Website Migration and Cross-Posting

Maintaining and updating your music studio website is one thing that should be done regularly. After all, search engines, love dynamic pages. However, how many music teachers have a lot of time to spend on their website? Not I, and although I learned Dreamweaver at my last "regular" job, I feel that website design technology has advanced far beyond what I was taught at my basic "Introduction to Dreamweaver" class. Although, I do know some HTML code, I cannot, for the life of me, get my brain around CSS. I'm sure, with time, I'd get it, but back to my original question, "How many music teachers have a lot of time to spend on their website?" That's when I started blogging. At least, that way, some pages on my site would get updated. However, I am challenged to update even my blogs regularly. My latest experiment is to ask several fellow word-savvy music teachers to contribute to my Musings at Musespeak and Busted Piano String blogs. We'll do some cross-posting on each other's blogs, thereby injecting new life to each other's sites, and share new ideas with a larger audience. Stay tuned for some guest posts. Back to my website. I will be migrating my website to Wordpress with the hopes that simplicity with lead to website optimization. Well I will be, once I'm done watching all Wordpress tutorials published by fellow music teacher and web guru Robert Vimer.

Music Practicing Podcasts

This week, I've taught "The Art of Practicing" at a few music group classes at my studio and my brother's. We have such a wide variety of learners. I promised the aural learners that I would find some music lesson podcasts for them. Here are some: Conklin Studios - Video Blog and podcasts The Piano Podcast - with Mario Ajero BBC's Music Workshop Podcasts e-learning Music Podcasts  These are full of tips on how to practice as well as how parents can the music student in their family.

Happy listening and learning.

Metronome Android Apps

I recently moved into the 21st century as far as cellphone technology. Yes, you're right. I finally got onto the smartphone wagon.

I've been experimenting with a couple of free metronome apps for Android to help when I'm practicing music away from my piano (or sometimes, when I just want to hear something different at home). The first is Mobile Metronome. It's a nice basic metronome. You can adjust the instrument used to bang out the beats. I wound up uninstalling it because I wanted to find something that could handle hybrid meter.

I'm currently playing around with Metronome Beats. I was able to set it to play 6/8 time. It works nicely. You can also customize what sounds you hear. You can also customize the following features: emphasize the first beat of the bar, adjust the normal beat, the pitch of the beat subdivisions and the length of the sound. You can even create custom sounds to use for keeping time.Both Android apps have a "Tap Tempo" feature.I'm still on the lookout for an app that can handle beat subdivision for hybrid meter well. Stay tuned!

With Music Software, Timing is Everything

I'd like to say that I know my way around a computer. At my last full-time job (for someone else), I was called one of the "super-users". However, I  have been experiencing several challenges with my Studio Lab computer. It's operating on Linux Ubuntu and it's not as easy as Mac or as familiar to me as Windows or even Unix or DOS. Linux has some fabulous apps available for education and more specifically, music education and music. For example:

• music notation software (e.g. MuseScore)

• audio recording and editing (e.g. Audacity)

• drum machine (e.g. Hydrogen Drum Machine)

• note reader trainers and more

Music and technology has never been so tempting. "Sudo apt-get install" is just so gosh-darn easy to do. Getting the sound set up and audio controls cooperating with all one another? Now there's my technical challenge. Thankfully, some super Linux users have posted some helpful tutorials. The Linux Community Forums have been good too, but having the visuals and working through the steps along with the video helped. It's just been challenging getting the time in to focus on it. The process has made me rethink my roll-out strategy for these music software programs. Rather than having them all available for my students to explore at once, I am going to just roll out a few programs at a time. I have learned that it's important to have Jack Control and those connections set up properly. 

After three weeks of on and off fiddling and re-installs, I can say with confidence that Hydrogen Drum Machine, Virtual Midi Piano Keyboard and Score Reading Trainer are playing nicely together in my computer lab.

Life was so much easier when dealing with physical midi and audio cables. Trying to set audio up in a virtual environment has really challenged my learning style.

Fixing Trouble Spots with the Smarties Practice Drill

This is, by far, the most popular practice drill with my piano students. If you are looking for new ideas for how to practice, try this Smarties Drill.First, you start with a number of Smarties (between three and five is ideal). It actually doesn't need to be Smarties. You can use carrots, raisins, M&M's, nuts or even marbles. Using something edible makes it more fun. However, try to keep it to snacks that are safe around your instrument (chocolate chip cookies or brownies would really mess up your musical instrument).Group your Smarties on one side of a Kleenex or plate:

Pick a spot in a song that requires extra practice. Maybe it's a spot where you consistently have a few few notes or where the rhythm is just a little wonky. Play through the spot slowly.

Each time you play through that spot cleanly, move one of the Smarties to the right-hand side of your Kleenex (the "Success!" side):

Smarties Drill - Progress?

 Say that your first two run-throughs were pretty good, but your third wasn't so hot. You have to move one of the Smarties from the "Success" pile to the "Oops, try again" pile.

Once you've done enough clean run-throughs to get all the Smarties to the "Success!" side, you can pat yourself on the back and enjoy your Smarties.

Don't forget to work the trouble spot that you worked on back into your piece in stages. Add the bar before, then the bar after the trouble spot. Keep extending your practice area until you can play through the entire section pretty well. That's a different practice drill.