amazing sounding piano then Ravenscroft 275 from UVItouch at $17.99 is such an outstanding app! It is on sale for 50% off currently until the 8th of June so act fast.
BeatHawk, also from UVItouch, is an amazing choice for a DAW like app. Great interface, very easy to understand, very easy to get creative with and the sounds are great! Plays well with other apps too!
50% off at $4.99 for the app itself and 50% off the expansion packs as well. There is a wonderful Mallet percussion IAP that I’d suggest if you are looking for those type of sounds.
Next up is an app from Klevgränd…
Brusfri is a highly advanced audio noise reducer packaged in a simple and straight forward interface. Ok… I stole that line from their web site. But I couldn’t have written it any better… wait, I’ll try…
Pure magic is packed into an easy to use button!
If you record anything … this $8.99 is going to be the best $ you have spent in a long time!
MET Podcast #13 with Don Crafton from Sight Reading Factory
Oh my it’s been a long school year during which Chris Russell and I were kept busy doing other things besides podcasting!
But we are BACK AND we have Don Crafton from Sight Reading Factory with us!
In this lengthy episode of the Music Education and Technology Podcast, we catch up about what has been going on in their classrooms since November, including discussions about Notion’s N-Tempo, Luddites, instruction with video, and more.
The interview with Don Crafton about Sight Reading Factory begins at 58 minutes into the podcast. Visit sightreadingfactory.com to learn more about Sight Reading Factory.
Final Projects – Authentic Assessments In The Music Classroom
Final exams….
What if your final exams were such that the students didn’t even feel like they were “exams”? What if they could just simply “be creative” using all the tools given them throughout the school year?
Such was the exam for my high school classes – take Yankee Doodle Dandy and “make it your own”. Use your band instruments and other acoustic instruments you found around you, use a group of 8 people and create an arrangement to perform for the class.
I of course had to get in on the fun. I used my iPad, Cubasis, a couple of 5th graders, one high school student, my conducting podium and of course my euphonium.
I will let you decide what instruments the 5th graders played and what sounds were coming from my podium.
I will say that I used my Line6 SonicPort XV stereo microphone to record all the tracks into Cubasis on the iPad. I did cheat a bit as we were able to lay in some effects that my high school kids couldn’t really make use of as they were performing their arrangements live. Some of the stereo mix you hear is from panning inside of Cubasis after recording because I used the mono setting on the SonicPort but some of the tracks were recorded using the stereo setting – like the percussion.
We ended up with 12 tracks. I did not spend hours and hours on my euph playing. I just played and what happened was what you hear.
Then I exported and used the Wizibel App to create the video along with some nature photos I’ve shoot this spring.
The students ran into the issue of needing more time – we used three days of class. We could have used two weeks. Getting groups of 8 to be productive and all come to agreement on the direction of their arrangement was a huge part of the process.
Me… well my group worked pretty well together. The one 5th graders made me laugh because she enjoyed it so much. She begged me to play our final mix for the rest for the 5th graders the next day.
Anyways… here’s my exam…
iPads Setup/Project Suggestions from Music and Youth Impact Network
It’s always great to see what other programs are doing with iPads and creating music with youth.
The Music Impact Network has had great success in using iPads with youth to create and explore music!
Here are some suggestions from them for iPad setups and uses.
Making Music on iPads
Well I found a bit of time to create some music with my iPad and to explore AudioUnit/GarageBand.
It wasn’t as easy of a process as I’d hoped. I used several AudioUnit apps all inside of GarageBand.
The short story – Ended up getting error messages. In the end the only way to get my track was to use my external handheld recorder to record from the iPad headphone jack and then upload to my computer and then back to my iPad for final mastering. 😦
More on this later… but for now… here is the end product if you’d care to listen to my latest musical wanderings.
Using Notion in place of non-available Musicians!
I have been an extremely busy bee the past couple months working hard on a project here at the school. I’d like to share just a bit.
I’ve learned a ton about using Notion software, by PreSonus, to fill in for musicians that just are not available.
You see we are a small school district with limited funds and limited access to amazing musicians who are able to cover all the possible different instruments we might want to utilize in a particular production. We just are not able to produce an entire orchestra, including harpist!
So I set out to see if it was possible to make do by using the nTempo feature in Notion.
Through a long process of taking the orchestra parts, entering them into the computer, and lots of trial and error I have found that using Notion with nTempo is absolutely a wonderful solution! Not a replacement in ANY WAY shape or form but I’d rather go live WITH these parts then to NOT have the parts!
I do have a few tips to share:
– NotateMe – with PhotoScore – Well worth every penny of the two combined purchases – the full app itself and then the IAP of PhotoScore
SCANNING:
- Neuratrons NotateMe used in conjunction with the PhotoScore in-app-purchase saved me a TON of time!
- I’ve found that using my iPhone X with NotateMe’s PhotoScore was WAY faster than using my original iPad Pro 12.9″ (I really wasn’t surprised that it was faster but I WAS surprised at HOW much faster it was!) Hands down, noticeable!
- Sometimes PhotoScore was NOT the fastest way!
- PhotoScore does NOT get everything –
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- multi measure repeats are the first obvious item it misses.
- Another biggie was that sometimes it missed the key signature.
- Text ALWAYS had to be cleaned up.
Notion – for iOS – Well worth having this on my iOS devices as well as my laptop! Has replaced my previous notation app.
ENTERING MUSIC:
- PhotoScore was how I started with the strings – Violin 1 & 2, Viola, Cello, String Bass
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- I always had to adjust the Show Attachments Above/Below to Auto.
- I also had to adjust Set Note Stem Direction to Auto.
- Step Entry Mode is Pretty stinking fast!
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- Harp parts got entered via step entry mode
- Many little parts that my High School kids couldn’t play were also entered via step entry –
- Real Time Recording absolutely needs a quantize feature. Because of the lack of this feature I found it useless.
- LEARN YOUR KEY BOARD SHORTCUTS!
- In a huge project like this I actually for the first time in my life lived in Continuous View Mode
ENTERING LYRICS:
- Found out that entering Lyrics has a bug – it doesn’t always work in Continuous View Mode!
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- Two Solutions
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- One – switch to Pages Across or Pages Down mode
- Two – Enter Score Layout mode and drag the Part containing lyrics down lower in the score temporarily.
USING THE iPAD:
- For the entire first act I never touched my computer. I scanned all the string parts via my iPhoneX and then edited them all in Notion on my iPad.
- Then I switched to my computer.
- I think the computer is possibly a bit faster.
- I haven’t tried the full score on my iPad again, now that I am about done. I am wondering if the iPad can actually handle playing the full score.
nTEMPO:
- Using nTempo is pretty straight forward.
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- First of all – Not available on iOS – only Desktop/Laptop
- Add an nTempo Track to your score (it’s under basics)
- Add the beat that you’d like to tap along to
- Then hit that little conductor dude (or Shift Return – which is VERY finicky though – sometimes that shortcut works and sometimes not. I really have NOT figured out the trick fully) (See the screen shot above to spot the conductor icon)
- THEN the MAGIC….
- start tapping and the music start to play and follows your tapping for tempo!
- Sometimes it is easier to tap in specific rhythms rather than the beat – for instance why Tapp four quarter notes when everyone is holding a whole note? or why tap quarter notes if everyone is playing quarter note triplets? (as you can see in the screenshot above…. the nTempo part is NOT quarter notes)
iCLOUD SYNC for NOTION
- iCloud sync in Notion is scary good! I never once had to manually transfer files between my iPhone/iPad/Laptop when I had wi-fi available.
- I was working on the beach during spring break a few times and had to AirDrop files back and forth then
- I used this app to store references to all the books that I did not want to carry with me.
- I am actually NOT using my iPad during the show because using the computer AND iPad is a bit much. I actually like the static reliability of having a two page paper score in front of me.
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- That has been a pain though for simple things like quickly finding specific songs. I mean the full score is 202 pages LONG!
OVERALL:
As for the sounds coming from Notion – OUTSTANDING – I remember the day I’d have to create a score for the way I wanted things to look and then another for the way I wanted things to sound. With Notion, this is no longer the case! Dynamics, articulations, and the list goes on…. they ALL make the sounds you’d expect! It’s very nice!
With the exception of swing… yeah… that’s a bit iffy still. It kind of works but there are adaptations you have to make. Like when you want one 8th note and then the next two tied.
I’ve ended up putting WAY more parts into the computer than I anticipated because I decided that trying to be the nTempo tapper AND trying to read my paper score was impossible! I really needed to use simply the computer.
Here are the parts I’ve put in that I never thought of before I started this process….
- Piano Conductor – This is a piano part that actually get turned off in the mixer. It is there because even on a 15″ MacBook Pro screen I can not see all the parts. If I’m conducting I have to know what the heck I’m conducting. It is in effect a condensed score that lives at the top of my screen.
- The actors cue lines to know how the music lines up with the dialogue.
- Vocal Parts WITH lyrics – this helps immensely as I do NOT remember lyrics very well. It also helps to separate the vocal line from the instrumental parts.
- nTempo – I knew I’d have to enter beats. I didn’t really understand the intense pre-thought of how detailed this track would become.
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- It’s WAY easier to just conduct – it comes second nature 🙂 I do wish I had the resources for all live musicians.
FINAL THOUGHTS:
You had better have a great sound system to make this work. First of all the sounds in Notion rock but if your speakers are bad… well….
You’ve got to have a good monitoring system so you and the live musicians can hear the track.
and finally…. just like a real live instrument… YOU’D BETTER PRACTICE A TON!
Free Beat Making App – FingerBeats
Well this looks fun… free! For today at least….
A pocket sampler, drum-machine & field recorder designed for ‘on-the-go’ creativity. FingerBeat allows you to capture sounds directly into pads or TapeRecord the entire sessions instantly. Make Loops using the reels then drag-and-drop clips into pads and keep creating!
