Countdown to 2023-10 Tech Tools or Tips for Elementary and Middle School General Music: #4 Dr. Musik

For the past few years, I have counted down to the new year with a top ten list. I begin on 12/23 and end on 1/1. The list is comprised of 10 tech tools or tips for elementary and middle school general music. This top ten list will have a tech tool or tip featured each day in a short video and blog post. When we reach number one, I will follow it with a video of all ten tools and tips. Therefore, you can follow me daily, or come back on New Year’s Day and catch all ten at once.

WHO AM I?

If you are new to this YouTube channel or my website or my buymeacoffee site, my name is Amy M. Burns and I have been teaching and integrating technology into the elementary music classroom for over 25 years at Far Hills Country Day School, a preschool through grade 8 private school in NJ. For the past two years, I have also worked for Katie Wardrobe in her Midnight Music Community as the Community Coordinator answering questions and giving out tech tips to the community. Finally, I am an author and clinician with four publications. My recent publication titled Using Technology with Elementary Music Approaches is published by Oxford University Press and can be purchased from OUP or Amazon today.

Each week on this website and my YouTube channel I post a play-along video, resource video, or a webisode about integrating technology into the music classroom. Please subscribe and click like to the video so that you can get weekly notifications about resources you can immediately use in your classroom. I am also working on my Teachers Pay Teachers page, but currently, it holds many free items. I hope to get that going more in 2023. If you like my resources, please consider buying me a coffee at https://www.buymeacoffee.com/elmusedtech

#4 Dr. Musik

If you have not checked out https://www.doctormusik.com/ yet, I highly encourage you to check it out in the near future. Whether you travel to classrooms, have access to one device, or your students each have a device, you can use the apps and games portion of the website in a variety of ways.

History

Dr. Musik is Thierry Simard. From the website: “I live in Montreal (Canada), and I teach music at an elementary school. Under the name Le Renard à la guitare, I’ve been composing songs for my students for several years, and more recently, I began programming games to help them get familiar with several skills such as composition, rhythm recognition, instrument playing, etc. The games you will find here are mostly english adaptations from french games I originally posted on Le Renard à la guitare‘s website. If you have any question or any suggestion for a new game (or improvement for an existing one!), please contact me and I’ll gladly consider adding it!”

Apps and Games

Dr. Musik categorizes the apps and games into 5 categories:

1. Virtual Instruments

2. Composition Tools

3. Staff Reading Games

4. Rhythm

5. Others

I will highlight one tool from each category and give an example or idea on how to use it in the classroom.

Tip: If IT blocks the site, take an hour to explore the site and speak about how it will benefit your music class. Below, I give examples to help you with this so that all of your students have the opportunity to make, create, and learn music.

Virtual Instruments

Virtual instruments are wonderful to use because there are times when we do not have enough acoustic instruments to accommodate an entire class. With this site either displayed on a screen with one device or accessed from the student’s device, an entire class has access to instruments so that they can explore, create, and make music.

Virtual instruments can also give students the opportunity to play an instrument when they might not be able to play that particular instrument in its traditional way. For example, the virtual recorder gives students who cannot play the instrument in the traditional way, the opportunity to play it using their mouse or the device’s keyboard. Plus, if you hold the key down on the device, the recorder will sustain the note. My only wish is it would have chromatic notes like F# and Bb.

Don’t have a class set of ukuleles, check out the virtual ukulele!

Composition Tools

There are seven different tools for composition in this category. You could write notes in the ukulele tablature and then save them in the program and download it to print or present on a screen. You could create music with the robot sequencer, similar to the way you create music with Chrome Music Lab. You could click and drag iconic notation with Robot Composer.

Let’s focus on Dr. Musik’s Boomwriter. This is a wonderful tool for younger elementary students to create their own simple songs or melodies to be performed on the boomwhackers. You could have them do this as a class project on one screen (an interactive screen would be ideal but not required) or on their individual devices. You could choose quarter notes and rests or quarter and eighth notes and rests. Have them compose a four-measure melody together and then have them play the melody using acoustic and virtual instruments. Again, these projects can be saved but remember to write down the codes so they can be accessed again.

Staff Reading Games

Staff Dungeon and Robot Factory give you options to begin at a level other than level 1. Staff Dungeon also has three clefs to choose from. Robot Factory also has solfege. Aquarium and Apple Picking are similar with just different backgrounds. The challenge with those two games if you have to remind the students that since there are two C, D, E, F, and Gs on the treble clef staff (since it begins with middle C), they have to notice the arrow next to the note to place it correctly on the staff. All of the games feature either the treble or bass clef, and they do not focus on more than one ledger line. These are very friendly games and they do not speed up and stress out the students that can feel stressed by that. These games are wonderful for retrieval practice.

All of these games could be played individually with the students recording their own progress, or as a class game with various teams or one gigantic team working together to create the robot, etc.

Rhythm

There are three games in this category. I like the Sea of Rhythms as an assessment tool. Tap the arrow and the ship will get to a treasure box. A rhythm pattern appears at the top of the screen. Ask a student to perform it (they could use body percussion or instruments like rhythm sticks). If they perform it correctly, click on the arrow again and a treasure will appear. If they do not perform it correctly, assist them until they can perform it. Repeat until the entire class has been assessed. Or, if that would take too long, divide it into two to three classes.

The other two games also train the ear for rhythm reading and decoding.

Others

The Forest of Instruments is a great supplement and assessment listening tool for the instruments of the orchestra. Dr. Musik’s Sketch Book is a drawing tool, but I like that it includes various staves, even two- and three-line staves

COME BACK TOMORROW FOR TECH TOOL OR TIP #3!

Check back tomorrow for tech tool or tip #3!