PLN - Pitch Formula

http://www.pitchformula.com/

An interesting project in which pop music and critical reviews of said music were processed by a computer formula in an attempt to create resultant music that was in "good" critical taste. Interesting results(mp3s provided), but it doesn't look like the rise of the machines is here quite yet.

Assist Tech

Seeing the video demonstrating Soundbeam and reading about the effects this and other musical experiences have had on children, I found myself asking a question: what is it about music that makes it such a powerful experience even for those who, because of their circumstances, have usual difficulty experiencing or being involved in creating music? And why do certain types of music seem more influential in this regard?

Anyone with hearing can choose to experience 4:33 without aid. Anyone capable of movement can probably create percussive effects and hear and/or feel vibrations, thus creating music. Almost everyone should be capable of perceiving the sounds of their environment and creating and organizing some sort of sound of their own creation(and if they are not, Soundbeam won't do a whole lot to help them): thus music.

Still, it seems these experiences are either less powerful or at least less ballyhooed than having small children listen to Mozart or Soundbeam. Is there some aspect of the way in which Mozart and Bach are organized that resonates with the human mind? Does cultural indoctrination through the music we hear in our early lives make music that fits our organizational sensibilities more influential to us?

These questions are important when thinking about something like Soundbeam. Sure, it's cool, but it may not really be necessary. If someone can understand, on any level, the concept of organizing sound, then there is basically no way they can fail to create and experience music if they so choose and are guided, even with extreme limitations. If they cannot, then Soundbeam is just a really fancy toy that makes interesting noises.

Unfortunately, Soundbeam may not be available or a budget option for some educational settings. I think in this case, it is the task of the educator to find a way to involve students in music regardless. Taking away Josh Smith's flute does not cause him to stop being a musician. Soundbeam is just one instrument, and really, anything that can create sound and vibrations is an instrument. That's a lot of possibilities.

Digital Photographs

Digital photography is a massively huge development that we now tend to take for granted. As someone who went to a tiny cash strapped elementary school and experienced some of the old technology and alternatives, I can say that digital photos make education much easier and more flexible. Traditional photos are fragile, easily misplaced, and only editable by physically altering them. Digital photos make it easy to take all or part of a photograph or digital graphic and quickly clip and edit it for a specific use. In music history these days, every lesson is accompanied by pictures of people, buildings, the artwork and architecture of the times, and so forth. It really adds to the lesson, especially comparing music with the art and architecture of the period.

While instrumental music has often tended towards just rehearsing and performance, images certainly have application. We spend all this time talking about visual analogies, but would it not be effective for visual learners especially to show images? Impressionist art and impressionist music, for example, compliment each other nicely in terms of teaching style.

Of course, one has to watch out for copyright, but digital images are easily accessible, customizable, and usable in the classroom.

PLN Addition - Jeffrey Quick's Blog

http://blog.case.edu/jeffrey.quick/

Our own music librarian and Cleveland Composers' Guild member Jeffrey Quick keeps a blog that features postings of performances and recordings of his own music, as well as witty and insightful analysis of the music of others. Those familiar with Mr. Quick will recognize his distinct wit and humor in the writing.

PLN Addition - Recorder Resources

http://diteggiature-flauto-dolce.it/en/index.php

A massive index of fingerings and techniques for one of the most common general music instrument: the recorder. However, the recorder is more than just a headache inducing piece of plastic played by 3rd graders: the site includes historical resources, fingerings and alternate fingersing for different regions, makers, and time periods. Form a consort and have your students use recorders the way they were used back in their glory days! After it, it can't be worse than playing Hot Cross Buns for the hundredth time.

Digital Natives

Prensky's article on digital natives has a lot of very good points. Younger people and many students today are digital natives in the sense that they are willing to pick up new technology and learn it quickly through use and trial and error. I know I function in this manner when learning to use new programs.

Even during the Sibelius unit of music tech class, I experienced some of the frustrations that Prensky notes. The detailed and laborious step by step instructions provided by the textbook took a long time to read, were slow, and were overly thorough. The program is designed to be as intuitive as possible, and so for me, the best way to learn was simply by looking at the desired products on the first page of each chapter and replicating them as exactly as possible using what I could immediately understand about the program from looking at the interface. For the things that I couldn't immediately figure out, the necessary resource was not a step by step guide but rather a searchable index. In this case, it was the index of the textbook, though a digital index would have been better due to ease of searching. Thinking about it, I learned programming for my Java class in basically the same way: starting with a goal and whatever understanding I already had and adding to it in small pieces from an index as needed, not going through commands in a systematic step by step order.

Prensky also makes another good point: educators often make a grand show of using the latest and greatest technology to simply teach the same material in the same traditional manner, while they neglect small and simple things that would aid digital natives. For math, posting linked examples, homework sets, and theorems online would be a huge boon. It would allow students to sift through a network and quickly find and focus on the exact material they need instead of wasting time and energy slogging through a traditional systematic textbook.

I'm not sure that I agree with Prensky though that all the burden of change is on digital immigrants. There are many old ideas and works presented in traditional manners that still have value. In history and classic literature, one is dealing with old source material, and no matter what supplementary materials are used, one can't understand a book without reading it or history without examining the documents and artifacts. The same goes for Prensky's idea of creating a game about classical philosophy. It's all well and good, but at some point, the students have to read the words of the philosophers themselves, who generally present their ideas in a traditional manner.

The new ideas are worth embracing, but many old ideas will continue to have value(even Euclidean Geometry, that one was a real head scratcher) and shouldn't simply be thrown away because they don't immediate conform to the sensibilities of digital natives.

Readings - Multimedia and Audio Compression

A lot of this stuff was already familiar to me. Pictures, oddly enough, were something that I studied in the context of binary in math and computer programming. Sound files likewise I had previously learned about when I had had to make recordings for various auditions. The section on text had some interesting an useful tidbits, especially for making things line up, an annoying problem that makes many websites look stupid and unprofessional.

However, the article on sound suffered from one of the usual problems: it sounded quite outdated. Broadband connections are pretty much standard today, which is why YouTube is so popular. Audio files are almost a nonissue now, in a day when anyone can host videos for free on the internet with someone else picking up the bandwidth. Admittedly, YouTube has problems with profitability, but I personally don't see it going away. The same goes for audio. All sorts of people host all sorts of stuff on myspace, social networking sites, their personal sites.

MP3 compression has actually been going the opposite direction recently. Apple recently rolled out new higher quality MP3 download options for iTunes because even with the higher bitrate, connections are so fast that the downloads don't take long at all. BitTorrent as well has made sharing files on networks easier, though this is not applicable for personal websites. MIDI is still useful because it is a set of instructions and such for notation purposes, but size of files is less and less of an issue. Hulu even streams entire episodes of TV shows, and sunday night football can be watched via a live stream.

Anyways, the point is that while understanding audio is useful, compression will continue to become less and less important as computers and networks get faster and faster.

Social Bookmarking

This is certainly a useful idea if undertaken by a collective that is actively trying to find and share relevant information. It certainly is easier than searching google. Thus, under the concept of a PLN or music educators sharing resourcres, it could be effective.

I tend to wonder though about wider uses simply because thye require that everyone uses a sort of universal logic and systemizes their tags. I know that my personal bookmarks on my computer are not organized in such a way as to be easily followed by anyone other than myself. They are split into divisions, but the divisions often have to do with associations I have with the sites that may not be obvious to others. It's certainly possible to tag by subject, but I also tend to organize bookmarks by how useful I think the sites are. So two sites could both be relevant to music education or flute playing, but one might be useful enough that I visit it once a week, while another might be more like once a month.

The idea of social bookmarking doesn't really solve this problem, unless one starts tagging things as "useless" or includes in the description the limitations of the entry. So, in some sense, one is still back to analyzing and sorting through the material, just with a higher probability of relevance. Certainly this is an improvement from search engines, users just shouldn't expect their accounts to be bombarded with heavenly manna in the form of universally relevant and useful bookmarks as identified by tags in every instance.

PLN Addition - Alex Ross's Blog

http://www.therestisnoise.com/

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/alexross/

Alex Ross is a music critic for the New Yorker as well as the author of "The Rest if Noise," an interesting, accessible, and engaging book about listening to music of the 20th century. On his blog, he points out interesting events, reviews, CDs, and includes some of his own ideas about the state and direction of classical music in modern times.

PLN - musictheory.net

www.musictheory.net

Nothing groundbreaking, but this is a nice set of tools for theory and composition purposes. It has printable staff paper, interval identification, tone matrices, basic theory, and quite a few other goodies. I used the interval and triad ear training functions to practice for my own theory tests.

PLN Addition - ArtsBeat

ArtsBeat is the music blog of the New York Times. It deals with all sorts of musical topics, but some recent posts touch on the interesting question of whether operas should be performed always aiming to replicate the period performances and presumably the composers' ideas or whether there is flexibility and that directors should have some leeway.

This touches the surface one of the deepest and most fundamental debates concerning the philosophy of applied music. What matters most: the intent of the composer or the experience of the listener? If Beethoven intended "Eroica" to express triumph and heroism, but I, as a listener with no prior knowledge, experience the piece as an expression of tragedy, is my experience invalid or "wrong" because it is not what the composer intended? Or is my experience valid because it is authentic for me despite the implications this has on the composer's authority over his own creation?

On SMART Boards

While many educational technologies have potential, they often require some thought and planning for implementation, and in some cases can tempt teachers to make the curriculum serve the interests of the technology instead of the other way around. In contrast, SMART boards have so many readily obvious uses in so many different types of classrooms that anyone with the resources to acquire on could easily jump right in. Without even considering whatever groundbreaking implications they might have, SMART boards make many of the little tasks of teaching easier.

No longer waste time scribbling illegible chicken scratch on chalkboards. Prepare visual aids ahead of time and focus in class teaching attention on other things. Need to change something? Quick type or create it on the spot, it's probably no slower than writing on a chalkboard anyways, and unlike transparencies, files are easily altered.

Instead of needing to buy expensive computers for each child and having to monitor them individual on internet use or whatever else, easily connect a computer and have the class focus on computer media together. The interactive functions allow the students to participate to some small degree as well.

The list goes on.

As someone who is used to using a computer connected to the internet as a workplace/media center, the SMART board presents a logical expansion of this concept to the teaching environment. I could easily imagine myself finding plenty of use for a SMART board in a classroom without needing training or having to attend focus groups. Honestly, I could find uses for a SMART board in my own room, though some of its functions would certainly be wasted in that setting.

The SMART board seems like a good choice for a piece of technology that could serve as a workhorse in the classroom, and is certainly something I would be interested in having as a teacher.

Picture This

The idea of using recordings for pedagogical purposes is something that musicians are often told to consider but rarely actually execute, often simply due to the hassle of using and setting up decent equipment. Thankfully, as technology improves, getting effective recordings is becoming easier. While a truly professional recording still requires a studio and expensive equipment, these days, even a computer and a few well placed mics can capture something more useful to players of all levels.

For all players, recordings have value in showing what was occurring rhythmically and dynamically. It's actually very difficult to play evenly, and a lot of musicians don't realize how bad they are at it. For the advanced player, some of the better recording devices accessible today can also be very useful for working on sound. Many of the nuances are captured, and one is able to gain a valuable "audience perspective" of oneself. Most instruments sound different from 10 feet away than they do from one foot away. Am I projecting? Am I obsessing too much over slight unclarities in the sound that I can only hear because of my proximity to the point of origin? Recordings can help us as musicians answer these questions.

Perhaps most interesting to me was the idea of using pictures of wave amplitudes in teaching. It fits in with the idea of those who learn best through visual stimuli, and even on an intuitive level, makes a lot of sense considering all the time musicians spend trying to translate music, which is inherently sounded, into visual and tactile images that assist achieving certain nuances. I could definitely see the use in not just asking for big rounded notes as a band director, but using the visual stimulus of a wave chart to show students what their notes look like.

The rest of the article, as well as the guide to recording equipment, was interesting, but may be a bit outdated. Hard drive space, as is discussed with respect to recordings, is hardly an issue these days. External devices capable of holding several hundred GB of data are available at very reasonable prices. Of course, this is simply all the more reason to use recording, especially digital recording. These days, even large amounts of space online are fairly easy to come by. This makes for a convenient way to distribute recorded material. I have used my Case filer a couple times to distribute my own recordings of recitals that I played on. It's much quicker and easier than having to take the time to burn CDs.

PLN Addition - Slate's Music Box

http://www.slate.com/id/2066612/landing/1

I enjoy many of Slate's columns because they managed to be both insightful and witty at the same time, and generally, the Music Box column, covering all forms of music, is no exception. It only comes out every few weeks, but the various authors often put an interesting spin on a conventional music topic.

One fairly recent entry I enjoyed was an article about "The Lexicon of Musical Invective" and what effects it might have on how we perceive music. The famous book was discussed in relation to the mythos of the brilliant but misunderstood composer and the shortsighted critics of his time who simply lacked the faculties to comprehend his genius.

Of course, no one wants to be that guy who trashes a composition that goes on to become highly respected, but at the same time, as educators, we have to be able to look at new pieces and have the confidence to make independent judgments. The repertory is a huge part of the curriculum, and promoting lousy music for fear of looking bad in the future, or simply ignoring the issue of new music and playing only what others have already approved is a disservice to students.

This larger concept of the dynamic between composer, audience, and critical establishment is hugely important in music, and something I have a lot of interest in, but this isn't the time or place for a detailed examination of these ideas.

Reading Reaction - Sequencestration

Now this article was interesting. While the primary focus was how to make MIDI more humanized for use in the educational settings, I saw in it something slightly different: taking the inherent limitations of MIDI and turning them into strengths.

The biggest weakness of MIDI is constancy: it always sounds the same, given a particular MIDI player. However, this also gives one, as a sequencer, a great deal of control over the sound. Sequencestration looks at this from the point of view of sound quality. One can mix and blend any of a huge set of consistent sounds together and get different results. With enough determination, one could even create one's own midi samples for use.

The article also talks about "humanizing" MIDIs, either through manual playing, or a humanize option(something I have not personally encountered). The manual playing is nice as long as no one needs to read the score, as the computer will record all the variances literally in the notation.

I'm not sure I'm convinced that even these techniques will make MIDIs particularly desirable for student performance, but this sound mixing is certainly applicable to composition. Electronic sounds have become more and more important and composition, and even for composers not directly interested in composition, sound experimentation helps develop the ability to orchestrate well. Considering and experiencing some of the vast sound possibilities out there encourage composers to use instrumentation and orchestration as important compositional techniques, instead of relying only on the notes and rhythms on the score, as is often a problem with inexperienced and developing composers.

Reading Reaction - Vermont MIDI Project

Reading about the Vermont MIDI Project was quite interesting and encouraging. It is definitely true that composition is neglected in music education outside of dedicated college programs. Even the composers I know who have gone on to study composition in college were primarily self taught until that point.

Composing is not easy. Compounding this, we teach in our general music classes very often a mythos of writers, composers, artists, creators in general as transcendent geniuses. While I am not saying that they are or are not, this certainly makes composing seem removed from the student. How could a mere student even think to approach the same type of art as such a mythic figure as Beethoven? And even if students do get past this, there is scant guidance for learning how to compose. Music theory exists, but unfortunately, in most cases, it is simple common practice theory that limits study to the music of specific period that could generously be said to cover 1600-1800 AD.

While technology was certainly an enabler for the Vermont MIDI project, what impressed me most, and what I have to believe was at the core of the project were the emphasis on teaching teachers about composition and bringing in professional composers as mentors.

Combined with network capabilities and notation software for digitizing music, not only did students have a way to share their music, they had access to experts who could provide guidance and feedback. Notation software and the ability to provide sonic feedback are hugely important, but so is actually teaching about compositional technique. Simply giving a student access to a notation program and telling them to go at it and express the inner workings of their soul is not that likely to produce a competent composer. Some students might figure it out or find an unusual niche(think mature John Cage), but in most cases, students will need to guidance to come to understand that compositional express lies at the crossroads of originality, structure, and history, as well as to develop their technique. Expert composers and educators trained in compositional technique can foster these skills by starting students out with rigorous structure and forcing them to develop various aspects of their compositional skill independently, moving to greater compositional freedom for the students as they build a repertory of skills and techniques that will increase their likelihood of producing interesting and coherent complex compositions.

However, while less related to technology or the Vermont MIDI project, I think it is also important to attack the mythos that makes composing seem so formidable. J.S. Bach may have been a brilliant composer, but he didn't waltz onto the scene circa 1700 and invent music. Nor did Beethoven enter the world a tragic and heroic genius whose spirit overcame all challenges. They both studied and learned from the past, and then built slowly upon it. Nor did they always have some spark of inspiration that caused everything they wrote to be infused with greatness. If we look at early Beethoven, there is not a lot original or innovative about his works. They don't sound at all like what we normally associate with him. J.S. Bach was throughout his career a stodgy old musician stuck in the past who refused to adapt to the changing musical world around him. His music remained largely in obscurity until Mendelssohn managed to catalyze a Bach revival by staging the St. Matthew Passion.

The point being: while history tells us that Bach and Beethoven ended up achieving greatness, they started out like the rest of us. They had to learn composition, and it took them time to develop maturity and their personal styles. We even have the evidence, but it is cast aside as "not worth studying" and ignored. Maybe if we really think about it, we know logically that this must be true, but on another level, the mythos of the "great persons" view of history is quite powerful and daunting. As educators, if we are to encourage participation and confidence in composition, this is a paradigm worth challenging and we are the ones positioned to challenge it.

PLN Addition - Malcom Gladwell's Blog

Malcom Gladwell is a writer for the New Yorker and author, someone who doesn't really have any expertise in the field of education. Still, I think his work posits a number of interesting questions and ideas that relate to education, and his blog is worth reading.

One could criticize his tendency for flair, the fact that he doesn't do much research himself, or the position he holds as a sort of "pop sociologist," but he is definitely an intelligent person, and in my opinion his writing is both accessible and thought provoking. An examples of his recent writing relevant to teaching:

"Outliers" theory - Why do some people succeed and some fail? How important is talent vs. work vs. environment? Gladwell points out that athletes born in the early months of the year have much more success on average than those born late in the year. When young, they are are part of a year bigger, stronger, and faster than their peers. They perform the best and receive the best training, believed to have the most potential, which just widens the gap further.

This definitely occurs in parallel in music. When a 4 year old learns by age 7 to play the piano well, she is invited and granted scholarships to special music camps, the best teachers want her, and so on. In this environment, where she gets the best training, of course she will probably end up one of the best pianists of her cohort. Is this because she had talent and potential or because she had the best environment for becoming a great pianist?

We as music educators naturally get excited when we hear students who are skilled, but assuming that these students have superior potential may be a flawed approach. The goal has to be to give our best effort not only for the most skilled with respect to immediacy, but for everyone who wishes to learn. We also need to fight against the culture of "it's too late for me to become a great musician." Unfortunately, the state of music education often very much reflects that statement. Some students may find a passion for music later or need to work harder for success, but that doesn't mean they can't become great musicians. A musical future should not feel impossible simple because one failed to make All-state band in middle or high school.

As a student, it can be hard to believe in your own chance to succeed when you see invitations to camps, studies, training, and the like lavished on your more immediately skilled peers while your own teachers may openly voice a lack of confidence in you or simply ignore your interests to focus on others. A few of these students may be lucky enough to meet paths with an exceptional teacher or mentor, or their families might have enough money to buy the best training outright, but barring these, the traditional music education system doesn't leave them a lot of opportunity to realize their potential.

Innovative uses of Notation Software?

Reading the articles about notation software, some of the ideas are pretty good, but considering the innovation they claimed, I was somehow expecting something a bit more obscure or arcane. Most of the authors' suggestions are things that are pretty obvious or even widely implemented nowadays(some of the articles are several years old and technology moves fast).

The ideas that appeal most to me are composition, ear training, and theory. Being able to hear assignments and compositions on demand when a pianist or instrumentalist isn't available is a huge boon that allows composition to be more accessible and less intimidating. For theory and ear training, it is just convenient, as not everyone will be able to play even a chorale or voice leading assignment on piano. Same idea with ear training.

From the actual implementations I have seen in the past, I remain unconvinced about creating electronic accompaniments, especially to more complex music. While computer sampling has improved, machines still sound very much like machines. It's hard to work on blend, musical nuances, and the like. Even if you add dynamics in notation software, they are unsubtle and often border on ugly. Dynamic shading and timbres are nonexistent. I don't think the advantages of this outweigh the advantages of simply recording an accompaniment played by a professional player and using that. The mechanical rhythmic exactness and ability to scroll through the score on demand are gone, but the student gets to play along with a musical performance, which encourages musicality. Having students play along with monotone mechanical performances encourages monotone mechanical playing.

Students are always listening and learning, and as a teacher, I would prefer that they listen and learn from recordings and samples that feature nuanced and musical performances.

PLN Addition - Music Theory Blog

The blog, Music Theory Blog, is a nice reference for music theory, from the most basic aspects to some more complex but still at least somewhat conventional chords. While the site isn't going to teach someone music theory itself, the references could be useful in an educational context, especially in cases, as often happens, when students are performing music that involves harmonies that don't fit perfectly into common practice theory. A polychord or twelve-tone chord might look like a block of notes, but even though these aren't covered in much detail in most theory classes, these are not things that are beyond students' understanding. Having a basic reference such as this blog allows them to at least look up and understand the construction of unknown chords. Often, if they have a good understanding of theory basics, this will lead them to accurate inferences concerning the uses of these unknown chords.

Of course, it is also a nice reference for people first learning about music notation, as everything is hyperlinked, and symbols for notes, rhythms, clefs, and time signatures may be easily looked up.

Late Noteflight Reaction

Despite the general excitement, I must say I was not impressed with Noteflight. From a user standpoint, it was slow, buggy, particular, and generally trouble to use. The note grid was often inconsistent for me, which led to notes dropping in the wrong place. Also, it was a hassle to have the cursor move forward every time I input a note. This needs to be adjustable(though maybe it is and I missed it). The playback often lagged, and the options for composition were seriously lacking beyond the very basics.

Obviously, Noteflight has two big advantages: it's free and it's completely online. No need to buy expensive software, move files around on flashdrives, work only on school computers, and the like. However, with the amount of space anyone can obtain online for free and the fact that bandwith is easy to access, either via home internet connections, publicly accessible library computers, public wifi, or other methods, to me, the only real concern needs to be the price of software.

On that note, for education purposes, I would prefer to see a piece of software somewhere in between Finale/Sibelius and Noteflight in terms of functionality, priced in the same range as a middle school or high school textbook. For students in general music class with only a passing interest in composition, Noteflight may be sufficient. But for those who do have a strong enough interest in things like arranging and composition so as to take a class, I don't think it is unreasonable to ask them to shell out some money for software, akin to buying math textbooks for algebra. Students aren't taught math from suboptimal and limited mathematics websites simply because they are free, and those seriously interested in the uses of music notation software should not have to use a program as flawed and limited as Noteflight simply because it is free.

Despite offers of student editions, Finale and Sibelius are still quite pricey. Noteworthy Composer is in a more appropriate price range, but has a rather poor interface. It does, however, have significant functionality for most compositional uses. Still, it seems to me that a better alternative could be created.

Technology and Music

Technology has changed music dramatically and continues to do so. It can't be reversed or escape, and will continue. It happens in both obvious and subtle ways, small and significant ways. On my other blog, I just wrote a post about how something as simple as the existence of shuffle has a huge impact on the way music is experienced.

Obviously, this means that technology also has to have an impact on music education. Music education needs to reflect the contemporary state of music, in addition to teaching about the past. This is what the idea of TPACK gets at, in my opinion. Anyone can learn to functionally use a piece of software or other new technology aimed for general consumption without much trouble. Likewise, any music teacher should start out with a strong knowledge of music based in both past and present.

The key idea of TPACK is that technology develops quite quickly, and so in order to stay up to date, it is necessary to have an understanding of how new technologies interact with established music and education paradigms. Without this understanding, it would be difficult to make intelligent choices concerning the implementation of technology in music education. Even if technology is simply used "because it is available," it is going to have some impact on the student's musical experience and education. In the absence of consideration and planning, this impact may very well not aid in the attainment of educational objectives.

To consider a specific example, one of the most obvious examples of technology changing music education is that of music notation software. Whereas before a composer would have to conceive of music aurally, play it on piano(or whatever other instrument themselves), or convince someone else to play it, they can now get instant feedback from computer programs. In general, this is a huge boon for learning composition. How can one create experiences and learn from them if one cannot listen to the music one creates? However, there is also danger of becoming too dependent on this software. Piano skills are incredibly valuable for a composer for a number of reasons, and those aiming to compose should still be encouraged to study them. Likewise, aural development is imperative. No program is going to be able to truly simulate the experience of music performed by human musicians, and since most music is intended for performance by humans, composers need to be able to envision the final product aurally within in their own minds to have complete control over their creations.

RSS and PLN

I got a google reader set up, but so far I don't have a whole lot of music additions yet. I added TrueHoop and The Fix, a few non-musical things I follow, but most of the music related resources I use don't fit the RSS model as well because they are references, suppliers, or other types of resources that don't issue common and regular updates. I did subscribe to OMEA, MENC, Slate's "Music Box" column, and WaPo's "The Classical Beat" blog.

I've been using aggregators for quite a while now, so the concept of RSS isn't new as it's simply a personalized aggregator. The advantage of this is not having to sort through irrelevant junk an aggregator might claim is relevant, but on the other hand, aggregators also pull material sometimes from sources that are not known to me or that I don't think important enough to scan on a regular basis with my RSS. In this way, I sometimes find new sources that are consistently interesting.

The PLN and aggregation models are great for bringing in new developments that people are trying to share, and this often happens in education, but in more general music terms, I still find it very difficult to find relevant reference information even when actively looking for it. Information on composers and pieces if very hard to find if you move outside the most famous composers. Even such people as Pierre Sancan and Matsudaira Yoritsune have only scant information available. Sancan was a renowned piano teacher at the Paris Conservatory and Prix de Rome winner and doesn't even have a Wikipedia page. Information on Matsudaira is available to level that he was a serialist influenced by gagaku, but little else, and given those tendencies, recordings will be sparse as well.

Knowledge of composers and music is incredibly relevant to interpreting music, yet still is neglected by many people, probably in part due to the difficulty of finding information for anything outside the mainstream. Even a database that included rudimentary information and observations on composers and music that made an effort to include information on figures from outside the western orchestral standards would be an incredibly valuable resources for my PLN.

As a music teacher, there is so much to be done in finite time that it is tempting to neglect the historical aspect of music if it is not easily accessible. If it is made easily accessible, I think it would benefit music education on various levels.

Noteflight Project 1 - A Bicycle Built for Two

This blog is now up

Now witness the firepower of this fully armed and operational . . . blog!