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Robby Burns
David MacDonald unboxes the Odla music notation ...
David MacDonald unboxes the Odla music notation controller

🎙 #9 - Automate All The Things! with Craig McClellan

Craig returns to talk about automating bedtime routines with Shortcuts, HomeKit automation, automating the Mac, our decision to end The Class Nerd podcast, and more.

Show Notes:

App of the Week: Robby - DEVONthink Craig McClellan - Dark Noise

Album of the Week: Robby - Fiona Apple: Fetch the Bolt Cutters Craig McClellan - Shawn McConnell: Live From Basement East

Where to Find Us: Craig McClellan: Twitter | Website Robby Burns: Twitter | Blog

Subscribe to Music Ed Tech Talk:

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Brainstorming ways teachers might be more productive with Microsoft’s New Fluid Framework

Microsoft kicked off a developer conference earlier this week. The Verge writes about a very cool set of forthcoming productivity features.

Microsoft’s new Fluid Office document is Google Docs on steroids - The Verge

Microsoft is creating a new kind of Office document. Instead of Word, Excel, or PowerPoint, the company has created Lego blocks of Office content that live on the web. The tables, graphs, and lists that you typically find in Office documents are transforming into living, collaborative modules that exist outside of traditional documents.

Microsoft calls its Lego blocks Fluid components, and they can be edited in real time by anyone in any app. The idea is that you could create things like a table without having to switch to multiple apps to get it done, and the table will persist on the web like a Lego block, free for anyone to use and edit.

This is obviously very cool, but it’s the next part that gets me excited.

Fluid is designed to make those tables, charts, and lists always feel alive and editable, no matter where you create them and regardless of how you share and copy them into other apps. Instead of getting a static and dull chart you copied from Excel, you’ll get a chart that can be edited anywhere you paste it, and you’ll see everyone making edits as they happen. That might be in the middle of an email chain, in a chat app like Microsoft Teams, or even third-party apps eventually.

So certain parts of Office documents can be shared between multiple spaces, or with multiple users, across multiple apps. If I am understanding this correctly, I can instantly think of 25 ways this could make my job easier. Here are a few...

  1. Copy tasks from a Microsoft To Do project called Field Trip into an email to my music team and have everyone check off tasks in the email as they do them. Status of those completed tasks syncs back to my project in To Do.
  2. Say I am logging a spreadsheet of student concert attire orders and I need some data for a few choir kids. I can copy and paste just those cells, email them to the choir teacher, he can fill out the data right in the email, and I watch as it syncs back to my spreadsheet.
  3. Similar to that last one. My school district sends me an updated list of recommended private teachers. I email just the flute teachers to my flute students and it stays up to date when the data is edited by those who maintain the list.
  4. No more putting the same student names in multiple different documents. I can have one Word document that acts as a primary roster. All concert programs, student lists, sectional roster documents, etc. are just snippets of text from my primary roster document, that automatically update when I update the primary roster. No more misspelled names, inconsistency, or duplicated work.
  5. Various data from documents can be clipped into media rich notes in OneNote where I can access them alongside one another without thinking about document management. For example, a short list of Concert Attire tasks could coexist in the same note as a portion of a payment spreadsheet, and both could update in real time when I edit their respective documents in To Do and Excel.

For the reccord, I don't use any of Microsoft's apps as my default tools, but I can certainly see myself using them more often if I can leverage this kind of power out of them.

Some questions I have:

  • Will this be web only or will it eventually roll out to Microsoft apps on all platforms?
  • Will Microsoft stand alone apps like Excel continue to exist or will they be replaced with one app (like the iPhone which now has an "Office" app that combines features of the whole suite)
  • Will this actually catch on with people who are used to saving files to places on their hard drive? It seems ahead of its time.
  • Will it compete with Google Docs? Someone needs to. Google Docs gets a only a few things right, but they get them really right, and that's why I think it has been so pervasive. Personally, I would far prefer that my work and personal circles relied on great native apps like Office.
  • Will third party apps be able to embed the modular Microsoft elements inside of them, create modular elements to be able to insert in Microsoft docs, or both?
  • Would Apple ever consider participating in this framework with their iWorks apps? Would they recreate their own version?

🎙 #8 - Diversifying Your Career and Your Programming, with Lori Schwartz Reichl

Friend and colleague, Lori Schwartz Reichl, joins the show to talk about student and teacher engagement, the up-sides of teaching private lessons remotely, broadening her teaching career beyond the classroom, the Institute for Composer Diversity, and much more!

Show Notes:

-Lori’s website - Making Key Changes

-Zoom - Recording both sides of the conversation as two separate audio tracks

-Peloton 

-Peloton App

-Joanna Stern - Laptop webcam showdown

-https://makingkeychanges.com/reflection

-Lori’s YouTube Page

-Mirror Mirror on the Wall. . . Am I Providing Opportunities Reflecting All? | NAfME Blog | by Lori Schwartz Reichl

-A Personal and Professional Pivot - Make it Simple, Not Stressful | NAfME Blog | by Lori Schwartz Reichl

-Andrew Hitz 

-Music Ed Tech Talk - #4 - The Most Validating Day of my Life, with Andrew Hitz

-Institute for Composer Diversity

-Regional Repertory Wind Ensemble

-Tyler Grant

- NAfME’s Music in a Minute Blog, Lori’s Appearances

An opportunity from Lori:

“I'm thrilled to join our co-founders of Women Banding Together”

(Virginia Allen, Laura Johnson, and Jenny L. Neff) as we host our inaugural panel discussion:

”Transitioning with Resilience“ - on Monday, May 18 at 3:00 pm ET via Zoom.

RSVP for Zoom details at here.

App of the Week: 

Robby - LumaFusion 

Lori - Acapella 

Album of the Week:

Robby - Nate Smith: Light and Shadows

Lori Reichl - â€śOne Voice”: A Holiday Presentation by The United States Army Field Band

Where to Find Us:

Lori Reichl: YouTube | Website 

Robby Burns: Twitter | Blog

Subscribe to Music Ed Tech Talk:

Apple Podcasts | Overcast | Castro | Spotify | RSS

đź”— New version of Logic Pro released today

Major upgrade to Logic Pro today. New non-linear loop composing, new drum machine, and sampling features... it sure does feel like this release is a response to some of the features that make Abelton Live such a compelling experience. 

From the Logic Pro page today…

Logic Pro - Apple:

Live Loops is a dynamic way to create and arrange music in real time. Kick off your composition by adding loops, samples, or your recorded performances into a grid of cells. Trigger different cells to play with your ideas without worrying about a timeline or arrangement. Once you find combinations that work well together you can create song sections, then move everything into the Tracks area to continue production and finish your song.

We redesigned and improved our most popular plug-in — the EXS24 Sampler — and renamed it Sampler. The new single-window design makes it easier to create and edit sampler instruments while remaining backward compatible with all EXS24 files. An expanded synthesis section with sound-shaping controls brings more depth and dynamics to your instruments. The reimagined mapping editor adds powerful, time-saving features that speed the creation of complex instruments. Use the zone waveform editor to make precise edits to sample start/end, loop ranges, and crossfades. And save hours of tedious editing with new drag-and-drop hot zones.

Quick Sampler is a fast and easy way to work with a single sample. Drag and drop an audio file from the Finder, Voice Memos, or anywhere within Logic Pro X. Or record audio directly into Quick Sampler using a turntable, microphone, musical instrument, or even channel strips playing in Logic Pro X. In a few steps, you can transform an individual sample into a fully playable instrument. And with Slice Mode, you can split a single sample into multiple slices — perfect for chopping up vocals or breaking up and resequencing drum loops.

The new Sampler and Quick Sampler seem especially interesting. Making these kinds of (usually advanced) workflows dead simple is something that Apple is unmatched at when it comes to software design.

🎙 #7 - Working with StaffPad for iPadOS, with Chris Russell and Paul Shimmons

This week, Chris Russell and Paul Shimmons join my show. We catch up on recent news in music ed tech, discuss what we are doing for distance learning, and then discuss how we have been using the new StaffPad for iPadOS app.

View the show notes here or listen below.

Chris and Paul, co-hosts of the Music Education & Technology Podcast, rejoin the show to talk about how we are doing for distance learning, StaffPad for iPadOS, and other recent news in music technology education.

Show Notes:

App of the Week: 

Robby - Slack

Paul - Cubasis 3

Chris - LumaFusion

Album of the Week:

Robby - It Is What It Is | Thundercat

Paul - You and I | Wycliffe Gordon and Marty Erickson 

Chris -

Bring Me Sunshine | The Jive Aces

Yesterday | Billie Eilish

Where to Find Us:

Paul Shimmons: Twitter | Website 

Chris Russell: Twitter | Website

Robby Burns: Twitter| Blog

Subscribe to Music Ed Tech Talk:

Apple Podcasts| Overcast| Castro| Spotify| RSS

🎬 My Online Learning Welcome Video

Teachers in my district were tasked with making a welcome video introducing students to the first week of distance learning.

After denying several times that I would put any serious effort into this project, I inevitably got carried away and spiraled down a rabbit hole of apps, workflows, and tricks. Musicians and teachers are feeling a special kind of hunger right now to be creative. I am thankful for software and internet connected tools that help me to communicate in a unique way.

First, enjoy the video below:

The video was produced with the following software:


Apple Clips App

(Download here) 

Apple Clips App might be the only one of these apps you need. It is a free Apple app that is kind of like a cross between iMovie and Photo Booth. Its intended purpose is to make quick, engaging videos, designed to be shared in the age of Instagram Stories.

Clips is how I got my Memoji head to appear on my body. It will also automatically caption your video for you. It can bring in numerous effects, call outs, emoji, backdrops, and can even do still images of words. You could make a video that accomplishes the same general effects as mine in next to zero effort using only Clips. 

Clips allows you to integrate Animoji, Filters, Text, Stickers, and Emoji to your live video.

Clips allows you to integrate Animoji, Filters, Text, Stickers, and Emoji to your live video.

Clips automatically adds captions in a style you like. You can edit them after the fact.

Clips automatically adds captions in a style you like. You can edit them after the fact.

You can record yourself speaking over static posters to communicate information in an engaging way.

You can record yourself speaking over static posters to communicate information in an engaging way.

iMessage

iMessage is where I made my Memoji. It is also another place that you can get a Memoji head on top of your body (see screenshots below). I used this method for a few scenes in the video, instead of Clips, because it can shoot in landscape view. Clips produces square video only.

An alternate way to film yourself with a Memoji head is to open up a text message conversation to someone or yourself.

An alternate way to film yourself with a Memoji head is to open up a text message conversation to someone or yourself.

Select the camera icon right above the keyboard, and then tap the effect button in the lower left corner.

Select the camera icon right above the keyboard, and then tap the effect button in the lower left corner.

Next, select the Animoji icon, and then select your own Memoji.

Next, select the Animoji icon, and then select your own Memoji.

Final Cut Pro X

Final Cut is an industry standard video editor. It is currently free for 90 days. If you know iMovie and want to go deeper, this will be the easiest option for you. 

I used Final Cut to dump all of my audio, video, and photo assets, and to mix them all down into the final product. I didn’t use Final Cut to do anything iMovie can’t do except for the fancy moment where multiple videos show up on top of the main video at once (and it was very important to me that it do this).

Screen Shot 2020-04-11 at 4.55.30 PM.png

ScreenFlow 

(Download here)

ScreenFlow is like the iMovie of making screencasts. It can do fancy video automations and call out things happening on the screen (like mouse clicks, taps, type our whatever your keyboard is doing, etc…)

ScreenFlow’s editing tools are almost as easy as iMovie and it is so powerful, I probably could have probably made the entire video in it. There is a free version if you don’t mind a watermark on the final product.

Keynote

Keynote is what I used to make the nice slides with information. I used ScreenFlow to record my screen as I tabbed through the presentation in time along to an audio recording of my voice over.

Logic Pro

Apple’s premiere audio editing software. Free for 90 days right now. If you have used GarageBand, the basics of Logic will feel familiar to you. I used it to record some of the voice overs in the video but it is frankly unnecessary. I just wanted to use my nicer microphone and it happened to be plugged into the Mac I already use to edit audio in Logic.

Downie

(Download here)

Downie is how I downloaded some video and audio assets from the web to my Mac’s hard drive. 

Permute

(Download here)

This is a beautiful and fuss-free Mac app that converts video and audio from one file format to another.

Prompt Lite for iPad

(Download here)

This free teleprompter allows you to write a script and have it appear in large text on your iPad’s screen. It automatically paces through the words as you read them.

Others

I also used OmniOutliner to outline the original ideas, BBEdit to write the script, and YouTube to publish, but those are largely unnecessary. 

If this seems overwhelming, I assure you that you could make close to the same result in just iMovie or Apple Clips with next to zero effort. I have been locked inside for weeks and wanted to learn some of the skills required to polish up a video in Final Cut. I hope you enjoyed it.

🎙 #6 - Paperless iPad Workflows for Teaching Music, with David MacDonald

David MacDonald, composer and professor at Wichita State University, joins the show to talk about paperless iPad workflows, student collaboration over the cloud, the state of notation apps on the iPad, and some of our favorite macOS and iOS productivity apps.

More topics include:

- Collaborating on student composition projects over the cloud using iPads, Dropbox, PDF Expert, and GoodNotes

- AirPlaying the iPad to Zoom conference calls

- Using the iPad as a digital whiteboard using GoodNotes

- Behavior management 

- Writing apps

- Why Markdown is useful

- Using GoodNotes Dropbox backups as a student collaboration feature

- Strengths of iCloud Drive, Dropbox, Google Drive

- Using third party cloud providers in the iOS Files app

- All of the various ways PDF Expert can work with files

- Annotating documents on iPad

- Searchable handwritten text in GoodNotes

- Converting iMessage stickers into stamps in PDF Expert to teach the proper resolution of the tendency tones in the Neapolitan sixth chord

- The state of notation apps on iPad

- Our dreams for future Apple hardware

- Our picks for app and album of the week

Show Notes:

- Blackboard

- David MacDonald / Composer

- Scoring Notes: Paperless composition lessons with iPad Pro and Apple Pencil | David MacDonald

- Apple to Launch Several Macs With Arm-Based Processors in 2021, USB4 Support Coming to Macs in 2022

- Dropbox

- PDF Expert 

- GoodNotes 5

- Hazel - Automatic file organization for your Mac

- Zoom

- Screenflow

- OmniOutliner 

- Tonal Energy

- forScore

- Ulysses - The ultimate writing app for Mac, iPad, and iPhone

- iA Writer - The benchmark of markdown writing apps

- Squarespace - What I made my website in

- How to use Smart Annotation in Pages

- Marked 2 - Smarter tools for smarter writers

- Midnight Music: 10 Productivity Apps to Help You Organize Your Lesson Plans | Robby Burns

- iCloud Drive Folder Sharing

- MindNode

- Aminal Sticker Pack for iMessage

- The Mandalorian Sticker Pack for iMessage

- StaffPad

- Scoring Notes: StaffPad wows with long-awaited iPad release and new free StaffPad Reader | David MacDonald

- Sibelius

- Dorico

- iPad and Technology in Music Education Blog | Paul Shimmons

- Technology in Music Education Blog | Chris Russell

- StaffPad Reader

- Notion

- Komp 

- Symphony Pro

- Cubasis for iPad

- SwiftUI

- Six Colors Blog

- 3.15.20 - Childish Gambino

- Snarky Puppy - Family Dinner (Vol. 1)

- Snarky Puppy - Family Dinner (Vol. 2)

- Snarky Puppy feat. Becca Stevens & Väsen - I Asked

- Jacob Collier - Theory Interview

- Adam Neely YouTube Channel

- Analyzing Demi Lovato’s arrangement of the Star Spangled banner at the Super Bowl | Adam Neely

- OmniFocus 

- OmniFocus Project Templates Using TaskPaper Syntax

- Drafts App - Where text starts

- 2Do 

- Downie - Mac app for saving videos from the internet

- Things - Award winning personal task manager that helps you achieve your goals

App of the Week: 

Robby - OmniFocus - Powerful task management for busy professionals, SetApp - The frontier platform that packs 170 Mac apps into just one

David - nkoda - Arguably the Netflix of sheet music

Album of the Week:

Robby - Wonderbloom by Becca Stevens

David - Partita for 8 Voices by Caroline Shaw (2013 Pulitzer Prize Winner)

Where to Find Us:

David MacDonald: Twitter | Website 

Robby Burns: Twitter | Blog

Subscribe to Music Ed Tech Talk:

Apple Podcasts | Overcast | Castro | Spotify | RSS

My very straightforward and very successful setup for teaching virtual private lessons

Edit: I have received numerous Instagram and Facebook questions about this post and thought I would clarify some things. Scroll to the bottom for more information on choosing the right voice app, my studio set up, and links to the extra gear I use if you want to level up. I am adding these details because some people want to take it beyond the basics. That said, my point stands that you really only need an internet connected cell phone and a voice chat app to teach online.

I’m seeing a lot of questions from teachers flying around social media fussing over new voice chat apps, microphone set up, and elaborate private teaching workflows. 

I have moved my private teaching studio of 22 students to live video over the past three weeks. For or better or worse, the technical demands of teaching remote are very simple. 


1. Use a phone (the quality is way better)
2. Use FaceTime (unless you can’t then use Google or Skype)


I made a video about it below. I am being kind of sarcastically dry in my tone, but my points are absolutely true. And if you watch it all the way, I actually do have some hardware recommendations to improve the experience. You do not need to be fancy. Most phones already have a voice chat app installed on them.

Zoom is the new hot thing. They are also in the news a lot this week for concerns over privacy (though its arguable that they are doing no worse than any other company out there.) There is absolutely no reason to make your students download a new thing just because it is being talked about. For what its worth, I hear from many educators that Zoom has poor audio quality compared to some of the others. If you want to read more on Zoom, I think this article from The Verge explains their rise to success and the risks that come with it.

Virtual lessons are going very well for me. No one gets into music to learn and play together remotely, but the human connection of music is something that we are just going to have to reinvent for a little while.

There are some real benefits to doing lessons remote. Seeing a student in their own practice space, using their own tools, is instantaneously valuable. I have noticed poor posture, inefficient instrument set up, wacky music stand placement, and more. It is also eye opening to ask a student to use a pencil, tuner, or metronome, and hear them tell you it is in another room! These are things you can’t coach in your own environment. And they spend way more time practicing in theirs than in yours.

Furthermore, a lot of my students need so much coaching on practice process that I am instructing mostly the same way I would in my studio. Teaching them how to break things down, assigning exercises, discussing long term practice goals and pacing. These are ideas I tell them verbally and are therefore not lost over the poor quality of an internet connected call.

I am fortunate that percussion technique has physiological components that are seen out of the body. I can see stick height, movement, placement, and grip, no matter how good or bad the audio quality is.

Many musical features can be heard just as adequately over a voice call: rhythm, style, tempo, and accuracy, to name a few. The major musical qualities I continue to miss out on are dynamics and tone quality which do not translate well over the compression of most smart phone microphones. These are, of course, two of the most important things to a musician. Like I said, this isn’t ideal for the long term, but it is viable for a time.

This is an uncertain time. Technological changes cause us to to question the nature of our work and personal engagements. But you do not need to reinvent your profession. If you have a smartphone and an internet connection, you have everything you need.

Common Questions:

  1. Is that Shure MV88 the best Mic for the money? No! It is actually very cost inefficient compared to other stuff on the market. But it is very convenient! It plugs right into the bottom of the iPhone without adding a cord or significant weight to the device. Click here to buy it. If you want something for a little more money that is way better in audio quality, check out the AKG P120, which I think sounds better than the wildly popular Blue Yeti and Snowball mics. It is also on sale right now.

  2. What tripod do you use? Amazon Essentials. It’s cheaply built, but effective. It will hold together if it doesn’t leave your studio.

  3. Why are you so opinionated about voice apps? I try to use what works for my students. If we both happen to have an iPhone, I prefer FaceTime because it has the best audio and video quality of all the apps I have tried. Google apps are second best, followed by Skype/WhatsApp. Zoom was by far the weakest audio/video quality and required the most fussing around to set up.

  4. Do you have connectivity issues? Rarely, but most of my students have more than one of the voice chat apps installed and we can usually get the second attempt up and running.

  5. What is your studio set up like? Lately, I position the iPhone on my desk like a webcam so that I can see my sheet music (on iPad) and notes (on Mac) and make eye contact with students at the same time. I keep a snare drum to my side and bring the camera with tripod around the room in my studio to model on other percussion instruments. See picture below.

  6. Wait! That picture is complicated! You said all I need is a phone and a voice app! Yes, this is all you need. I also choose to share my students notes with them over a Google Calendar and read my music digitally. You don’t have to use technology for those things. If you do, you can use secondary devices. Alternatively, you could start a voice call on the iPad or Mac and then use other apps on the screen while the voice call keeps running in the background. Your phone is going to give you the best quality video though. 

IMG_5222.jpeg



🎙 #5 - Yours in Quarantine, with Julianna Mateyko

Julianna Mateyko, Director of Support and Training for MusicFirst, joins the show to give me customer support. Other topics include: teaching music remote, quarantined lifestyles, Instacart, and cute life-simulator games as a form of escapism in the age of COVID. Also, our favorite albums and apps of the week.

Show Notes:

- MusicFirst

- Jim Frankel - Director of MusicFirst

- Animal Crossing

- Sharing Apple Notes

- Instacart

- Doordash

- Sign In With Apple

- SAMR Model for Technology (Substitution, Augmentation, Modification, Redefinition) ... Julianna refers to this as the three levels of technology in the episode

- Soundtrap

- Noteflight 

- Barbara Freedman (Website) (Twitter)

- Zoom 

- MusicFirst Customer Support Page

- Google Chrome

- MusicFirst iOS App

- O-Generator for iOS

- Soundtrap for iOS

- Spotify

- Musictheory.net

- In Tune Monthly

- type “yourdomainhere/support/userguide” to get to the user guides

- type “yourdomainhere/support/tutorials” to view the video guides 

- Icon Factory

App of the Week: 

Robby - Tot - An elegant, simple way to collect & edit text on your Mac, iPhone, and iPad

Julianna Mateyko - Stardew Valley

Album of the Week:

Robby - 3.15.20 by Childish Gambino

Julianna Mateyko - covers and more - A Spotify playlist of covers brought to you by Julianna

Where to Find Us:

Julianna Mateyko: Twitter

Robby Burns: Twitter | Blog

Subscribe to Music Ed Tech Talk:

Apple Podcasts | Overcast | Castro | Spotify | RSS

🎙 #4 - The Most Validating Day of My Life, with Andrew Hitz

Andrew Hitz (former tuba player for Boston Brass, professor at Shenandoah University, speaker, creator, and podcaster) joins the show to talk about portfolio careers, being an entrepreneurial musician, confident self-promotion, apps we’re using, classical music subscription services, and Phish. And as usual, way more...

Show Notes:

Baltimore Brass - Amazing Instrument and Repair Shop in Baltimore, Maryland

AndrewHitz.com

Boston Brass

The Brass Junkies

TEM.fm

Me Asking Andrew A Question

TEM Episode 206 with Amanda Gookin

Andrew Hitz Twitter

Band Directors Guidebook

Crush it - Gary Vaynerchuk

My book: Digital Organization Tips for Music Teachers | Oxford University Press

GroupMe

Ship It - Seth Godin

Joe Alessi 

Presidio Brass

Parker Mouthpieces

Brass Chats

Tech Tools Andrew is Using:

- Audible

- This is Marketing on Audible

- Slack

- Tonal Energy Tuner

TEM Episode 174: Sam Pilafian on Producing

Rick Beato: Perfect Pitch: The World’s Greatest Ear | Music Notation!

My StaffPad Review 

Leo Laporte 

IDAGIO 

Clairières: Songs by Lili & Nadia Boulange

Digital Concert Hall - Currently free for the month! 

Phish Concert 12/31/93 - Harry Hood (Hitz’s first Phish show)

The Most Validating Day of My Life —Andrewhitz.com  (Hitz takes Sam Pilafian to his first Phish show)

Punch Brothers

App of the Week: 

Robby - StaffPad for iPadOS

Andrew Hitz - Better Ears - Eartrainer

Album of the Week:

Robby - Brilliant Corners | Thelonious Monk (Not mentioned on air) 

Andrew Hitz - Andris Nelsons | Boston Symphony Orchestra | Shostakovich Symphonies No's. 6 & 7 

Where to Find Us:

Andrew Hitz: Twitter | Website 

Robby Burns: Twitter | Blog

Subscribe to Music Ed Tech Talk:

Apple Podcasts | Overcast | Castro | Spotify | RSS

Find Robby elsewhere on the web