Cool Kids Play The Glockenspiel -> Ivan Trevino's Music for the Young Percussionist

I have so much admiration for anyone throwing all of their composing creativity into writing music for young musicians.

Ivan Trevino is doing just that with his new collection of pieces for young percussionists. Read more below. My favorite title in the collection is Cool Kids Play The Glockenspiel.

MUSIC FOR THE YOUNG PERCUSSIONIST – Ivan Trevino

MUSIC FOR THE YOUNG PERCUSSIONIST (2022) was commissioned by The Juilliard School for Juilliard’s Music Advancement Program. The collection features 12 short pieces for snare, mallets, timpani, and multi-aux, and was written with the early – late high school percussionist in mind. In my experience, the music that young musicians experience and study can have a profound impact on their relationship with music. Rather than writing these pieces as a step towards conservatory, I wrote them as a step towards enrichment, with hooks and beats that might resonate with young musicians. While each piece focuses on specific musical and technical concepts, they were also written through the lens of a songwriter who enjoys writing tunes. I hope this spirit rings true for performers of this music.

Claris’s Plans for FileMaker Bode Well for Individual Users - TidBits

Some interesting changes coming to FileMaker, including a new name, and most notably, a freemium version!

I have talked at length about using FileMaker and relational databases to assess mastery-based learning in the band environment. Listen to the embedded podcast episode below for more.

I updated podcast listeners on how I am revamping this workflow and building it upon PKM software in another recent episode about building a second brain. I hope to go into more detail about this here later in the school year.

Read about the updates to FileMaker below.

Claris’s Plans for FileMaker Bode Well for Individual Users - TidBITS

The more important change for longtime individual FileMaker users is that there will be a freemium version of Claris Pro with free access to Claris Studio (and presumably Claris Go). Its only restriction is that databases created with the freemium version are restricted to a single user—but there are no size or time constraints. The apps are also free for professional developers, who will pay a single, as-yet-unspecified Claris Platform licensing fee only when they wish to deploy a solution to additional users. Since Claris is wholly owned by Apple, deployment could even mean putting an app on the Mac App Store. Those with existing licenses can continue to rely on them but won’t get access to Claris Studio without switching to a Claris Platform subscription.

Practicing Mindmap - Andy Bliss

Andy Bliss is a brilliant musician who knows how to use his tech tools to work through an idea. I loved this recent blog post of his. It is all about structuring practice methodically. Be sure to click the link and read the entire post. (He turned out a really neat MindNode mindmap in the process of thinking this idea through.)

Practicing Mindmap — Andy Bliss

Practicing is very much an iceberg-meme situation; much of the work is underwater and in preparation phases — before we are ever in the room with the instrument.

Fall always represents a return to this methodology for me. My primary goal with my first year university students is to establish practice habits - a healthy balance, great strategies, and supportive, compounding methods for growth.

David MacDonald unboxes the Odla music notation controller

David MacDonald reviews the Odla music notation controller at Scoring Notes.

Odla, an input device that “touches” the music | Scoring Notes:

Despite all the developments users have seen in music notation software and related technologies, the ways we actually get notes into the software hasn’t changed much in the last couple decades. Odla, an Italian music technology startup, is changing that with their new hardware controller for MuseScore and Dorico.

While other input devices rely on an instrument-style controller like a MIDI keyboard or “music alphabet” shortcuts on a computer keyboard, Odla directly models the five-line staff itself. The bright red staff-line buttons make Odla look pretty cool, and the connection between input and notation was obvious and intuitive from the moment the device hit my desk. As Odla’s tagline goes, it is “music you can touch”.

This device seems really interesting, and I like the idea of having MIDI input devices that embrace the visual nuances of staff notation.

David has an immeasurable amount of experience with notation software and gets straight to the point while testing this thing out. Check out the Odla here.

🔗 SoundSource 5.5 adds Shortcuts support for full Mac audio automation – Six Colors

From Jason Snell at Six Colors...

SoundSource 5.5 adds Shortcuts support for full Mac audio automation – Six Colors:

On Monday Rogue Amoeba released SoundSource 5.5, the latest version of its handy Mac sound-routing utility that—let’s be honest—is doing all the heavy lifting for a feature that should probably be a core part of macOS. (Apple doesn’t seem to really care about Mac audio, and that’s good for Rogue Amoeba’s array of products.)

The big feature of SoundSource 5.5 is support for Shortcuts. While Rogue Amoeba’s utility Audio Hijack decided to primarily support automation via JavaScript with some basic Shortcuts hooks, SoundSource is all in on Shortcuts. The app provides 17 different actions, and they affect not just SoundSource’s individual control over apps and audio inputs, but the system’s as well. So with SoundSource, you can now automate many of your Mac’s default audio settings, setting a new default input and output, for example.

SoundSource is one of my most depended-on Mac utilities. Shortcuts support is a natural extension to the app that I have been waiting for.

Most of my desks at school and at home have an audio interface set up that I plug into. While my computer usually defaults to it as the input and output when I plug it in, it doesn't always.

It is great to be able to have Shortcuts automate the selection of my input and output, amongst the other actions SoundSource is capable of.

For example, when I plug in to the front of the band room, my "Rehearsal" automation automatically starts, and one of the steps of this automation is to ensure that the Mac is outputting to my Scarlet Solo audio interface and set the volume to 50%.

Steinberg Summer Sale

Summer Deals:

Save up to 50% on Groove Agent 5 and expansions, Iconica, Dorico, Cubasis and much more. Only from July 7 to July 28, 2022.

Steinberg is running a summer sale right now and some of the cuts are deep. A lifetime purchase of Dorico is 30% off and Cubasis (which is, in my opinion, the most fully-featured DAW available for iPad) is 50% off.

Check it out!

Ben Giroux - Violin Sonata No. 1 in G minor: Fuga, J.S. Bach

I love bragging about my past private students, so here is Ben Giroux (Peabody Conservatory - BM Percussion Performance '21, BM Recording Arts and Sciences '22) performing the fugue from Bach's first violin sonata. Ben filmed and edited this video himself. Ben told me it ws ok to leave his email here in case you are in need of videography, live recording, audio, or video editing. Ben is available and can be reached here: GirouxBL99@gmail.com

Midnight Music: 25+ Ways to Use Canva to Create Teaching Resources

Midnight Music has a lot of great content for music educators. One topic I enjoy their coverage of is Canva, a web-based design tool.

Katherine Miller has some tips for using Canva that are worth checking out. Click the link below to read the post.

25+ Ways to Use Canva to Create Teaching Resources:

Being a teacher encompasses so many different skills. Some skills are taught and practiced in our pre-service work while others we have to figure out once we are deep in the trenches of student learning.

One of the skills that didn’t get much attention, at least in my pre-service program, was the practice of design in helping students gain, organize and use information. I understood the importance of design to prepare, present and practice standards that students needed to master but I didn’t have a way to easily do it.

I can remember copying transparencies to project onto paper so I could trace images to make my classroom materials more appealing. I also remember searching through clipart collections to find the perfect addition to digital items I created. And I will never forget making copy after copy to enlarge, reposition or get things to fit just right. Designing materials in my classroom involved lots of magic tape!

Thank goodness that things change! I have learned new skills and new tools, like Canva, have been created to make design as easy as drag and drop!

Google Docs now supports some Markdown

From The Verge…

# Google Docs now supports limited Markdown. —>

Google is adding Markdown support to Google Docs on the web, letting you format your document using text shortcuts rather than keyboard ones. In a blog post announcing the feature, Google says it’s doing this through its autocorrect feature, so it will automatically format the text for you after you type it in Markdown format. For example, if you type “# Google Docs is getting more Markdown support” it’ll automatically get converted to a level one heading.

Google says that Docs already supported a few Markdown autocorrections for bulleted and numbered lists, and checkboxes. It’s adding much wider support, though — you can now use Markdown to add headings, bold and italicize text (or do both), strikethrough (though it’s done using a - on either side of your content, rather than the traditional ~), and links. That’s a far from complete implementation of Markdown, but at least it covers most of what I personally use the language for.

Markdown is extremely useful and easy to learn because of its natural syntax that doesn’t look like code.

I wrote a little bit about why I use Markdown, and how it can be used to better organize and compose content in Learning Management Software. Read that here.

While Markdown is typically used to compose text documents and web content, it will only make your experience easier if you spend most of your time inside of Google Docs.

I found some of Google’s support documentation on Markdown here.

Pixelmator Pro 2.4 gets an update!

Pixelmator Pro 2.4 was recently released.

You can read more here. This version adds tons of new stuff, including color adjustments and effects layers.

Pixelmator Pro is always my recommendation for people who need a Photoshop-like tool, but without getting a degree in Photoshop or buying a monthly Creative Cloud subscription.

Pixelmator seems like it gets easier to use every update. It’s wild how much power they pack into an interface that is inspired by Photoshop workflows, but immediately accessible anyone who has used a personal computer.

My favorite features of Pixelmator Pro in recent years include:

• One-click machine learning feature which can remove things from the background or foreground, and sharpen low-quality images
• Shortcuts support (which can automatically batch edit images on my computer, generate my podcast show art, and more)
• It’s easy to use interface

Check it out on the Mac App Store.