Going without a wallet

According to this other announcement from Apple last week, Maryland will be one of the first states to allow iPhone users to put their drivers license in the Apple Wallet app.

I am thrilled!

Apple announces first states to adopt driver’s licenses and state IDs in Wallet - Apple--->

“Maryland is proud to be a leader once again in safe innovation with the implementation of mobile driver’s licenses,” said Maryland Governor Larry Hogan. “As we look to the future, we are committed to enhancing convenience and accessibility while maintaining the highest safety and security standards for our state and citizens.”

Between credit cards, house keys, car keys, and drivers licenses all going into Apple Wallet now, I can see the day where all we need it a phone or a watch when we leave the house. I wonder how long it will take to get my school ID card into my phone? I have to use that to swipe into the building.

Apple acquires classical music streaming service Primephonic

Last week, Apple aquired classical music streaming service Primephonic. This service is very similar to [IDAGIO](https://idagio.com) which I use and have written about here before.

[Apple acquires classical music streaming service Primephonic - Apple-->](https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2021/08/apple-acquires-classical-music-streaming-service-primephonic/)

CUPERTINO, CALIFORNIA AND LONDON Apple today announced it has acquired Primephonic, the renowned classical music streaming service that offers an outstanding listening experience with search and browse functionality optimized for classical, premium-quality audio, handpicked expert recommendations, and extensive contextual details on repertoire and recordings.

With the addition of Primephonic, Apple Music subscribers will get a significantly improved classical music experience beginning with Primephonic playlists and exclusive audio content. In the coming months, Apple Music Classical fans will get a dedicated experience with the best features of Primephonic, including better browsing and search capabilities by composer and by repertoire, detailed displays of classical music metadata, plus new features and benefits.

Primephonic is no longer available for new subscribers and will be taken offline beginning September 7. Apple Music plans to launch a dedicated classical music app next year combining Primephonic’s classical user interface that fans have grown to love with more added features. In the meantime, current Primephonic subscribers will receive six months of Apple Music for free, providing access to hundreds of thousands of classical albums, all in Lossless and high-resolution audio, as well as hundreds of classical albums in Apple Music’s Spatial Audio, with new albums added regularly.

I would have never guessed that a company as big as Apple would dedicate resources to solving a problem like classical music metadata but I will take it. This will mean that I can use my same Apple Music account, library, and payment, and get a superior searching experience. Viewed simply as a utility, this seems like a win.

I wonder if this means that Apple is aware and working on the many other musical metadata problems in other styles. For example, in jazz, it would be great to search a recording by personnel, soloists, recording enegeniers, and more.

I'm on the iPad Pros podcast to talk about Dorico and Sibelius for iPad

I am pleased to be a guest on the iPad Pros podcast this week to talk about Dorico and Sibelius for iPad.

Tim Chaten does an awesome job with this show and has a background in composition. If you want to spend quite a bit of time with us and hear my thoughts on these two professional scoring programs for iPad, give it a listen!

YouTube version here:

App of the Week: ViDL (Downloads YouTube Videos On Your Mac)

For anyone looking for this kind of tool, I recommend checking out ViDL for downloading video content from websites on to your computer.

ViDL for Mac - Download Web Videos Easily:

ViDL is a free Mac app that allows you to easily download videos from YouTube and hundreds of other websites for offline viewing.

It is based on the popular youtube-dlcommand line tool, but much easier to use, especially with videos/playlists that require a login (like your personal "Watch Later" list).

Free Masterclass on Groove - Andrew Hitz

Andrew Hitz brings the truth…

Free Masterclass on Groove — Andrew Hitz:

If you go deep (Sam Pilafian's take on deep listening - headphones, eyes closed, phone on airplane mode) and truly get lost in it, I guarantee you that your Fountains of Rome or your Bolero or your whatever will be better on the other side of it. Full stop.

Megan Lavengood IDs songs on the Baby Einstein Take Along Tunes toy

Music theorist Megan Megan Lavengood recently took to Twitter to try and identify all of the songs on a Baby Einstein toy.

It’s a particularly fun read, and I had an especially good time with it since we have this toy and our 1.5 year old has played with it off and on since birth.

Click the link below to read the entire thing. It comes complete with audio examples of the toy and a Spotify playlist of all the pieces of music they are based on.

What actually are all these songs on the Baby Einstein Take Along Tunes toy? – Megan L. Lavengood:

For the uninitiated, the Take Along Tunes toy plays a series of excerpts from Classical- and Baroque-era (mostly) orchestral works while flashing colored lights; its purpose is to distract and occupy your baby while you’re forcing them to do something they don’t particularly enjoy (in our case, diaper changes). As musical toys go, it’s really not annoying, because the tunes are pleasant and the excerpts are long enough not to drive you up the wall with repetitiveness.

While there are some obvious, Greatest-Hits-of-the-Classical-Era-type selections (William Tell, Eine Kleine Nachtmusik), some other excerpts stumped me.

Making the Grade | a weekly education series on 9to5Mac

Making the Grade is a reoccurring weekly series on 9to5Mac written by Bradley Chambers. It typically features tech analysis concerning Apple's relationship to education.

I recommend subscribing to 9to5Mac on Twitter or in an RSS app (like Reeder 5) if you are interested in more. Here is a link to a recent article...

Making the Grade: Custom domains for schools is the next logical step for Apple after bringing custom domains to iCloud - 9to5Mac:

In the hours after the WWDC Keynote, there are always little “nuggets” of news that come out that didn’t make the event, but can often be pretty impactful because it can give you an idea of where Apple is moving in the future. When 9to5Mac first spotted the mention of the custom domains in iCloud in the moments after the Keynote, I knew immediately this was the first step to offering this service to schools

MusGlyphs is a useful font for typing music symbols into a word procesor

Check out the update to MusGlyphs, a font for typing music symbols into a word processor. Scoring Notes has the details. Click to read their writeup below.

MusGlyphs updated to 2.1; text version added - Scoring Notes:

MusGlyphs has been updated to version 2.1. MusGlyphs is the font by Dan Kreider that makes it easier to type a wide variety of musical symbols directly into a word processor, combined with text fonts, without needing to adjust baselines or point sizes.

Among the notable improvements in this version is the addition of MusGlyphs Text, a version of MusGlyphs with regular and bold variants that allows the user to type ordinary text and musical symbols without needing to switch between two different fonts.

This isn’t something I have used a ton but I am excited to check this version out in more detail. It could be really useful for making music worksheets in a word processor like Pages or Word. Unfortunately, Google Docs (to my knowledge) still has terrible support for third party fonts.

Control Alt Achieve covers 40 Google for Education Updates for Summer 2021

Google made some big education announcements last week, including a bunch of education features across their apps.

Control Alt Achieve has a great overview of them. Click below to read more.

Control Alt Achieve: 40 Google for Education Updates for Summer 2021:

Summer is a nice time to take a break and relax, but Google has instead been busy working on new updates and features for schools.

On June 22nd Google hosted their "Anywhere School 2021" event (http://goo.gle/tas21) where they covered loads of announcements concerning 40 updates for Google Classroom, Google Meet, Chrome and Chromebooks, and Google Workspace tools in general.

In case you missed it, or are just trying to review through everything that was shared, see below for a list of all 40 updates that were shared at the event.

On the one hand, many of these features looks great (especially the education streaming feature with YouTube/Google Meet). On the other hand, it is easy to see that some of these features are born out of the needs of virtual/hybrid learning and may not be as useful as schools potentially return to in-person instruction this fall.

That said, it looks like there is plenty in store for Google Classroom users, no matter what teaching environment you may find yourself in this fall.

Music Ed Tech Conference, July 2021. Register now!

MusicFirst is putting on a Music Ed Tech Conference this summer. I strongly encourage you to check it out. It is completely free! There are a lot of great speakers including myself and past guest, Richard McCready.

Victor Wooten and Dr. Jeffrey A. Murdock are keynote speakers.

Click the link below to learn more and register.

Music Ed Tech Conference:

We are thrilled to announce the 2021 Music Ed Tech Conference: Renew, Refresh, Rebuild! This event is a completely free virtual conference held on Tuesday, July 20, 2021. It is open to all music teachers and features an incredible line-up of music educators from a wide variety of backgrounds, including two keynote speakers: Dr. Jeffrey A. Murdock (2021 GRAMMY™ Music Educator of the Year) and Victor Wooten (bassist and founding member of Bela Fleck and the Flecktones). Attendees will be able to attend breakout sessions focusing on specific content areas and strategies for using technology to strengthen and rebuild music programs in the 2021-22 school year and beyond.

My session is called What Do We Keep? I am going to talk about which technological practices from the past year are worth integrating into the future of teaching.

I pushed my tech to the fringes last school year, and I think it is worth investigating what new ideas are worth keeping, which should be quickly discarded, and which have the power to transform classroom environments. I will be talking about my experience through the lens of both traditional performance ensemble teaching and the general music classroom where kids are making music, crafting beats, and covering various styles of music. Click the link below to read more.

Robby Burns — Music Ed Tech Conference:

WHAT DO WE KEEP? 2:05 - 2:50 PM EST, July 20, 2021 Join band and general music teacher, Robby Burns, to reflect on which digital teaching practices are worth integrating into the new year. Find out how he has pushed his technology to the complete limits, using advanced organization tools and automations to speed up his logistical work, as well as digital collaboration tools to create rich and engaging assessments online.