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

Apple Music Classical (Mostly) Plays the Right Chords -- TidBITS

Kirk Mcehlhearn wrote a detailed breakdown about Apple's new classical music app for TidBITS last month.

Apple Music Classical Mostly Plays the Right Chords:

Apple Music Classical is a free app for Apple Music subscribers to access this new, enhanced collection of music. Inexplicably, it is only available for the iPhone. One would expect Apple Music Classical to be available for desktop computers, especially since many people listen to classical music from a Mac, or a PC running iTunes, connected to a stereo. Since Apple Music has added a lot of high-resolution music, which requires an external DAC (digital-analog converter) to play at its full quality, it is quite difficult to play that sort of music from an iPhone. You can stream music to an AirPlay 2-compatible receiver with a DAC attached, but most people don’t have that hardware. You can, of course, stream Apple Music Classical from an iPhone to a HomePod—the second generation of which also supports Dolby Atmos, or what Apple calls spatial audio—but overall, this focus on the iPhone limits playback options considerably. Keep reading here...:

MuseClass Introduces AutoGrade Feature

In an email from the MuseGroup earier this month...

We are thrilled to announce the public beta launch of AutoGrade for MuseClass! This new feature will revolutionize the way educators grade and provide feedback to their students, saving countless hours of your time. With AutoGrade, teachers can focus on teaching and providing personalized feedback to their students, while we take care of the grading. Our team has been hard at work developing this innovative tool that accurately evaluates student performances.

And best of all, it's FREE!

You can read more about the feature here.

#67 - Back to School, with Theresa Hoover

Theresa returns to talk about going back to school, research tools and workflows, general productivity, and Obsidian.

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Thanks to my sponsors this month, Scale Exercise Play-Along Tracks.

Show Notes:

Additional Places to Find Theresa:

App of the Week: Robby - MarkEdit Theresa - Forest

Album of the Week:
Robby - Nickel Creek: Celebrants Theresa Hoover - GoGo Penguin

Tech Tip of the Week:
Robby - Drag the proxy icon on Mac Theresa Hoover - Data vailidation in Google Sheets

Where to Find Us:
Robby - Twitter | Blog | Book
Theresa Hoover - Website

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

Introducing MusicFirst Elementary — Dr. James Frankel

Introducing MusicFirst Elementary — Dr. James Frankel:

After 4 years of work, thousands of pages of lessons plans, more than 1,000 interactive resources, and the tireless work of an amazing team of teachers and developers from our award-winning partners Charanga, I am so very proud to introduce you to a truly revolutionary music curriculum for Grades K-5 - MusicFirst Elementary, powered by Charanga. Unlike other online collections of resources that are targeted to the elementary music teacher, this is the first complete sequential K-5 music curriculum to hit the market in over a decade, and it is truly spectacular. The following provides an overview of what the curriculum includes, and most importantly, how you can preview it for yourself. Keep reading here…

Soundboard app Farrago goes to version 2

Of all my favorite apps, Farrago is often one that my other colleagues instantly get the appeal of because of its colorful user interface, which depicts a grid of audio blocks.

Farrago has become the default way that I play soundbites, audio recordings, and practice tracks tracks for my band students. I have organized my Scale Exercise Play-Along Tracks into a grid of color-coded exercises (organized by circle of fifths). I used to use iTunes for this, but the grid of squares is so much easier to navigate and operate during a busy rehearsal.

I have been beta testing Farrago 2 for months now and I am thrilled to say that it takes all of my workflows to the next level and even introduces new workflow possibilities that elevate my teaching.

Farrago 2 introduces numerous improvements and feature updates, which you can read about here.

My favorites are the integration with FreeSounds.org, Shortcuts, and Stream Deck. Watch the video below to see these features in action.

Learn more about Rogue Amoeba’s awesome apps on the podcast episode below.

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Forscore 14 Automation Links

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forScore 14 came out last month. It is an awesome release which includes updates to the metadata panel, tuner, Apple Pencil support, and other redesigned user interface elements. You can read about all the details here.

My favorite feture in this update is called Automation Links. The feature allows you to copy a link to a score (or a page within a score) to your clipboard and paste it somewhere else. This kind of deep linking has become a core part of my productivity workflow over the years. Most of my productivity tools offer a shortcut like this, and it is so awesome to see the feature added to one of my more musically specific apps.

Watch the video below to see the feature in action along with two demos of how I use the feature to teach music more efficiently.

Note: Automation Links are a paid forScore Pro feature.

What Does It Mean To Be Creative? - Off the Beaten Path

Theresa is addressing important questions on her blog this week. Stay tuned for a near future episode of Music Ed Tech Talk. She is the next guest.

What Does It Mean To Be Creative? - Off the Beaten Path:

Creativity is a word we hear often in education, especially in music education, and it’s something I’ve become quite passionate about in the last few years. How are we, as music educators, offering opportunities for students to be creative? When do students get to create their own music and make their own musical decisions, instead of only recreating someone else’s music and performing music as dictated by someone else? Keep reading here…

Apple Music Classical is out

Apple Music Classical is out! MacStories has a detailed overview here.

Why this app needs to exist and exactly what kind of problem it solves has been covered a little bit here on the blog and on the podcast over the years. I have been using and recomending IDAGIO for some time now.

I have been using Apple Music Classical a lot since last night, and while it leaves a lot to be desired (like an iPad, Mac, and car app!), it is good enough for me to replace IDAGIO.

The fact that it links to my existing Apple Music account and library means that I can continue using the standard Apple Music app in combination with it. One library for all of my music, but two app interfaces to interact with it, depending on which context makes the most sense.

I plan to cover this app on the podcast some time soon. You can download Apple Music Classical here.

Actions for Obsidian Released

You may have heard me talk about the note app Obsidian here a lot over the past year (like for example here, here, or here). I also really like automating my life with the Apple Shortcuts app (which you can read about here, here again, or here).

Obsidian is already very automatable, but using Shortcuts for the job makes everything way easier and less abstract. I am happy to report that there is now an awesome Mac app which adds Obsidian actions to the Shortcuts app.

Actions for Obsidian is the missing link between Obsidian and macOS / iOS. It brings 30+ Shortcuts actions into the Shortcuts app to help bring your notes and automations together. The Mac app is out now and the iOS version is coming soon.

From the developer:

Actions for Obsidian is a macOS application that adds over 30 Shortcuts actions for working with Obsidian notes and vaults, making Obsidian a first-class citizen in Apple's Shortcuts app.

Obsidian is very powerful, and its large community has created hundreds of useful plugins that make working inside an Obsidian vault even more powerful and easier, but there was no integration with macOS and Apple's automation ecosystem until now. Actions for Obsidian adds that integration and makes it easy to bring information from other apps into your notes, or to bring information from your vaults into other apps.

I have been testing the app for a bit now, and it has really cleaned up a lot of my daily workflows.

For example, here is a Shortcut that takes looks at my daily calendar events, creates a note for each of them all in Obsidian, and then preappends my Obsidian Daily Note with links out to all of them so that they are associated with the current day.

That last action in the sequence is provided and made possible by Actions for Obsidian. You can download the app here and get ideas for how to use it in their Workflow Library.

Here is a little sample of what calendar notes look like when embedded in my daily note:

Actions for Obsidian is free to download with a 14 day trial period. It has a "pay what you want pricing" starting at $9.99.

Music Ed Tech Talk featuring Mark Connor

I am thrilled to have music educator, composer, and host of The Everything Band podcast, Mark Connor, on the latest episode of Music Ed Tech Talk!

Mark Connor (composer, music educator, and host of The Everything Band podcast) joins the show. We stay up way past our bedtime to talk about teaching music, music theory, composition, podcasting, our favorite tools, and more.

Subscribe to the Blog...

RSS | Email Newsletter

Subscribe to the Podcast in...

Apple Podcasts | Overcast | Castro | Spotify | RSS

Support Music Ed Tech Talk

Become a Patron!

Buy me a coffee

Thanks to my sponsors this month, Scale Exercise Play-Along Tracks.

Show Notes:

Where to Find Us:

Robby - Twitter | Blog | Book

Mark - Website

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

Find Robby elsewhere on the web