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Blog: Catalysts & Connections

Music Education Research & AERA..

I had a phenomenal experience this past week attending a wide variety of research sessions at the AERA conference in Chicago. The presence of music education at the AERA conference continues to grow as the Music Education Special Interest Group membership increases. If you aren’t a member of AERA and the music education SIG and are interested in current research you should seriously consider becoming one. Wondering what types of research studies were presented at the conference? Here is a… Read More »Music Education Research & AERA..

Happy Anniversary SoundCheck & John Schaefer!

I just found out, thanks to Justin Davidson, about the 5th year anniversary of the WNYC radio program Soundcheck. Congratulations are definitely due to John Schaefer (the host) and the Soundcheck crew, for an excellent radio show. I have Soundcheck to thank for inspiring several general music lessons I taught and can think of countless excerpts of episodes that could generate interesting discussions in a music class. No worries if you don’t live within the broadcasting range of WNYC, the… Read More »Happy Anniversary SoundCheck & John Schaefer!

Building instruments & music technology…..

Have you ever seen some of the interesting projects students work on in their technology (once known as “shop” ) classes and wished you could collaborate with those teachers to come up with a project that would combine music, technology and a little electrical engineering? Some students who like to work with electronics might want to try a little circuit bending. Other students might want to make their own electric guitar out of say, an IKEA table or construct high… Read More »Building instruments & music technology…..

Video Game Controller Instrument?

I don’t own a Wii and it is likely that the average music educator doesn’t either, however some of our students probably do. I have a feeling students would enjoy merging their video game finger dexterity with music mixing skills. Is this a look at a new possibility for integrating technology in the music classroom? Yann Seznec aka The Amazing Rolo has made the software available on his blog. You can insert your own audio files to replace his. Students… Read More »Video Game Controller Instrument?

Jazztube…

Thanks to ptkblog I just learned of jazztube, a website that collects jazz video clips from Youtube and organizes them according to musician. In a way, some of your students can actually say they saw John Coltrane, Clifford Brown or Ella Fitzgerald perform. If your next thought is that there should be a bluestube, you are in luck. You can find a link to bluestube from the jazztube site. John Lee Hooker, Son House and Keb Mo are just a… Read More »Jazztube…