Week #2: Music Notation and Creativity
This week in the technology class, we took a look at several different websites and apps which can be used for writing music, arranging music, exploring with sounds, or making chord progressions. One such app that I enjoyed working with is iRealPro. In this app, you can write chord progressions for music which you want to practice, and the app with play an accompaniment with different instrument sounds so that you can practice or improvise with the accompaniment. This app can also be used to learn how to play guitar, ukulele, and piano. I would have loved to have access to something like this when I was learning how to improvise in high school. I had to find jazz recordings of what I was playing and hope it was in the same key. Something like this could be used to help aid my students through the first step of improvisation - exploration - and further advance into process- and product-based improvisation.
When it comes to music improvisation and composition in the classroom setting, many of today's music educators don't take the time to teach it. There are multiple reasons for this. Some teachers do not feel comfortable teaching or facilitating improvisation because they were not taught it in their own music education. Others feel they do not have time to fit it into their established curriculum. And yet, there are others who feel teaching improvisation does not benefit students as much as teaching performance techniques in context of literature (Bauer, 2014). Nevertheless, apps such as iRealPro can be used not only within the classroom setting, but can also be used by students outside of school, as many of these apps are readily available on computers, phones, and tablets, and many of them are free and fun to use!
Music Notation
As a music educator, I often find myself using music notation software to rearrange parts, create replacement parts for destroyed/lost originals in emergency situations, or make custom assignments for my students. I have used programs such as Finale, Sibelius, and Noteflight over the years. This week, our class was tasked with familiarizing ourselves with Noteflight and MuseScore, both of which are free to use.
Noteflight is a web-based program and basic accounts are free. You won't be able to make full wind band scores with a free account, but there are many possibilities still. I originally used this program in high school for an assignment in the music theory class, and I used it frequently when having to complete theory assignments in college or write choir builders while student teaching. When exploring it further this week, I was introduced to a grid of the available keyboard shortcuts, and my world was forever changed. This program, in my own humble opinion, has the most user-friendly interface of the notation softwares I have used. I was able to whiz through compiling a 32-measure score within minutes without ever taking my hands away from the keyboard. While I would have preferred to be able to use my MIDI keyboard, the website has a keyboard function available to use if you prefer that over typing note letters on a QWERTY keyboard.
Given its accessibility and cost of zero dollars, Noteflight is a tool I can use with my students without having spend precious budget dollars, and without having to ask parents to spend money for software. Students can work from home and from school simply by logging in online and saving their work. I tweeted about this and mentioned the Noteflight account, and they offered for my students to try one of their paid account options for free! We will have to try that in the next couple of weeks.
MuseScore is another free music notation software which is much more like the big guns of Finale and Sibelius in that it is a program to be downloaded to a computer. There are similar shortcuts to the aforementioned programs and to Noteflight, and this program allows the use of a MIDI keyboard. One function of this program I really enjoyed was the option to view the score as a continuous score without page breaks. This made for easier access when going back and forth to add repeats, endings, and copying/pasting similar measures. What was real interesting was that, in the midst of becoming familiar with the program, a friend of mine from Dubai, Juneefer Lapeña, asked me to look at a score of an arrangement she is working on. When she sent me the file, it was a MuseScore file! I was able to use the techniques I learned this week to make edits and share them with her.
Same as with Noteflight, the reality of this program being free to download and use will make it a possible program to use with my students in and out of the classroom. Perhaps after getting my students acquainted to writing music in Noteflight, I can graduate them to MuseScore for larger composition assignments.
All in all, this week provided many great programs and apps to facilitate creativity through improvisation and composition. Now comes the fun part.....actually trying it out with students!
References:
Bauer, William I. (2014). Music Learning Today: Digital pedagogy for creating, performing, and responding to music. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
https://irealpro.com/
When it comes to music improvisation and composition in the classroom setting, many of today's music educators don't take the time to teach it. There are multiple reasons for this. Some teachers do not feel comfortable teaching or facilitating improvisation because they were not taught it in their own music education. Others feel they do not have time to fit it into their established curriculum. And yet, there are others who feel teaching improvisation does not benefit students as much as teaching performance techniques in context of literature (Bauer, 2014). Nevertheless, apps such as iRealPro can be used not only within the classroom setting, but can also be used by students outside of school, as many of these apps are readily available on computers, phones, and tablets, and many of them are free and fun to use!
Music Notation
As a music educator, I often find myself using music notation software to rearrange parts, create replacement parts for destroyed/lost originals in emergency situations, or make custom assignments for my students. I have used programs such as Finale, Sibelius, and Noteflight over the years. This week, our class was tasked with familiarizing ourselves with Noteflight and MuseScore, both of which are free to use.
Noteflight is a web-based program and basic accounts are free. You won't be able to make full wind band scores with a free account, but there are many possibilities still. I originally used this program in high school for an assignment in the music theory class, and I used it frequently when having to complete theory assignments in college or write choir builders while student teaching. When exploring it further this week, I was introduced to a grid of the available keyboard shortcuts, and my world was forever changed. This program, in my own humble opinion, has the most user-friendly interface of the notation softwares I have used. I was able to whiz through compiling a 32-measure score within minutes without ever taking my hands away from the keyboard. While I would have preferred to be able to use my MIDI keyboard, the website has a keyboard function available to use if you prefer that over typing note letters on a QWERTY keyboard.
Given its accessibility and cost of zero dollars, Noteflight is a tool I can use with my students without having spend precious budget dollars, and without having to ask parents to spend money for software. Students can work from home and from school simply by logging in online and saving their work. I tweeted about this and mentioned the Noteflight account, and they offered for my students to try one of their paid account options for free! We will have to try that in the next couple of weeks.
MuseScore is another free music notation software which is much more like the big guns of Finale and Sibelius in that it is a program to be downloaded to a computer. There are similar shortcuts to the aforementioned programs and to Noteflight, and this program allows the use of a MIDI keyboard. One function of this program I really enjoyed was the option to view the score as a continuous score without page breaks. This made for easier access when going back and forth to add repeats, endings, and copying/pasting similar measures. What was real interesting was that, in the midst of becoming familiar with the program, a friend of mine from Dubai, Juneefer Lapeña, asked me to look at a score of an arrangement she is working on. When she sent me the file, it was a MuseScore file! I was able to use the techniques I learned this week to make edits and share them with her.
Same as with Noteflight, the reality of this program being free to download and use will make it a possible program to use with my students in and out of the classroom. Perhaps after getting my students acquainted to writing music in Noteflight, I can graduate them to MuseScore for larger composition assignments.
All in all, this week provided many great programs and apps to facilitate creativity through improvisation and composition. Now comes the fun part.....actually trying it out with students!
References:
Bauer, William I. (2014). Music Learning Today: Digital pedagogy for creating, performing, and responding to music. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
https://irealpro.com/
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