This play-along is challenging! The tempo is quick, there are a lot of chromatic notes, the rhythm has a lot of playing on the offbeats, and the play-along encourages one to look ahead when performing it. I would highly suggest slowing down the tempo on YouTube by clicking on the settings, choosing the “Playback speed” and slowing it down to 0.75 or 0.50.” Or use the “Transpose ▲▼ pitch ▹ speed ▹ loop for videos” Chrome extension that will allow you to change the pitch and key of most YouTube videos. In addition, I would use the screenshots/file found here in the blog post so that your students can practice this before trying it with the video.
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This week, Midnight Music is running its "Festival of Free PD" which includes four webinars for anyone to access until Cyber Monday.
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Level up from ChatGPT and try some of these AI tools specifically created for educators! This blog/episode focuses on three AI tools that educators can use to save them a lot of time and energy. Like my resources? Please consider buying me a coffee at https://www.buymeacoffee.com/elmusedtech
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Canva’s “Brand New Era” was launched this past week. If you noticed, Canva had ten gift-wrapped boxes that when you unwrapped them, showed you some new tools and fun tutorials for you to use to explore those tools. As I worked my way through the tutorials, I realized that many of these will be useful in our music classrooms. Here are some ways to use these new items. Check out the blog and webinar video to see some examples and ideas on how to use these new features in the music classroom.
To check out more, read Canva’s blog here or check out a deep dive here when they launched it this week.
Like my resources? Please consider buying me a coffee at https://www.buymeacoffee.com/elmusedtech/
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Have you ever needed free notation graphics that you could easily grab and use at a moment’s notice? Or have access to them to create manipulatives, presentations, worksheets, posters, and more? Look no further than Katie Wardrobe’s Midnight Music’s Big Free Music Notation Library COMPLETE 2022! Check out the webisode and blog about this great resource. Like my resources? Please consider buying me a coffee at https://www.buymeacoffee.com/elmusedtech
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Many of my favorite music educators from Katie Wardrobe to Jim Frankel have spoken highly of the free website, Vocal Remover (https://vocalremover.org/) created by Melnik Dmitry. This site can do so many things that you need for your music classroom, and it can do it for free on various devices because it is web-based. You are not required to login to use this, but if you become a patron, you will be able to use the website often. Like my resources? Please consider buying me a coffee at https://www.buymeacoffee.com/elmusedtech.
Read more to find out how to remove vocals, split accompaniment tracks into separate, instrumental tracks, and so much more!
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It was another inspiring day at the New Jersey Association for Independent Schools (NJAIS) Innovation and Collaboration Conference! There were thought-provoking sessions and a wonderful keynote address. Here are my takeaways from Day 2, how some can be implemented personally and how some can be implemented in elementary music.
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The New Jersey Association for Independent Schools (NJAIS) held their annual Innovation and Collaboration Conference live, after having virtual conferences for the past couple of years. It was so wonderful to be back together in-person and to learn how educators are using technology in ways that focus on innovation and collaboration.
When I first attended this conference back in 2017, I left inspired. Jaime Casap, who at the time was a Google Education Evangelist, was one of the keynote speakers and he spoke about the fact that our current generation does not understand the question, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” This was a popular question asked to many of us when we were growing up in the 20th century. Instead, they are asking, “What do I need to learn to solve that problem?” And this leads to collaborating with others to solve problems. His keynote inspired me to use technology in ways of collaborating to make music. This was very successful with students working together using Seesaw and Soundtrap to create music and reflect on it together. This was especially true when the pandemic hit and we had to adopt virtual learning.
The first day of NJAIS’s Innovation and Collaboration Conference proved to be just as inspiring. As I break down some of the sessions I attended, I end each reflection with what the tech tool or concept looks like in an elementary music classroom.
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Looking for summer PD where you can learn on your time, at your own pace, and about music creativity? Join us for a course that includes lessons and ideas for Garageband, Soundtrap, and Bandlab.
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