Noteflight

This is my review on Noteflight

I created a copy of Bicycle Built For Two and embed it below.

      When I was watching the tutorial videos, I was thinking “This looks too easy. I know there are going to be problems to watch out for when doing this assignment” .  However, I was impressed how easy it was for me to do the assignment. I did not use a midi keyboard to input the notes, I chose to use the mouse feature and the typing keyboard feature. I liked how I did not have to select a  voicing part when I needed to notate two or three notes on the same beat. If I wanted to add or delete measures, I just moved my cursor to the top of the measure to find a plus or minus button to click for the addition or reduction of a measure. When I need to add more measures, the last measure would add another measure while I was started to input notes in the last measure that was present. Everything was user friendly to access. 

     My students would do well with this program due to it being user friendly.  They would explore all options, and I would have some complaining that they did not have access to all the instrument voicing, if was unable to purchase the teacher package. 

However, some students would need to have a “one on one” time with them to be successful in using Noteflight.

     Recently my students finished a keyboard and recorder unit. In both unit studies, I had my students compose a four measure phrase with a partner, then they had to play their composition to their classmates. I had some students who did well playing back their composition, however I had some students who were struggling to play their compositions. If my students had access to this program, it would help them to hear how there composition should be performed, and help them to play more fluently.  

Creativity Through Improvisation

Six years ago, I was sitting and waiting in the doctor’s office with my 13 year old daughter.  My daughter started to tap her feet on the stool that was next to the patient’s table. Most parents would have asked their child to stop tapping or playing with the foot stool; however I tapped out a rhythmic patter with my foot on the floor.  My daughter responded back again, but this time adding snapping and clapping. This rhythmic dialog when on for at least thirty minutes, until the physician returned back with my daughter’s strep test results. Even though my daughter was not feeling her best, she and I were enjoying our rhythmic conversation while we were waiting. 

In Chapter 3 of Music Learning Today, Bauer (2014) discusses Creativity.  Bauer quotes Weber’s (2012) definition of creativity as “the engagement of the mind in the active, structured process of thinking in sound for the purpose of producing some product that is new for the creator. Creative thinking is a dynamic process of alternation between convergent and divergent thinking , moving in stages over time, enabled by certain skills, and by certain conditions, all resulting in a final product” (p. 49). Looking back on my daughter’s and mine rhythmic conversation, our conversation was the result of our past musical experiences.  Rhythmic skills and the ability to audiate rhythmic patterns gave us both the ability to create our own rhythmic conversation. Bauer discusses that musical improvisation is like having a conversation with a person. Since people don’t stop and plan what they are going to say, they react to the other person’s narrative and spontaneously begin to speak (p.52). 

Having a musical conversation with my daughter was delightful. However, I want to have   musical conversations with my students.  As a music educator implementing improvisation techniques would benefit all my students learning, by applying the knowledge of the musical concepts that I have taught them.  This would provide the opportunity for my students and I to have a musical conversation like the one my daughter and I had shared, and promote in depth learning for all.

How does one teach improvisation to general music students? Improvisation can be taught in variety of forms, from experimenting with pitch, rhythm, and timber that occurs naturally with children during play; however, where does one begin (p. 51)? Kratus (1996) describes a seven-level sequential model for developing improvisation abilities (p. 52). 

Level 1: Exploration-This requires audiation skills to be developed with the students and to provide them the time and necessary instruments to facilitate exploratory improvisation. 

Level 2: Process-oriented improvisations-This level is when true improvisation begin. This allows students to have some ownership over the process. Students view improvisation as a process of doing instead of creating musical patterns. The teacher isolates the students’ improvisational patters to show the students how their musical patterns relates to other musical patterns. The teacher continues to help develop the students’ ability to audiate and provide opportunities for students to improvise and absorb other students’ improvisational patterns.

Level 3: Product-orientate improvisation. Students become more aware of musical structures that are melodic, rhythmic, harmonic, tempo and phrasing. Students begin to use these musical structures in their improvisations, in which listeners understand its greater meaning. The teacher helps expand her students’ understanding of the structural elements of music, and helps develop her students’ aural skills and sensitivity to the differences in harmony, tempo, and meter.

Level 4: Fluid improvisation-The student is able to perform without consciously thinking about performance. The performance would be more fluid in keys, meter and tempos. The teacher’s emphasis is on proper performance technique and provide exercises for technical development for the students. The technical exercises are grounded in authentic musical contexts that focuses on improvisation opportunities to use an assortment of tempos, meters, tonalities, and harmonic chord progressions.

Level 5: Structural improvisation-The students applies larger musical structures when improvising and developing melodic ideas, tensions and release, and the connection with musical ideas within their improvisations.  The students’ improvisations demonstrates a beginning, middle, and end for the listener. The teacher can recommend strategies that students can uses when developing an improvisation, and the students will benefit by analyzing the techniques of other performers.

Level 6: Stylistic improvisation-Students are fluently improvising within a specific style, applying appropriate melodic, harmonic and rhythmic strategies. The teacher helps her students to acquire a repertoire that includes melodies, rhythms, harmonies, and timbers characteristic of a specific style. Learning standard melodies, continue to analyze expert performances, and having opportunities to perform with expert improvisers in all styles is beneficial to the students.

Level 7:  Personal Improvisation-“The ultimate achievement is for a musician to develop a unique, recognizable style of improvisation” (Bauer, 2014p. 53). The teacher encourages her students to become fluent in a wide rages of styles that over time blend into an innovative stylistic approach (pp.52-53).

     After reviewing these seven steps the ability to audiate, aural skills, time to explore and having the necessary tools/instruments to help students be successful with improvisation was highly emphasized. I would like to have tools in place to help my students to be successful. My students have the ability to audiate and identify rhythmic and melodic patters when I perform them. However when they perform their rhythmic and melodic patters for me most of my students are not fluent.  My students do write down their rhythmic and melodic compositions, but have difficulties preforming their compositions back correctly. Having access to technology would be a helpful device for them to hear the fluency in how their compositions to be performed.   Utilizing Musecore and Noteflight notation software, my students would be successful with having these tools for their compositions, and would help them reach their creativity through improvisation.

Bauer, W. I. (2014). Creativity. In Music learning today: Digital pedagogy for creating, performing

       responding to music. New York: Oxford Press, Inc.

Past and Present Reflections

      I am consider to be a digital immigrant of technology.  My first experiences with computer technology was in the mid to late 1980's. My high school was using TRS-80 computers for my computer math class. I remember the floppy disks that were huge and fragile, and the computer monitor was boxy and huge.  I also took a computer word processing class in high school that used WordStar before there was Microsoft Word. Instead of using a laser inkjet printer, I had to use a Dot Matrix to print my finished assignments.  Before smartphones with unlimited data plans, call waiting and three way calling was the best phone technology a teenage girl could have access to on any land-line phone service plan. Youtube was not available for video and audio recording or sharing, but the use of a cassette and cassette recorder was the best way to create audio performances.  I would make audio cassette recording of me singing, playing the piano, or make recordings my dad and his friends playing bluegrass music on Saturday nights. My recordings would help me to practice, critique, and to create musical projects to share with my friends and family.

     In the present, I use technology everyday in my personal life, however, I wished I could use more in my music classes. The use of my classroom computer and having internet access is a necessity for my teaching.  I enjoy showing Youtube videos of  concert and marching bands, choir and orchestra performances for my students. I use educational singalong, Youtube videos to help teach musical concepts. However, I feel like that I can benefit from increasing my technology, pedagogical, and content knowledge (TPACK) to help better my own learning and my students learning.

 As a music educator at an elementary school, I feel alone and sometimes isolated because I am the only music educator in my building. Compared to when I was a choral director at a middle school, I was able to connect with the band and orchestra directors on a daily basis. However, after reading "Your Personal Learning Network: Professional Development On Demand", by William I. Bauer (2010), he describes multiple ways to share, collaborate, and learn from other music educators globally though the use of the internet.
      One way to have connections to other music educator and resources was the use of  Personal Learning Networks (PLN). PLN's can be used as resources for professional development that  can  be accessed by an educator's specific areas of interest.  Bauer discusses the uses of different tools to develop technology assisted PLN's, and how educators can adapt these tools.  Some tools that Bauer describes are the following Blogs, Podcasts,Wikis,Twitter. These tools are familiar to me, however I never knew how they can play a vital roll for professional develoment.   The use of  Really Simple Syndication (RSS),   how one can subscribe to it that it will  notify the subscriber when something new is published is new information to me.

     The knowledge on how a Feedly account is used amazed me. I like the idea of being able to have access to all my favorite web news sites and/or other information resources at one place instead of accessing the information through multiple sites.  After reading about how RSS it  is used, and having set up a Feedly account, I have been sharing this information with my family and friends who are digital immigrants. As a result of sharing this information, my family members are setting up their own Feedly accounts.
 Never the less, having the ability to professional development resources, and  the ability to communicate with other music educators globally, gives music educators a sense of connection instead of isolation.

I am looking forward in developing my (TPACK) in this course. Furthermore, I am looking forward to creating a learning, collaborating, and sharing community with my classmates.