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Blog, videos, and resources by Joe Gilder regarding Audio Recording, mixing, mastering, songwriting, and music technology. Geared to home studio enthusiasts, the materials on this site can be of great value to music teachers as well as students in music technology classes as well as general music classes diving into songwriting or audio.

Some great tips for teaching songwriting on this teaching post. The post includes a detailed lesson plan with a step-by-step sequence. The lesson includes brainstorming tips, lyric writing, rhyming, and music composition. It also suggests incorporating technology to record and playback your collaborative creations.

This article is geared towards the non-music classroom but has much to offer to the music educator. Music teachers could incorporate the suggestions for songwriting into their own lessons. Ever more, they could use this resource as an example and a guide to collaborate with core subject areas engaging in cross-curricular instruction.

Hookpad is a free web app that simplifies songwriting by helping you choose chords that sound good together and guiding you to write a good melody. It's a musical sketchpad with music theory "built-in" to make it easier and more intuitive to find the sound you're looking for.

Hookpad is a free web app that simplifies songwriting by helping you choose chords that sound good together and guiding you to write a good melody. It's a musical sketchpad with music theory "built-in" to make it easier and more intuitive to find the sound you're looking for.

Hookpad is an interesting piece of software. While it does involve digital notation, it focuses more on notating chords and chord progressions and does so by providing the user options to use standard and non-standard notation. I love using Hookpad when my students are doing songwriting on the ukulele. It is easy for them to play the chords on the ukulele, then input them into Hookpad by selecting the chord symbols. They can then go in an add melodies as well.

Specifically designed for songwriters, this site teaches the student about chord (minor, Major, modes).

This is an entertaining and educational video from Ted Talk. Famous singer and songwriter Bobby McFerrin uses the crowd to improvise a pentatonic scale. This is only a small clip from the event "Notes and Neurons: In Search of the Common Chorus" from the World Science Festival.

This website offers a multitude of resources designed for music-making. This specific organization is devoted to offering musical programs to students who are in the 80% of the population that are not involved in performing ensembles. It offers curriculum, lesson plans, and interactive activities for guitar, piano, drums, bass, ukulele, composition, voice and more. There are free PDF songbooks and lesson plans that are connected to the program, that are extremely helpful towards teacher and student interest. The best part of the program is that the majority of the music is examples that students know already - a lot of pop, rock, and even hip-hop. It connects the bridge between traditional musical concepts with music of today.

Little Kids Rock has a multitude of resources for creating a modern band in your classroom. There are songs loaded on the website that include tab for ukulele, guitar, and bass. There are also drum set patterns included. This website serves to expose educators and students modern band and provides lesson plans to go along with the popular songs. Little Kids Rock also provides workshops on how to effectively teach a modern band program.

This website offers many lessons for instruments that students may be interested in playing (piano, guitar, songwriting, drums,etc). The website offers video lessons as well as current play-along songs for students to put their newly learned skills to work.

This website is filled with information about every song you can imagine. It also includes information about artists as well as some fun games and trivia concerning musicians. A top ten list of songs is given with further explanation about the music.

This site is a great resource to help students get into the minds of their favorite pop artists. Students often find it easier to connect to pop tunes than to classical music. This site provides a list of different pop tunes/artists along with descriptions about those pieces and artists. This helps students realize the thought behind creating music, which they can then transfer to their school music class. This site also includes blogs about songwriter interviews, quizzes, and song facts to name a few. The featured songs fall into the category "daily top ten" or "weekyl top ten," keeping the songs up-to-date and easy for young students to recognize/connect with.

This website is a great resource for discovering the stories behind popular songs. The list of songs seem to be extensive and include pieces that would be familiar to students. This resource could help create a relevant curriculum that speaks to the non-traditional music student's interests and their music experience.

The Recording Revolution blog and joint YouTube account, are great resources for teachers who are introducing the concept of mixing to students. The blogs cover a wide range of FAQ from beginners and feature videos that use Pro Tools as the DAW, but can be applied to any DAW that has comparable plugins and effects.

Blog for home studio recording by Graham Cochrane. Graham provides excellent posts as well as videos on music production, engineering, recording, and mixing that are geared to home studio enthusiasts but would be a great resource for high school music technology courses as well.