What do you do?

What do you do when you are travelling to Italy to visit your sister city with your band and choir and they give you a tour of their town factory?  Which produces the liquor Limoncello?

And they give you three cases of it?

You give each kid two bottles to pack in their suitcase to take home to their parents.

iPad "3"

The iPad announcement was today and I am currently waiting for the software updates to download.  I may wait until tomorrow when things quiet down on the servers.

Some intriguing items:
1. Days after highlighting the need for String samples in garageband they seem to have added them.  This is needed for our iAlchemy performance.  I have not tested the sound yet.  Chris Russell suggested Thumbjam which is a definite step up from what we had.
2. Jam sessions in Garageband?  I can't figure out how this will work but will try it tomorrow.
3. iMovie update.  This file is downloading now and is huge.  They have added trailers and more of the functions seen on the desktop version.

The iPad is becoming a strong creation device.  Dropping the iPad2 to $399 will drive a lot of sales as they get rid of inventory.

Some New Apps

Some new apps I have been using:

Too Loud: I don't know why I didn't get a decibel meter earlier.  Great for health protection (how loud is your band room?) but I also see me putting this on the Apple TV to use during study hall or individual work time.  Less me saying "It's too loud", I can just point to the screen.

Scribble Press: A super simple way for K-2 grades to write ebooks.  Templates are set up with questions to answer.  It basically writes itself.

Dr. Seuss Band: A pretty simple Guitar hero like app.  For younger kids.  You can make your own Dr. Seuss horn and it plays some pretty cool tunes.  Great for rhythm development.

iMovie: Its fairly startling how easy this is to use.  I made this video at Molly's Dance class.  You can make professional looking videos right on the iPad with out using a computer.  Really works smooth.

ShowYou: I like video and this app helps sort out the daily news.

OnLive Desktop: PC on the iPad.  All the MS Office you can handle.  Full versions of MW Word, Excel, etc... Amazing.

Theory of Numbers

Is there a number of students in the ensemble that is needed to create "critical mass" for note learning?  We jumped in choir from 12 to 34 students this year and I am finding we are learning notes much faster.  Having the reinforcement has to help.

On the flip side does it become harder to really rehearse since you can't focus individually as much on tone production, diction, phrasing as you can in a small group?

Sing We and Chant It

I've been trying to archive songs as we rehearse.  We have been working on Sing We And Chant It for about 6 rehearsals.

We are so far ahead of last year.  We can sing through most of our repertoire and have been spending a lot of time on solos and small groups work.

Having a larger group has definitely helped us learn the notes.  But as you can hear we have a lot still to work on.  The group is mostly 9th graders.

Composition

Is this the best composition scene in cinema? So well written.

Garageband lessons in band

I have been spending a few weeks working on ear training in band class.  I outline this process in the Leading Notes article that was published last week.

So we have spent a lots of time working on four basic scales (C, G, F, Bb) in a number of patterns.  We have also started playing songs through the keys, including Over the Rainbow and Amazing Grace.

Today I asked the students to take an iPad and create an 8 measure "scale song" using garageband. I showed them briefly how to change the key of the song and how to drag loops on to the screen.  Then I told them to compose a song and include their scale improvisations on top of the loops.

Each student produced some cool versions.  In almost every case as I assessed them and gave some suggestions they came back with a substantially better version.  We played each version for the class (and they played for each other).  Some students started laying multiple tracks down of their own playing (scales in two directions, ostinato and melody, etc..).

The iPad is so easy to to do this with.  Garageband in a lab just wouldn't work for this type of assignment.   This assignment involved analysis, evaluation, improvisation, and composition.  It also required collaboration.