iTunes Match – This Changes Everything

iPod Classic

Recently I was mourning the loss of my 4th generation iPod classic.  It had been my solution for carrying my large volume of recordings from home to school for years.  It was very handy when I wanted to play a certain cut for my jazz band or for playing the full orchestral version of some masterwork that one of the bands was working on.  It gave me almost six faithful years, which I suppose is pretty good for a mobile device of any kind.

There were some limitations to the iPod classic.  You could only sync it with one iTunes library at a time.  So, I didn’t have things such as the publisher recordings of band literature that I had put on my iMac at school available on my iPod.  The other limiting factor was that you had to actually have it with you to use it.  There was a time when my wife was using it at work on an almost daily basis.  I’d have to plan ahead and enter into some low-key negotiations if I wanted to use it at school.  Still, at 60GB it was a great device for carrying around all (really almost all) of my music.

Well, the poor thing died last month.  It was possibly the result of overuse by my three-year old son, but I am assigning no blame.  I’ve been thinking of it as the end of an era, and it truly is.

With the end of one era comes the beginning of the next.  Enter iTunes Match.  In short if you subscribe to this cloud-based service you basically sync the recordings on all of your devices and have access to any of them any time you are connected to the internet.  Now I have access to truly all of my music on all of my devices.  Right now that stands at nearly 7300 recordings available on everything from my 750GB MacBook Pro to our tiny 16GB iPad.  Pretty cool.

Yes, it is a subscription service.  Apple charges $25/year, but as far as I can tell there are no space limitations.  So go ahead and rip those CD’s you thought you wouldn’t really need on your iPod and start the music again – anywhere you want it!

P.S.  On another topic, I just received word that our district is opening the wireless network to student devices.  This is a huge development and opens up some very interesting possibilities for us in terms of assessment and instruction.  I’ll follow-up with more as news warrants.  Thanks for reading!

Composition Contest for iPad Orchestra

https://sites.google.com/site/seymourhighmusic/composition-contest

This will be a great resource for the performance capabilities of the iPad!

Over 60,000 musical scores for free?

We’ve already demonstrated that it is quick and easy to read music in the form of a pdf published on a website with the iPad. Last night I rediscovered the IMSLP/Petrucci Music Library, which is a wiki whose stated goal is “to create a virtual library containing all public domain music scores, as well as scores from composers who are willing to share their music with the world without charge.” Sounds pretty noble to me! I had used this resource in graduate school to study scores by the great Romantic piano composers, but had pretty much written it off for use in middle school band. Then yesterday I was looking for a solo piece to try with a student that had been recommended to me, but which I didn’t own. I wanted to play through it with my student before telling him to buy it so I did a Google search and the link to the Petrucci Library came up. In seconds I had the entire piece on the iPad. We were able to play through the entire solo in his lesson. Now the great thing about the Petrucci Library is that the pieces have been scanned in – they are the actual sheet music so there are no worries about bad transcriptions. Would I advocate that IMSLP replace legally acquired sheet music? Absolutely not. But it is an ethical resource for research and education and another web resource brought straight to the music stand by the iPad.

Oops

Found out today the iPad does scratch. Good thing it was on the back rather than the glass. Guess who’s buying a case tomorrow. Any suggestions?

From Vienna: The New Year’s Celebration 2010: Preview the Concert | Great Performances | PBS

From Vienna: The New Year’s Celebration 2010: Preview the Concert | Great Performances | PBS.

Gustavo Dudamel and the Los Angeles Philharmonic: Watch the Abridged Program | Great Performances | PBS

Gustavo Dudamel and the Los Angeles Philharmonic: Watch the Abridged Program | Great Performances | PBS.

Carnegie Hall Opening Night 2008: A Celebration of Leonard Bernstein – Video: Selected Bernstein Numbers | Great Performances | PBS

Carnegie Hall Opening Night 2008: A Celebration of Leonard Bernstein – Video: Selected Bernstein Numbers | Great Performances | PBS.

The New York Philharmonic Live from North Korea – Video: Watch the Concert | Great Performances | PBS

The New York Philharmonic Live from North Korea – Video: Watch the Concert | Great Performances | PBS.

Week Four: making music

This past week we have started using some of the free music instrument apps on the iPad. The size of the device allows an octave of reasonably sized piano keys, though the apps we have used all had one shortfall or another when it comes to actually making music. However, for demonstration or performing a basic pattern these apps actually are quite useful. And when keyboards are scarce, the iPad provides a portable and accessible option. Plug the headphone jack into an amplifier and you can balance the iPad as part of a rhythm section.

My favorite keyboard is on Jam Pad. It’s keys are big enough to play chords and the keyboard scrolls so it is easy to go right to the octave you want. Unfortunately this scrolling feature can’t be turned off which makes it kind of like playing a piano that you can’t really feel that moves underneath your fingers. The piano sound also has a permanent sustain which makes it tough to play staccato.

Musical touch has two manuals which span an eleventh, but the keys are too small to voice chords. It also has the permanent sustain problem with the piano sound. It does have the option of turning on or off labels of the note names on the keys.

Clef tunes lite is an app which allows you to play right off the staff. It has an interesting set-up and actually the best sounding instrument of these three apps: you hold your finger on the note and it sustains, let up and it stops – brilliant! We’ve actually used it to play the left hand of the piano in our sixth grade jazz unit. It also has the option to turn labels on or off. Since it uses staff notation it has the ability to select major or minor key signatures. This could prove to be a powerful tool to help students learn the landmarks of the grand staff.

Third Week: video, teacher productivity apps, and a program idea for next year

At the end of week three we are still comfortably plugging away with our iPad.  I’m finding it a handy place to bookmark and share sites that have classroom applications.  We started a jazz unit in sixth grade band last week and I was able to share some common tones for improvisation with the entire class via a bookmarked web page.  We don’t yet have a direct video connection between the iPad and our LCD projector, but I found the ELMO works just fine projecting the iPad’s screen.  Plus it doesn’t have the output limitations that the internal USB output has.  For more complaints about that and other current limitations read Dr. Joseph M. Pisano’s post on the iPad.

We also started sharing concert video using the iPad.  Our post-concert ritual is to have students view the video in class and either complete a written evaluation or participate in a classroom discussion.  It works just fine, except for the fact that between six and eight students miss seeing the video entirely because they are pulled out for their small group lesson.  I hate to have them miss a lesson in order to view the video, but perspective and opportunity for self-evaluation is valuable too.  Enter the iPad!  I quickly dumped the video from the camcorder into iMovie, then created small videos (about 10 minutes for each concert) and copied them to the iPad.  Each lesson group that missed the video in class took the iPad out into the hall, watched their portion of the concert and passed it off to the next group.  In the future I would like to create a survey that students could then complete on the iPad which would allow the students to participate in the evaluation part of the activity.  This also illustrates the capability of the iPad to catch kids up on classroom presentations when they’ve missed class.

In the realm of teacher productivity  I must recommend Evernote.  I discovered that you can log in/out of your account on the iPad/iPhone/iPodTouch which enables multiple users and maintains privacy.  So, we went ahead with the free download.  It is a simply beautiful app that I find more uses for all the time. Our colleague at the high school just got an iPad of his own and recommends a pdf reader like GoodReader or SimplyPDF and the amazing Air Sharing HD which turns the iPad into a wireless hard disk. So far our wish list has $28 worth of apps on it!

Looking ahead to the future I’ve started talking to our principal about the idea of virtual concert programs.  With the printing budget cuts we’ve experienced this year we have stopped printing programs for our sixth and seventh grade concerts.   Last week we had a sixth grade band concert and I saw at least one iPad and all manner of WiFi enabled devices from phones to Nintendo DS machines.  This is typical of a 21st century concert in a gym and I personally don’t mind it.  These devices keep the younger kids occupied and relatively quiet.  But seeing this caused me to imagine a way to engage the audience in the program with the devices they are already bringing to the concert.  Here’s the idea:  we post the web address of a virtual program in the gym for the audience to access.  We also make the school WiFi available (that’s the part we have to wait until next year for).  Not only is the virtual program loaded with the items we typically have in a printed program, but it contains all sorts of links to information on the compositions, the composers, musical styles, and for audience members to register their reactions.  It would work not only on the iPad, but any wireless device.  I’m not sure I’m ready to see an audience full of glowing screens in a darkened auditorium, but for a concert in a gym it seems like it may be an appropriate venture.  I’d love to hear readers’ reactions to the idea and if anyone has seen anything like this used in school concerts.

Thanks for reading – we’ll post more next week!