Musicmap is an incredible interactive website project by Kwinten Crauwels, which endeavors to offer an encyclopedic collection of music genres and their histories. When you first visit the site, you will probably be familiar with most of the titles on the home page. Click on any type of music, however, and you will be able to access many genres that, if they ever crossed the thresh-hold of your eardrums, you would be hard-pressed to identify their names.
Pop music, for example, offered up “Brill Building” and “Shoegaze,” two genres that sound more like commercials for men’s products to me than musical categories. In case I had any doubt these existed, though, all I had to do was click on either one to get a definition, time context, and a suggested playlist of examples.
I can’t attest to the accuracy or reliability of Musicmap, but I certainly can recommend it to anyone with an interest in the history of music and in learning more about its extensive diversity.
Piano Tiles (Don’t Tap the White Tile) is a free app, available on iTunes and Google Play. The name of the game is pretty self-explanatory. As black and white tiles fall down the screen, your job is to tap the black tiles only. The black tiles will make the sounds of music notes as you tap them. The faster you can play without hitting a white tile, the better. I’d never heard of the game until I saw this article in one of my Flipboard magazines, featuring a pretty amazing setup invented to “beat” the game like no human would ever be able to do. To be perfectly honest, the video pretty much discouraged me from ever even trying to play the game – at least not until I get some bionic eyes and fingers.
Thinkfun periodically sends products to me for review. When Compose Yourself arrived on my doorstep, I knew that I should find someone with a musical background to give it a test drive. Our school music teacher, who is also the President-Elect for the Texas Music Educator’s conference, volunteered to try out the game with her class. Here is Angela Leonhardt’s review.
“I was recently asked by our GT teacher to test out this music-based game from Thinkfun. What fun my students and I had being the testers! Although we were using this in our music classroom, anyone who loves music would enjoy this activity.With 60 different music cards the possibilities for musical enjoyment are almost endless.
How it works:Once you have signed into the Thinkfun Compose Yourself website and entered the “make music” code provided with the cards you are set to start composing your own music. Each card has a 4 digit number code that you enter.You can enter up-to 16 cards in your composition. Once you are done you can hear your composition played by a professional marimba player, orchestra or both.
Here are some highlights from Compose Yourself we found:
Very easy to use.Students in 1st – 5th grade easily used the website and cards with minimal instruction from me.
All of the students enjoyed the music making experience and were disappointed when our time was done. A good sign in my book.
The students were very excited to hear their finished products.One group of students wanted to continue the experiment and see what it would sound like if they all played at the same time.
We loved the ‘Clear Composition’ feature at the bottom of the screen to quickly set up a new composition.
Of course the Free Set-Up of your account is also a big plus. I set up one teacher account for all of my students to use.
Bonus:You can download the mp3 of your composition and the printed melody line.
For those music educators out there who are wondering how this relates to your classroom instruction and standards, never fear.My initial purpose was to have students ‘play’ with the ideas.As an Orff Schulwerk teacher the act of play is where the learning begins for me.I gave my students a quick overview of how to enter the card codes and told them to play, see what happens. What happens if you flip a card or move it to a different place in the score?They LOVED hearing their compositions in an orchestral setting.It was very satisfying to them.With our second experience I provided more structure to their play by turning this into a lesson on musical form and elemental structures. What started as play turned into learning through play. I can also see future lessons on melodic contour using Compose Yourself.I don’t see my class using this as a ‘notation reading’ lesson at this point.I could separate out the cards within their reading ability but I think there are other ways to practice this skill.I’m not a fan of the ‘lollipop’ notes as we call them in my classroom but I’m sure there was a technical reason why the programmers printed the notation this way.This is a small minus for an overall great program and experience for my students.
My students have been satisfied with the instrument choices because they’ve never heard their ideas in a full orchestral setting.The website talks about adding more instrumental choices in the future, which would be a bonus but not necessarily an essential in my book.”
Typatone comes from the makers of Patatap. In the latter, you are basically able to create visual fireworks by typing on a keyboard, as each key corresponds to a shape and sound. Typatone is similar, but it allows you to create music with a sentence.
How can you use this in class? We discuss synesthesia in my 4th grade GT class, so Typatone can definitely augment that discussion. Also, I think the students would enjoy writing poetry or sentences with figurative language to see how they sound. How about a spelling test? Allow students to listen to the sounds of different letters, and then have them guess what word you just spelled. Music teachers can probably think of a few applications also.
Creations can be shared through e-mail or embedding (although the embedding option apparently does not work in this blog). You can click here to listen to the short tune I composed.
The Piano Guys have arranged a brilliant composition that combines Bach and “I Want You Back” from the Jackson 5. Here is part of the summary you will find on their YouTube description of the video:
“What if the harpsichord from the 1770s hit headlong into the talk box from 1970s? What if J.S. Bach and Jackson 5 met up and just jammed? Would they jive? Can you dig it? These are the kind of far out questions we asked ourselves as we laid down these licks and cut this film. We decided to put together a gig with two wigs in dandy attire and two hep-cats in some funkadelic threads to see if it would fly. (Incidentally, Steve’s 1770/1970 alter egos are “Sir Reginald von Sharp” and “Scooby” while Jon’s are “Duke Johann van Keymeister” and “Phil.”)
Presenting… “I Want You Bach” – Jackson 5’s funky “I Want You Back” mashed-up with 5 illustrious themes written by J.S. Bach.”
Hmm. What do you think might be next? Bach in Black, Bach in the Saddle, The Boys are Bach in Town, Bach in Time…
I forgot my wireless speaker yesterday. Usually, the week before our Winter Break, my students enjoy listening to Christmas/Holiday music. Our new computers don’t have C.D. players, so I have a few playlists on my phone. However, the phone doesn’t sound very good without a speaker.
Podsnack to the rescue! During my planning time, I quickly put together a playlist of virtually all of the same songs I had on my phone. When the students returned to class, the songs were ready to go. Click here if you would like to access my Holiday Playlist. (The Straight No Chaser songs are a huge hit with the students, by the way!)
Podsnack is a free service. You can access public playlists that have been shared by a link without even registering. If you do register (for free), you can create your own playlist by adding tracks from your computer (not iTunes), Dropbox, or YouTube. There is a Premium version of the service, but I haven’t needed that.
Of course, make sure Podsnack is not blocked if you are using it in your classroom. And always preview the songs before playing them to make sure they are appropriate for your particular group of students.
Podsnack is great to use in the curriculum as well. You can read about one great idea from my friend, LeAnne Hernandez. She won the Teachers are Givers contest this summer with this lesson plan.
Below, you can see some of the creative thinking my 4th graders did yesterday while they were listening to our Holiday Playlist. Their assignment was to “adapt” Santa’s sleigh to a different environment. If you are interested in more ideas like these, check out this post.
Santa has his own inner tube connected to one carrying gifts. Whales are pulling them.I cannot even describe all of the details in this picture. The sleigh is being pulled by lions and is also powered by a lunar panel (as opposed to a solar one). There is feed hanging off the end for the lions.Here we have the sleigh outfitted with a drill for underground travel. Powerful lanterns are necessary, too.Sorry about the quality of this pic! My favorite thing about this one is the technical jargon on the buttons!
I found myself in Seattle a few weeks ago, stuck in a 12-person van with my daughter’s synchronized swimming team on a road trip. The girls were getting a bit stir crazy, and I was trying to think of a game we hadn’t played yet. I desperately texted a music teacher friend, “What was that fun music app you showed me last month?”
I quickly downloaded it, and got the girls next to me to give their input on the song and style. Once you choose a song and style, the app tells you certain sounds to make as you are recorded, then mixes them into a fun video. The video can then be shared to your camera roll or on social media (if you desire).
The team loved it. Suddenly every girl in the van was downloading the app to her phone and making weird sounds. In retrospect, maybe it wasn’t a great idea to try it out in an enclosed space…
VidRhythm is rated for ages 9+, and available on iPhone and iPad. It’s free. I’m sharing it today because it’s Phun Phriday, and it’s definitely a lot of fun. Of course, kids will be kids and try to make all kinds of sounds that are not suggested by the app – so be prepared if it’s on a student’s device to hear and see some unique videos that only kids would dream up;)
