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Teach Music and Programming at the Same time! EarSketch engages students in computing principles through collaborative computational music composition and remixing. It consists of an integrated curriculum, software toolset, and social media website. The EarSketch curriculum targets introductory high school and college computing education. The software toolset enables students to create music by manipulating loops, composing beats, and applying effects with Python code. The social media website invites students to upload their music and source code, view other students' work, and create derivative musical remixes from other students' code. EarSketch is built on top of Reaper, an intuitive digital audio workstation (DAW) program comparable to those used in professional recording studios.

An article about the use of this program in schools and its positive impact: http://www.eschoolnews.com/2013/05/20/pilot-hopes-to-draw-students-to-computer-programming-through-music/?

The Resource for Education Technology Leaders focusing on K-12 Engineering and physics teacher Nelson Nunalee of Ravenscroft School in Raleigh, North Carolina, was the high school winner of Vernier Software & Technology's 2013 Engineering Contest, which showcased creative uses of Vernier sensors with NI LabVIEW software in the classroom. Nunalee's class created virtual instruments as part of their digital music study. In this video, the students explain the process of devising the virtual trombone and demonstrate its use. Watch below or on YouTube.

Two musicians in two cities -- a violinist in Philadelphia (Marjorie Bagley, associate professor of violin from the University of North Carolina Greensboro) and a cellist in Dekalb, Illinois (Cheng-Hou Lee, assistant professor at Northern Illinois University Music School) -- played a duet together in real time, connected via a live audio/video stream on Internet2. They played "Passacaglia" by Handel-Halvorsen, a piece filled with complex interplay of violin and cello. The timing has to be perfect or it falls apart. "It is what we call a showpiece," said Bagley. "It's the sort of thing you show off with." Small delay can make a huge difference in sound For this venue, they were showing off Internet2's low latency capability, or LOLA. Normally, a live stream over the traditional Internet has a delay of about 300 milliseconds (about a third of a second), even before buffering.

Learning a musical instrument as a child gives the brain a boost that lasts long into adult life, say scientists. Adults who used to play an instrument, even if they have not done so in decades, have a faster brain response to speech sounds, research suggests. The more years of practice during childhood, the faster the brain response was, the small study found....