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David MacDonald unboxes the Odla music notation ...
David MacDonald unboxes the Odla music notation controller

iOS Music Plugins on the Mac

At WWDC, Apple’s software developer conference last month, they announced that the Mac will be moving to the same chip architecture as iOS devices. One of the many benefits of this move will be that iOS apps will run on the Mac natively.

CDM had an interesting immediate reaction to this news.

The Mac will now have the same chip architecture as an iPad, so what does that mean for us? - CDM Create Digital Music:

Apple’s announcement of moving the Mac from Intel to ARM is no surprise. But here are the details most relevant to your tools – and why we’re in a new era on both the PC and the Mac.

And TL:DR – the change on the Mac platform has a lot to do with Apple’s App Store ecosystem and blending the iPad and Mac platforms. But looking at the big picture, we aren’t so much post-PC as post-Intel. All vendors, not just Apple, are starting to eye chips other than Intel’s even on the x64 architecture.

I am really excited about this possibility for a number of reasons. There are a ton of iOS apps I would love to use the Mac (I am looking at you Tonal Energy and forScore). But then I got thinking about how big and diverse the iOS App Store is, and what some of the edge-case effects of iOS apps on the Mac could be.

Let’s think about audio plugins for a moment. iOS doesn’t have a robust architecture for integrating third party audio apps into larger ones like GarageBand. But it does has a lot of these audio apps. My understanding is that iOS plugins are Audio Units with the .AU extension, just like ones you would install in a DAW on MacOS.

So my assumption is that that an audio app for iOS like Brusfri could run inside of Logic alongside all of your other plugins. This may be a bad example considering Brusfri has a Mac version already but you get the idea.

I think this will only help the Mac. It could be mildly disruptive to the audio plugin market because iOS plugins are so much cheaper than things like, for example, Waves but ultimately, people who want Waves will still buy Waves. I am optimistic that this change will simply mean more apps for everyone, more variety of apps, and more variety of price.

Apple Updates iWork Apps with YouTube and Vimeo Embed Feature

Apple Updates iWork Apps for Mac for iBooks Author Transition, YouTube and Vimeo Embeds - MacRumors:

The Pages app now supports importing books from iBooks Author, which Apple discontinued and removed from the App Store on July 1. The update app also allows videos from YouTube and Vimeo to be played right in documents, with release notes below.

  • Play YouTube and Vimeo videos right in your documents.

I have been wishing for this feature for years. Embedding web videos is so useful in the classroom, where adding something like a YouTube video to your class presentation is as easy as pasting a URL to it in a slide.

I have been jealous of Google Slides for this feature (and pretty much only for this feature) and had just assumed that it was easier for Google to implement because both services are web-based. Apple doesn’t have a strong history of going out of their way to cooperate with the web, or Google services for that matter. So I am happy to see this feature here.

I have worked around this problem in the past by using two apps that are incredible utilities. Downie, on the Mac, which strips videos from the web and downloads them to your hard drive, and iCab Mobile, which is a web browser for the iPad that can download web videos to the Files app.

Both these apps, on their respective operating systems, have allowed me the control to download web videos and put them in slides. But this new iWork feature will eliminate several steps and make my files much lighter.

🔗 Noteflight Announces Soundcheck, Bringing New Pitch and Rhythm Analysis Features You Can Add to Your Assignments

Web based music notation editor, Noteflight, recently launched a new feature called SoundCheck. It works with Noteflight Learn to add the same pitch and rhythm analysis to your assignments that services like Smartmusic and PracticeFirst are capable of.

My understanding is that it works like this: Noteflight is still a standalone service for writing notation, publishing it, and sharing it within the Noteflight community. Noteflight Learn is the service that can be added to your Noteflight subscription which gives you access to content libraries and some LMS features like managing students and assigning work. SoundCheck is a third offering that can be added to your existing Noteflight Learn subscription, that adds the practice and analysis tools to your assignments.

It seems like it should be very easy to make assignments out of your Noteflight scores, which can be imported via the XML format.

John Mlynczak, Managing Director of Noteflight, is coming on the podcast this week to discuss more. Stay tuned.

SoundCheck Check One Two - Noteflight Notes:

We are so excited to announce our partnership with MatchMySound™ technology to bring SoundCheck™ to Noteflight! This proven solution for performance assessment will be available for use with any Noteflight score, and provide ratings and feedback for pitch, rhythm, and intonation – which can be used for assessment. All Noteflight scores will be available in SoundCheck with just the click of a button. All current Noteflight Learn integrations with Google Classroom and LTI tools such as Canvas, Schoology, Moodle, etc, will still be supported for creating and turning in SoundCheck assignments. We are actively integrating this feature now and are committed to having the first version available for use in June.

🔗 Apple honors StaffPad with annual Apple Design Award - Apple

Old news now but I just wanted to give a shout-out to StaffPad for winning an Apple Design Award this year. It is so completely deserved in every way. If you want to hear more of my thoughts on StaffPad, try one of the following posts:

First Impressions of StaffPad

StaffPad Comes to iOS (Reflections on App Store Pricing and Touch Screen Operating Systems)

Music Ed Tech Talk Podcast #7 - Working with StaffPad

Read more about Design Award winners below. They are very focused on pro apps for the iPad this year.

Apple honors eight developers with annual Apple Design Awards:

StaffPad, from StaffPad Ltd., brilliantly converts handwritten musical notations into digital sheet music. Designed for composers who want an easy solution for writing and composing music digitally, the app uses Apple technologies such as Apple Pencil, drag and drop, and Core ML to transform each bar into beautifully typeset music notation that can be edited using intuitive touch or Apple Pencil tools.

🎙 #12 - Making Music and Podcasts Using Soundtrap, with Meredith Allen

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Meredith Allen, Sales Enablement Manager at Soundtrap, joins the show to talk about using Soundtrap in the music classroom to create music and podcasts, getting acquired by Spotify, and wearing hard pants.

Show Notes:

App of the Week: Robby - Permute Meredith - Innovators Compass

Album of the Week: Robby - Dreams Come True | Love Goes On Meredith - Rocketman Soundtrack

Where to Find Us: Robby - Twitter | Blog | Book Meredith - Twitter | Website

🎬 How to Make a Virtual Ensemble!

The school year is finally over, as is my first ever quarter of online teaching.

I wanted my students to end the year seeing themselves represented together, playing the same music, at the same time. So I sharpened my Final Cut skills and dove into the process of making a virtual ensemble.

The video in this post gives an overview of my process for making these videos, all the way from making a play along track, to advanced editing such as pitch and rhythm correction. The video includes a couple of my favorite Mac utilities for manipulating audio and video files. Scroll to the bottom to see all of the final videos of my students.

Apps Mentioned in the Video

If you want free alternatives to the apps in the video, try:

To edit on iPadOS, try:

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Here are the final videos...

🎙 #11 - New Announcements from Apple, with Craig McClellan

🎬 Vivo! - The Ellicott Mills Middle School Wind Ensemble (Virtual Band Video)

Here is the first of a few "virtual band" videos I have been editing over the past few weeks. I am proud of my students for their hard work in unfamiliar conditions. I enjoyed making this a lot, but for different reasons than I enjoy teaching band.

I really refined my audio and video editing workflow for this. Stay tuned in the coming weeks for a video post on how I made this using Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro, and handful of other indie Mac apps.

🎙 #10 - Designing Curriculum and Assessing Students with FileMaker, with Ben Denne

Robby’s Ellicott Mills Middle School colleague, Ben Denne, joins the show to talk about designing a sequential instrumental music curriculum, and how they track student progress in the FileMaker app. Other topics include:

  • Workflows for producing virtual band/orchestra videos
  • The importance of developing audiation in student musicians
  • The strengths of binary performance rubrics
  • Art vs. Craft
  • Understanding relational databases
  • Data-driven music teaching (the good kind)
  • Lots more music teaching philosophy

Show Notes:

App of the Week: Robby - Discord Ben - IDAGIO

Album of the Week: Robby - Sarah Jarosz | World on the Ground Ben - Marc Ribot | Y Los Cubanos Postizos

Where to Find Us: Robby - Twitter | Blog Ben - EMMS Music | HoCoYo

Subscribe to Music Ed Tech Talk:

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Screenshots of Our FileMaker Database:

Our table of assignment records (Right) and the Layout we use to enter performance records (Left)

Performancerecord

Example of the music packets that FileMaker generates for our students:

Orangeflutepacket

🔗 Institute for Composer Diversity: State Repertoire Lists (Wind Band)

The Institute for Composer Diversity is curating special lists from their database, and their first one features wind band music! I am especially excited that this list includes works for beginners, an area that I find it typically challenging to program for. There is a lot of beginning music on this list to pick from.

State Lists — Institute for Composer Diversity:

Required state repertoire lists exist differently in every state in the U.S. and ICD, along with our partners in On The List and many others, wants to help to make sure those solo, chamber, and large ensemble lists appropriately provide students with music from many diverse voices. We’re starting with wind band works, but will grow this project to include choir, orchestra, jazz ensembles, and chamber works!

The lists below comprise a growing list of works for wind band composed or arranged by either a woman composer or a composer/arranger from an underrepresented heritage which have been selected by one or more U.S. state for repertoire lists. K-12 schools are required to perform works from these lists at district-and state-wide band festivals and competitions. Most of these works are in our Works Diversity Database (and those that aren’t will soon be)!

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