EtherPad, a Cool Tool for Collaboration

I receive updates every day from Diigo - most of the time I ignore them, but I’m glad I didn’t today.  One user shared a link to EtherPad, a collaborative text-editing tool.  Here are some of the benefits:

• No account is required, a real benefit over Google docs, which requires everyone to have a google account
• You can customize your URL
• Unlimited editing history
• Easily track edits from multiple authors

The only disadvantages that I see at the moment are that it doesn’t support .rtf formatting and it’s “only” a text editor. 

However, the buzz has been good.  One testimonial on EtherPad’s front page reads: “EtherPad has killed wikis, whiteboards and to-do lists for everything from meeting notes to writing copy to issue tracking” —Drew Houston, Dropbox. 

I’ll have to keep this in mind for future on-line courses.  Let me know what you think of EtherPad!

I Could At Least Say Thank You

My colleagues and students probably don’t know how much I appreciate them.  I’m not sure I do quite enough positive reinforcement when I teach especially in the classroom.  When I’m teaching a voice lesson I do say a lot of “good,” “nice sound,” etc.  But when I’m in class, especially this semester, I say way too frequently things like, “Please be quiet;” “No, by now you know I don’t accept late homework;” “Excuse me, can I please teach my class.”

I have a senior in my freshman theory class.  I’d like to thank her for her hard consistent work this semester.  I’d like to thank her for keeping me on track with regard to the schedule.  (I call her my schedule TA.)

I have several 1st year students who are working their tails off in my theory classes.  They are struggling with the material and really setting themselves on a good course for success in the theory area.  I’m thankful to have students who work so hard.

I have several students who are a handful but are an awful lot of fun.  I can thank them for being enthusiastic (even when it’s disorderly).

Similarly, I have some amazing voice studio students.  Folks who show up ready to work every lesson and who have obviously been working hard in between lessons.  Every once in a while a student makes an amazing technical discovery, and that is very exciting for me.  I am thankful for those discoveries.

I have a few students who are really great about singing in voice area class and performing on extra recitals.  One student really “wowed” some young voice students at a community recital.  I am so thankful that she shared her talent with them and inspired them.

I am thankful to work in such a beautiful place and have a steady secure job.  I am thankful to have a great work environment overall, even though little (and big) things get me down from time to time.  I am thankful that I am treated with respect by my colleagues.

I am thankful for the people I have met through music associations like the College Music Society, the Association for Technology in Music Instruction, and the Music Teachers National Association.  I have learned so much from my colleagues and have enjoyed getting to know people at conferences this past year.

Me? I too have Spark?

Thank you to my twitter friend Julie at the Cool Mom Guide for bestowing a Sparky Blogger Award upon me.  Thanks for making my day even better!  I wish I were better about blogging here, and maybe I’ll do it more often now that I’m sparky!

I have a number of blog friends who are deserving of this award, so I will update soon with my list of awardees.
And very soon I’ll have a new post up here!

Glogster for Music Projects

I came across this neat Web 2.0 tool called Glogster today. [Twitter is coming in more handy all the time. Who'dathunkit!] Anyway, I knew by how it was being described that it’s similar to ScrapBlog, a service that I’ve had trouble utilizing. Glogster is in fact quite simple to use. You can upload media or choose from their galleries to create some nifty on-line posters. Here’s something I created with minimal effort and frustration:

Here are the features that Glogster touts:
* Mix graphics, photos, videos, music and text
* Create links to your Glogs
* Share your creations on MySpace, Facebook, Hi5, Friendster, Bebo or wherever you want.
* Find new friends by their style
* Have fun browsing Glogs, comment on other people’s Glogs and get inspiration

You can print Glogs directly from the browser, but at present, you cannot send them to your favorite printing service. Right-clicking the image (on a PC) allows you to view the Glog fullscreen or print it but not save as an image file. This is too bad – printing to pdf reduces the image quality. Well, I’m hopeful that they’ll add this capability soon. If anyone knows of a work around, please let me know.

Any music educators out there using Glogster or ScrapBlog? It seems to me that it would be great for music literature classes – Glogs of important composers, artistic trends, music centers, etc. It might be a way to spice up your students’ studio repertoire reports.

Update: I just discovered while sharing this to Facebook (actually, I’ve edited it since sharing it there), that you can share directly to WordPress and a number of other services.

Organizing Your Music Files

I was Digging around this afternoon mostly catching up on the buzz from the Vice-Presidential Debate this past Thursday evening.  I’m starting to blog about national politics, actually.  (Which makes a lot of sense since I have 3 blogs, administer a Ning site, participate in different Ning groups, and do things like Plurk and Twitter – I have no time.)  Anyway, one popular article on Digg is “Fix your music library.”  I was quite interested to read it because I feel like my music library is a MESS and nothing is well integrated for both iTunes and WMP.  Frustrating.  Anyhoo, the author had two recommendations: MusicBrainz (open source) and FixTunes ($$). 

Since FixTunes can’t fix things like “Track 1″ and “Track 2″ as titles, it seems fairly worthless.  Before heading over to check out MusicBrainz, I decided to read the comments.  One person commented that MusicBrainz doesn’t have a good classical music database, so that would have minimal value for me.  Most of what’s on this laptop is classical music – stuff for my applied teaching and the song literature class I taught a couple of years ago.

A couple of people recommended something called mp3tag.  I googled it and think it’s worth exploring.  It supports a number of file types, not just mp3.  The ones I tend to use are mp3, wav, and wma.  It doesn’t look like wav files are included, but since it supports flac and I learned to flac my wav files this summer, that should work.

Other features they advertise include:

• Write ID3v1.1-, ID3v2-, APEv2-Tags and Vorbis Comments to multiple files at once (sounds fancy)
• Support for embedded cover art
• Automatically create playlists
• Recursive subfolders support
• Remove parts or the entire tag of multiple files
• Rename files based on the tag information
• Import tags from filenames
• Format tags and filenames
• Replace characters or words from tags and filenames
• Export tag information to user-defined formats (like html, rtf, csv, xml)
• Import tag information from online databases like freedb or Amazon (also by text-search)
• Import tag information from local freedb databases
• and some other technical stuff . . .

Since it can import tag info from Amazon, there’s hope that most of my classical music sound files can be cleaned up as well!!  Ok, I’m sold.  I’ll download it and give it a whirl.  But first . . . I need to figure out what the banging/hammering sounds are outside . . .

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Tags: Digg, mp3tag, FixTunes, MusicBrainz, organization, music files, classical music

Music Theory, Ning, and Wordle

Isn't wordle a neat way to look at usual things?

(Why is wordpress making the image so durned small? Grrrr!)

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Tags: ning, music theory, social media, on-line learning, wordle

More Cowbell!

Here’s a cut and paste of an interesting post I read today over at Mashable’s blog.  Echo Nest looks like it could be a whole lot of fun, so hopefully even “serious” (aka classical) musicians will check it out.

Plus, how can you not love MORE COWBELL!?

The Application Showcase shares several examples of what can be created with the Echo Nest. There are some silly fun apps such as More Cowbell which allows you to upload a song and actually adjust the amount of cowbell you want to hear for that particular song (based on the famous Saturday Night Live sketch). You can then share the results with anyone.

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Tags: echonest, mashable, application showcase, more cowbell

Students – Join Our Ning Network

The class members who spoke up the other day seemed to be interested in http://www.ning.com, so I have set up http://freshmontanatheory.ning.com.  Please request membership and set up your “my page.”  There’s already a bit of activity, and it’ll be more fun the more we all use it.

From your “my page” you can start blogging – remember that I expect you to blog about your aural perception practice at least twice a week for the duration of the semester.  My next post will be an example journal post.

Aural Perception and Radiohead

Radiohead is one of many bands that are perfect for analyzing in the context of aural and written theory.  Why?  Simply stated – their music is very complex and creative!

Can you figure out the pulse & possible time signatures for the following songs?  Anything seem “odd” or “irregular” in the rhythmic patterns?

Radiohead – “Go to Sleep”

Coldplay – “Clocks”

Beetles – “Ticket to Ride”

Radiohead – “15 Step”

Raconteurs – “Steady as She Goes”

TV on the Radio – “I Was a Lover”

Radiohead – “You”

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Tags: radiohead, beetles, raconteurs, tv on the radio, coldplay, beat, meter, pulse

First week of school and NO BOOKS?

Is this some Montana college student conspiracy of which I am unaware?  I never arrived for a new semester of college without my course books, and this was before the time of instant on-line ordering and speedy delivery!  Tell me, oh students of mine, how do you plan to participate in class and complete assignments (both of which contribute to your final grade) without the proper materials?

If you are still having trouble obtaining the course books through the bookstore, you can try www.bigwords.com to search for the best on-line deal!

By Friday, August 29 (the third class meeting of written theory) you are required to either have the Benward & Saker in hand or show PROOF that you have ordered it on-line.  A few of you have e-mailed me copies of receipts – thank you!

By Tuesday, September 2 (the third class meeting for aural perception) you are required to have both required textbooks in hand.  There are copies available at the bookstore.  If they run out before you get yours, you can show PROOF that you have ordered it on-line.

Let’s get with the program!  There’s a lot to do, a lot to learn!

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Tags: musictheory, aural perception, texbooks, freshmanitis