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keyboard maestro

Music Ed Tech Talk Episode #46 - Featuring Christopher Bill, from Classical Trombone

Christopher Bill joins the show to talk about the musicianship, hardware, software, and creative process behind his viral YouTube channel, Classical Trombone.

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Show Notes:

App of the Week

Robby - Keyboard Maestro

Christopher - Flic

Music of the Week

Robby - My Bluegrass Heart - Béla Fleck

Christopher - Don't Lose Sight - Song by Lawrence | Dirty Loops - Rollercoaster | How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful - Florence and the Machine

Tech Tip of the Week

Robby - NFC stickers

Christopher - OVOU Business Card

Where to Find Us:

Robby - Twitter | Blog | Book

Christopher - Twitter) | Website | YouTube

Please don’t forget to rate the show and share it with others!

Automatic Instrument Rental Forms, with Keyboard Maestro

One of the things I hate the most about the beginning of the school year is managing instrument rental. It just takes too long to log student instrument needs, cross reference them with my inventory, and type out all of my loan agreements. So I automated a part of that process.

Using the app Keyboard Maestro it is possible to automate almost anything under the sun using a simple graphic user interface. Imagine tons of actions available in macOS presented as draggable blocks that you can stack on top of one another and initiate with a keystroke, by time of day, or by an event happening on your machine. It's like building with legos. And the sky is the limit.

Watch my automation in action. I have set it up to prompt me for some information about the instrument and student. Once entered, it makes a copy of the selected file in Finder, copies it, and names it after the student. Then Keyboard Maestro waits for my next click. After clicking in the upper-leftmost field, KM fills in the rest and saves the document.

If you want to break apart the logic of it, see the image below to get an idea which triggers and actions I have used to set up the automation. If you are a KB expert and know how I can make it more efficient, let me know! If you are new to the app and need help, let me know! Patreon supporters can get access to the actual macro, install it into your own copy of Keyboard Maestro, and edit it to your liking.

App of the Week: Timery for Mac

I started time tracking around this time last year as a way to see how long I was spending on making virtual ensemble videos and other creative projects I was pursuing in my personal life.

Toggl is absolutely the tool for this job, and Timery is the best Toggl experience on iOS.

Using Apple’s Catalyst technology, Timery for Mac is built off of the iPad experience, with tweaks that make it adhere to macOS standards.

Using Apple’s Catalyst technology, Timery for Mac is built off of the iPad experience, with tweaks that make it adhere to macOS standards.

The hardest thing about time tracking is remembering to start and stop the timers. Because Timery has such a user-friendly design, it becomes way easier to trigger timers. Support for always-visible iOS widgets and support for Shortcuts make the experience even more frictionless.

The app is now available for the Mac using Apple’s Catalyst technology which I have recently taken about on my podcast (listen and subscribe below). forScore for the Mac is also made using this technology.

A TImery widget on iOS can be fixed to your Homescreen where you can see which timers are running and quickly launch the ones you need most.

A TImery widget on iOS can be fixed to your Homescreen where you can see which timers are running and quickly launch the ones you need most.

I enjoy using the same apps for doing things across platforms. Timery is no exception. And because the Timery app takes advantage of macOS platform norms (like putting all of its commands in the menu bar), you can do cool things like automating it with Keyboard Maestro.

The only reason I might continue to stick with the standard Toggl app on Mac is because it does even more to take advantage of the system. For example, you can pin the window so it stays permanently visible on the screen no matter how many other windows you have open. It can also detect when your keyboard and mouse aren’t in use and offer to backdate the time you were idle (or working) based on your computer activity.

If you want to learn more, check our the MacStories review, linked below with a quote:

Timery Comes to the Mac and Makes Time Tracking With Toggl Easier Than Ever -- MacStories:

I’d still like to see reports added to Timery in the future, but I’m glad the Mac was addressed first. Time tracking is the sort of activity that needs to exist everywhere to be most effective. I’ve spent the past couple of years using Toggl’s Mac app, which has improved dramatically in that time, but I’m glad that I can now learn one set of keyboard commands and use them across both the iPad and Mac. If the lack of a Mac version of Timery was holding you back, now is a perfect time to give the app a try.

METT Podcast #16 - Master Your Virtual Teaching Tech, with David MacDonald

Thanks to my sponsor this month, MusicFirst

David MacDonald returns to the show to talk about the hardware and software in our virtual teaching setups. Then we speculate about touchscreen Macs and consider how Apple's recent App Store policies might impact the future of creative professional software on iOS.

Topics include:

  • New Zoom features for musicians and teachers
  • David and Philip Rothman's new podcast, Scoring Notes
  • Using Open Broadcaster Software to level up your virtual teaching
  • Routing audio from your apps into Zoom and Google Meet calls
  • Teaching with Auralia
  • LMS integration with third-party music education apps
  • Using MainStage and Logic for performing instruments into virtual classrooms
  • Touchscreen Macs
  • Apple's App Store Policy

Show Notes:

Where to Find Us:
Robby - Twitter | Blog | Book
David MacDonald - Twitter | Website | Blog

Please don't forget to rate the show and share it with others!

Subscribe to Music Ed Tech Talk:

Subscribe to the Blog

Subscribe to the Podcast in... Apple Podcasts | Overcast | Castro | Spotify | RSS

Today's episode is sponsored by MusicFirst:

MusicFirst offers music educators and their students easy-to-use, affordable, cloud-based software that enables music learning, creation, assessment, sharing, and exploration on any device, anywhere, at any time.

MusicFirst Classroom is the only learning management system designed specifically for K-12 music education. It combines the flexibility of an LMS with engaging content and powerful software integrations to help manage your students’ progress, make lesson plans, and create assignments.

And for younger students, MusicFirst Junior is the perfect online system for teaching elementary general music. It includes a comprehensive K-5 curriculum, hundreds of lessons & songs, and kid-friendly graphics to making learning and creating music fun!

Whether you’re teaching remotely, in-person, or in a blended learning environment, MusicFirst will work with you to find a solution that fits your program’s unique needs. Try it free for 30 days at musicfirst.com.

David’s teaching setup.

David’s teaching setup.

My teaching setup.

My teaching setup.

…From far away.

…From far away.

Find Robby elsewhere on the web