Noteflight

Noteflight is a great introductory music notation website. On the site, you can notate your own music either one note at a time or by using a midi controller. When creating it from scratch, it has all the features you need such as rhythm values, dynamics, and different instrument sounds.

On Noteflight, you can view many other users' free arrangements. My first fear was about copyrights; you would have to be careful of this. Actually, this would be a great opportunity for a lesson on copyrighting in music production! 

I listened to an arrangement of Pentatonix's version of "O Come O Come Emmanuel" for clarinets, and it was pretty cool.

In a music theory or music composition class, this site would be perfect for beginner composers or songwriters. It is easy to use and many of the functions are free. You can subscribe to the website; for $69 music teachers can use all of the site's music education features for a year. If you do not have the funds, the basic functions are great. 

This website is accessible for any student with a computer, so the only limitation there would be if students don't have a computer at home. I don't think there would be an issue with student interest since this is creative and individual. I think if students are taking what they are learning in music theory/composition and work on writing/arranging for themselves outside of class, they will learn so much as musicians! Of course, students would be free to email me with questions. 

For beginner students, I see them working on one piece of choice for the entire year/term. For more advanced students, they might have different themed compositions throughout the year. Students would then be able to share their work in class; maybe even have other students play the pieces for an added sight-reading practice.

Chrome Music Lab

The Chrome Music Lab is a collection of experiments to help anyone understand how music works. There is an experiment about rhythm, one about arpeggios, one about melodies- 12 in total. These experiments are interactive, pleasing to the eye, and fun. They are free to anyone with access to an Internet browser.

The rhythm experiment is very cute: it involves two interactive monkeys playing percussion. Users create rhythms using dots and the monkeys play the rhythms. You can add dots at any time, and it beautifully introduces how different rhythms promote different feelings.

I love the idea of using Chrome Lab as an introduction to a topic, maybe linking it to a Padlet. For example, the “Melody Maker” allows students to add pitches as color blocks, where blocks in the same row have the same pitch. I would love to have students play around with creating their own melodies before teaching a lesson on reading music, because they then would be excited to understand how pitches come together effectively since they have already done some creation. 

Using the Chrome Music Lab requires that all students have access to a computer outside of class, and that students take the time to play around with it. Because of this limitation, I could consider spending a class period allowing students to use school computers, if available, to play around in the Lab. I could then spend the next class period introducing music reading.

A music classmate in told me about this, and I’m so pleased that he did! I personally got excited about using it, and I feel that it would be a helpful learning tool for students to promote the learning, creation, and love of and music.

https://musiclab.chromeexperiments.com/Experiments

Using Padlet to Plan a Unit About Learning to Read Music

When thinking about what unit I wanted to prepare, I actually went to the Common Core Standards for Performing Arts. I also thought about the kids who I teach now private music lessons, who are, on average, about 10 years old. I read through the standards and reflected on what I thought my kids would need to learn most to achieve these standards. Although a lot of people think that learning music by ear is fine enough to be proficient, I believe there is value in learning to read music, because it provides the framework for understanding the musical language.

It is a common core standard that by grade 5, students should be able to understand and perform the basic elements of written music.In teaching the basic elements of music, I wanted to introduce rhythm as a concept of feeling, and pitch as a concept of hearing on different instruments, because it is easy to separate written music from music that you hear. I believe that separation is harmful to the students' learning! Therefore, I believe having games such as the Rhythm Lab in the Chrome Music lab allows students to put together what they see with what they hear and feel in the music.

https://padlet.com/kaylajackson5221/o6pq32w4inre