Microphone

I received a microphone on Friday that I had requested from my budget money for my iPad.  Since I am more comfortable using GarageBand now I hope everything will work flawlessly together.  I am looking forward to using it in the next couple of weeks for our GVC (Guaranteed and Viable Curriculum) assessments.  We (the secondary choir teachers) have several assessments where we require our students to sing a short song a cappella.  I hope to have it all up and running by the end of the week so I can start working on these assessments.

Recording

As Kathy suggested I used my "new" iPad with Garageband to record my Vocal Jazz group.  We were going to perform at the Greeley Jazz Festival on Thursday, April 18th so I recorded them on Monday so they could listen to themselves.  It is always interesting to have middle schoolers listen to themselves.  They are so judgmental of themselves and they can always "pick" out their own voice.  Makes you love teaching 7th and 8th graders.  Anyway, the recording turned out fairly well but the down side was the volume to replay the recording wasn't very loud.  I will need to look into options for getting a portable speaker.  I know there are quite a few out there that are fairly inexpensive.

Thanks Kathy for the suggestion :-)

Btw..........we never made it to Greeley.  School was closed from Tuesday at noon until Friday morning.  We ended up having about 12 - 18 inches of snow.  But........it is melting FAST.

Here is a picture of my daughter standing in between two piles of snow that came from my driveway.  She is almost 5'8" too.......

YouTube

I don't know why I always forget about YouTube.  So I was searching using different topic threads like "garageband tutorial", "garageband for iPad".  The last one I tried was "recording vocals in garageband on iPad".  Low and behold it brought up various YouTube tutorials that I could use.  Wow, do I feel dumb now.  LOL

Been looking at many of them and I'm excited to try some possibilities out.  The only thing is to record on the iPad, or Mac for that case, you have to have an external recording device.  And of course the external recording devices are not inexpensive.  By the time you get the mic and other components you might be looking at quite an expense.

But, I am not discouraged and will keep moving forward.

Music on the iPad

Today I received an email from a developer of the Sibelius software (music notation software) saying that he was going to offer a class on Sibelius in Ft. Collins, CO at the Community College.  At the bottom it said that he also had a new class called "Music on the iPad".  He wanted to know if I was interested in either of the classes and when during the summer would I have a free weekend that I might be able to take the class.  I emailed him back the possible weekends and told him I was REALLY excited about the Music on the iPad class.  Hope it is a weekend that I will be able to attend.

Music Apps?

Hi everyone.  I decided my post for this week would be to see if anyone has any interesting music apps that they have come across.  I'm specifically looking for apps that my students can use at home to help them with reading music (i.e.....music theory).  I've come across a couple but I haven't found anything that I really like.  Let me know if you find anything.  Thanks.

Garageband for Dummies - podcasts

Was looking for websites on Garageband and googled Garageband for Dummies and came across this website that helps you make podcasts with Garageband.  Definitely a website I will use.

http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/how-to-create-podcasts-in-garageband.html#

Moosic Studio

This new app, Moosic Studio, sounds really cool if I taught more private lessons.  Keeps track of all your lessons plus payments and a portfolio for all of your music.  I'm going app hunting to see if I can find something similar to keep track of all my octavos for choir.  Would save me time going through all of my boxes of single octavos to find songs for my choirs.