Digital Musicking

An online magazine that reviews music education related books, interviews composers, publishes articles about best practices, and offers technology resources.

SFSKids Classic is an interactive website for kids. Students are able to learn, explore and listen to the instruments of the orchestra.

This website features interactive activities for kids that introduce them to musical concepts. The section titled "instruments of the orchestra" allows students to select specific instruments and hear their unique timbres. Students can also explore other unique aspects of the symphony orchestra. 

The San Fransisco Symphony Kids website allows students to explore classical orchestral music. Students can listen to the radio as it describes what is happening in the music, they can explore the instruments and hear how they each sound, and enter "The Music Lab" to learn about various elements of music such as beat, tempo, rhythm, and pitch.

The JLCO has a series of videos available for students to learn virtually from members of the band. The media library includes numerous videos about warming up, comping, blues, and jazz history.

Audacity is an audio editing tool used to alter recordings and export them into various formats. Used as an educational tool students are able to record, edit, and add digital effects to recordings to remix or compose creative musical products. Music educators may also find it valuable for editing recordings of performances or demonstrating the properties of sound. In order to export a song file to MP3 additional instillation steps are required, see the FAQ for more information.

A website created by the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz and designed for instructors. It offers lesson plans at no charge for 5th - 8th - 11th grade. Lessons examine jazz styles, performers, and composers. The website provides instructors with video and audio media, handouts and quizzes for students, and assessments.

Developed by The Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz, Jazz in America provides jazz educators with many great resources, including lesson plans, curriculum ideas, and audio samples.

The purpose of Jazz in America is to educate middle and high school students on the history of Jazz, help students think creatively, and to develop an appreciation of jazz music. The musical content includes lesson plans, a timeline, glossary, important musicians, style sheets, and audio recordings to use in instruction.

Noteflight provides music notation software from the ease of a web browser. The program is free to use, and although there is a premium version, the free version has all the tools needed for learning and creating notated music. All works are saved in the cloud and can be accessed at anytime from any device that can access the website, making music composition easier than ever.

Noteflight is a free browser-based music notation tool. The software has cloud storage allowing you to work on creative musical products from any computer with an internet connection. It also connects to MIDI instruments. Noteflight has a paid subscription which allows you to store unlimited compositions, full access to all sounds, transposition, and the ability to print individual parts. Student accounts can be purchased which you to create "closed" classrooms allowing for creative musical products and collaboration amongst peers.

The purpose of iReal Pro is to provide a simple yet high-quality practice resource for musicians. The application creates a customizable and realistic sounding accompanying tracks especially useful for practicing improvisation or jazz standards. Chord charts are used to create backing tracks in a variety of musical styles which can be transposed at the push of a button. The application is inexpensive and can be used on all mobile devices and on Mac OS. Currently it is not available for Windows (but can be used on android devices).

The FAME website provides information on the pedagogical approach advocated by John Feierabend, lesson resources, FAQ's, as well as locations for trainings and additional publications. There are thorough explanations on the First Steps in Music and Conversational Solfege curricula developed by Dr. Feierabend for those who want to learn more or want to advocate for his methodology. A thorough explanation of the musical content and learning objectives (tuneful, beatful, artful) are also available. A podcast hosted by Dr. Feierabend himself is available to members. Some services, like teacher resources, are also only available to members but have incredibly valuable.

This page lends itself as yet another valuable resource, especially for those whose weakness is teaching students to play by ear. In it, you will find six games that not only seek to refine our students' aural abilities but also serve to make a seemingly tedious task both motivating and fun; among this list are activities like rhythm chain, scale stops, and interval recognition--all of which can and should be implemented in K-12 music classrooms.

How to make accommodations for music students with special needs has always been a topic of conversation; however, as author Mary Rogelstad suggests, we have nothing to fear; among her list of recommended strategies for effective differentiation are items like teaching lessons that appeal to multiple senses and varying the speed of the content, or repertoire, to be learned and performed. As you can see, Rogelstad provides a sort of manual that helps us help our students to reach their maximum potential.

Educator Ken Thompson describes several views or perspectives on balancing an ensemble. By asserting his opinion as well as that of Francis McBeth, he weighs the pros and cons of some of the most common models, including the "Christmas tree pyramid." In short, Thompson uses SBO Magazine as a means through which to discuss the need for teachers to make balance an integral component of their day-to-day instruction.

Educator David Pope aims to provide his audience with effective strategies for selecting repertoire that compliments their ensembles. His list includes but is not limited to setting realistic expectations, knowing the demographics of your ensemble, determining the curricular goals or outcomes to be achieved through the repertoire, and connecting with each student; additional information pertaining to each of these four strategies, especially their impact on the repertoire selection process, has been summarized in the article as well.

This page lends itself as a particularly valuable resource, especially for those whose weakness is intonation. In it, you will find philosophies, phrases, analogies, activities, and what the author terms "common threads" for approaching the aforementioned topic with your students. Among the most popular suggestions are singing, practicing characteristic tone quality, and listening down, or back, to the tuba section--all of which can and should be practiced in the early stages of a student's musical development.

Authors Nicole Springer and Ella Wilcox summarize strategies for effective classroom management in the ensemble classroom. By citing the experiences of former high school orchestra director Gretta Sandburg as well as her tried-and-true teaching methods, they provide their audience with four substantial tools that enable directors to make the most of their students' rehearsals; reading suggestions pertaining to this same topic are also provided at the end of the article and are accompanied by downloadable handouts. 

This is Google's free experimental sequencer, created in 2018. There is very little verbal information - it is intuitive, simple and easy, and could be used with very young students. It also could be used by someone who doesn't read English.

This is another great, simple, web-based music sequencer that can be used to allow students to experiment with composition without needing to know anything about reading music or writing music notation. There is a large amount of sounds available and the sounds are of high quality. It is very simple to use and students can start composing right away using this site.

This simple app is great for reading notation and having students identify notes on the staff. Difficulty levels range from three notes in one clef to over 20 notes using a grand staff with accidentals. Exercises can be done in as little as 30 seconds. I think any middle or high school musician would benefit from the use of this app as a simple reminder of how to recognize pitches notated on the staff.

This is a simple, free, loop based music sequencer that allows students to create short compositions. It is very simple and easy to learn and nicely shows subdivisions. The sound samples are of high quality.

This website is a spin off of a Podcast from Mrs. Miracle. MusiQuest is an application designed to utilize technology to make music education accessible, creative and fun, and in keeping with digital advancement. Different music genres, personalize learning, cross curricular studies, song writing and sketching, melody, and, literacy and drama are a few of the attractions fo this website.

There was a big shift in the music education standards in 2014. Sometimes it's difficult to remember what standards we are supposed to teach as we try to plan our curriculum around performances. Here's a quick reminder!