NotateMe - New App Translates Handwritten to Notation!

Click HERE for the lowdown!

Can you name the Piece of Music by Score Fragment?

Name the classical music tune based off the score fragment shown!  

CLICK HERE TO TAKE THE TEST!

Permanently Fix a Manhasset Music Stand

Going Low-Tech for a moment.  Very helpful for any schools using Manhasset Music Stands:

CLICK THIS.

Essential Elements Interactive - A Reason to Switch to EE?

I just discovered the amazingly wonderful teaching tool and student motivation greatness of Essential Elements Interactive.  It's basically like having a free version of smartmusic, except students can do multiple takes of a recording, and submit their favorite one, but without the green/red note instant feedback.

Watch the video from Steve Smith at Hal Leonard:

The video found HERE I find to be better at showing the awesomeness of this online tool.

Click the "EEI Quick Tour Video" button for the overview of all the great features.

The price tag of all this makes it the most impressive - FREE.  Well, free with the Essential Elements books anyway.  The only negative for me is that we are currently using "Traditions of Excellence" books, and I really enjoy the way the books are put together since we start with like-instrument classes.  The EE books do not have many of the great things I'm looking for when starting just horns for instance.  The Traditions of Excellence books use professional musicians to demonstrate in the DVD's, and EE method books seem to use kids.  Granted, they are teaching the concepts properly, but there is something about having an adult professional vs kids which helps to make the students believe them w/out questioning integrity.

Now I have a big dilemma... do I make the switch from ToE back to the ol' EE?  I used to use EE years back, and many of the guest teachers I would invite in would point out the flaws in the book.  I had no defense.  Then ToE came out, and I never looked back... until now!

This is going to take more research before I make a commitment, but the good news is that it is VERY easy to switch to a new method book anytime at my school.  

I would LOVE to hear your thoughts and comments on this!  Feel free to leave them below!

iWork Pages Unable to Make Name Badges.

So I've been slowly coming around to Mac's Pages (part of iWork).  The more I discover about it, the more I really love the interface and what it offers in terms of flexibility.  The learning curve is a bit slow at times, but overall I really do feel like it is worth taking the time to learn.  It makes things look so much better in general.

Once I came to understand the difference between a word document and page layout, my life became significantly better.  Short version: page layout is basically like Publisher mixed with Word and it's very awesome.

Now on to the disappointment:

If you want to make name tags or name badges in Pages, don't even try, because it is fail.  The issue with pages and name badges is that you cannot make a bunch of mail merge fields in the same page.  This is something Word does very well, but Pages does not.  In order to mail merge in Pages, it must put a different name badge on each page in Pages.  Something Word has been able to do forever.  Ugh.

My Week at ABC in Pictures

The sum of my 2 weeks here at the American Band College:

Week 1:

Week 2:

End of Finals:

Done!

Great Website for Band Instrument Information

It has been a while since my last post, but things are going to get busy very soon!

Here's a taste of some great stuff coming:

http://www.bandguide101.com/index.htm