Digital Musicking

This page is the entrance to the repository of resources connected with Band Directors Facebook group. It includes worksheets, flashcards, recruiting information and many other downloadable information.

This site, compiled of professional educators, aims to enhance creative music and movement by emphasizing the Orff approach to instruction, providing professional development to its members, and supporting the creative potential of learners. You must subscribe to the association in order to benefit from its classroom resources, scholarships, and publication. But it seems to be a great source of support for classroom music educators!

The AOSA website is a resource for music educators. It provides information about the Orff-Schulwerk approach, advocacy, professional development, and teaching resources (lesson plans covering a variety of music content, videos, literature integration, and technology). Some links are only accessible by AOSA members.

The American Orff-Schulwerk Association provides a variety of resources for teachers and students to enhance their musical education. Here, students work together to create musical experiences through dance, movement, playing instruments, singing, and acting. Workshops and clinics can be attended to enhance knowledge and understanding in this area of music education.

On this site, one can explore all knowledge needed to learn correct playing practices on the recorder. Along with fingering charts and sample music, one can find articles on overall playing technique, mechanics and instrument choice.

Through this site, students can engage in a variety of music theory or aural skills activities. Using the program's interface, one can engage with activities such as melodic, harmonic, two-part, and rhythmic dictation as well as chord analysis. It uses a click-drag method to assign notes and/or pitches to an exercise.

This site advocates for music edcuation. It provides information through blogs, articles, and research. The topics of discussion include arts as a core subject, formal teacher evaluation procedure for arts classes, engaging students in music classes, and the importance of providing an arts education to every student. A nice aspect of this site is that it provides information not only in the form of text, but also graphs and charts. This makes the information presented easy to comprehend for a larger audience. Teachers can use the informaion from these research studies and blogs to ensure that their music program is genuinely helping all of the students and to educate themselves on the importance of music education/its place in todays changing views on the arts as a core subject.

This site is something that most music educators today are familiar with; Finale. it provides a free download of Finale as well as blogs and training tutorials about how to use the program. The purpose of Finale is to all teachers (and students!) to create their own music. It can be anything from an original composition to an arrangement of a familiar song to a replica of something that has already been created. Not only does finale help build musical creativity, but it also teaches students about the basics of music notation. This site is a great source because it takes you step-by-step through downloading Finale, making it more user-friendly, especially for those that might not have as much experience with more recent music software.

A website that allows you to track practice time better and provide students with feedback. The program saves the information and can supply practice reports.

Everyone wants their classroom to look organized and inviting. This website offers great bulletin board ideas for the music classroom.

This website is an experiment in sound production. The different sounds are made to look like organisms swimming around. The composer creates music with their ear, not notation.

This podcast discusses a myriad of topics that band directors face at some point. James Divine approaches the topics with good humor, a great education, practicality, and experience.

This is a blog that focuses on elementary music education, specifically songs and games that teach simple musical elements. The blog is very well organized and easy to access.

This is a website that provides free music graphics. This is a helpful tool for publications, projects, presentations, programs, and more.

Great free online resource to practice ear training exercises. I really like how it is broken down into different categories and has a beginner level. It is great having a specific section devoted to note location and perfect pitch.

This is a blogpost that helps give ideas and aid for helping teachers be more comfortable teaching improvisation. It is very descriptive and has sample videos supplied showing the suggestions in action. A helpful resource to help facilitate teaching improvisation to young children especially.

Free podcasts available online, also on iTunes, to learn how to play jazz piano. There are a lot of episodes and it starts simple and easy before it gets a bit more advanced. There's an easy progression of increasing difficulty. These podcasts are a great resource for students and teachers for increasing their jazz piano abilities.

Great resource for music history. With a new audio show being posted every week and past shows being available, there is a lot available and will continue to be available. Has short audio to keep children's attention and has an accompanying worksheet to help facilitate optimal listening and understanding.

Great source for a wide range of quizzes. There are a lot of options ranging from learning different instruments, note identification, rhythm practice, musician quizzes and more. There are lots of fun games that kids really enjoy.

This website is a compilation of world music that is appropriate for children to learn about and perform. The library is vast, and is easily searchable by continent, country, and language. There are audio clips and linked videos, as well as several English translations. It's a great resource to explore world music and culture.

This interactive guide by composer Abbie Betinis goes through a step-by-step question guide that allows conductors to answer questions about how they want to perform and/or reproduce music. The guide then explains the appropriate licenses needed to ensure the copyright holder is fairly treated. It also tells you how to obtain these licenses.

This article provides ideas for small budget ensembles to make a dream of commissioning a new piece of music a reality. Commissioning music is a great way to get singers invested in music-making, yet the monetary restrictions can be huge. This article encourages the reader to not be afraid to reach out and see what opportunities are possible just from a simple conversation.