Forward written by Katrina Proctor, content manager at Midnight Music.
A Note to Teachers
As this new year begins, I want to take a moment to extend my heartfelt congratulations to each and every one of you. It takes a special kind of person to dedicate their lives to teaching music, and I am grateful for your tireless dedication to your students and your craft.
I also want to thank you for your continued curiosity and drive to learn and grow. Your willingness to keep exploring new techniques and approaches not only benefits your students, but also keeps the flame of music alive and vibrant in our world.
As you look ahead to the new year, I want to remind you of the eternal importance of music in our lives. It has the power to transcend language and cultural barriers, to bring people together in harmony, and to heal and uplift the human spirit- never has that been more needed than now. You are not just teaching a subject, you are sharing a gift that will stay with your students for a lifetime and teaching them the incredible skill of human connection and teamwork.
I hope that you enter this new year with hope and enthusiasm for all that it will bring. Thank you again for all that you do and will do in 2023.
So, without further ado, here is the 2022 year in review; a countdown of our most popular posts that helped teachers survive and thrive in 2022.
Countdown: Top 10 Midnight Music Posts of 2022
There are so many digital resources available for educators out there, but not all of them have direct connections to the music classroom. Lucky for us, this does not include Canva!
There are thousands of templates to help start various design projects from worksheets to websites and almost everything in between! Here are 10 of my favorite templates.
Written by Sarah Joncas
My students love film music! From the latest Disney animated movie to older classics, I find that almost every student will engage when they get to talk about the music of the movies. In developing a unit on film music for some of my classes, I dove deeper into the history of the connections between film music and opera and decided to have them try their hand at a very old concept – the leitmotif – in a new way.
The 12 Bar Blues are a popular choice when it comes to teaching form, chord structure, chord progressions, and songwriting to students.
I’ve recently been working on my GarageBand, Soundtrap, and Bandlab Lesson Plans and Teacher Tips Course (yep, the title is a mouthful!), and in module 3 we learn how to record a 12-bar blues backing using a virtual keyboard instrument, bass guitar, and a drum track.
Here’s a fun holiday season-themed Chrome Music Lab Song Maker lesson that works in the same way.
This activity asks students to recreate well-known holiday-themed songs in Song Maker from a provided image, listen to what they’ve created and then fill out a corresponding worksheet where they can identify the mystery song and guess the year it was composed.
Written by Katie Miller
Once you fall in love with designing for your classroom using Canva, you will find there is really NOTHING you can’t use this website to create. And, with all that creating, you will quickly may find that your content will start adding up making your drive within the Canva website a little more challenging to navigate. Here are 3 tips to help!
I recently discovered the Tango Chrome Extension and it’s a game-changer for teachers or anyone that needs to create quick how-to guides which include clear screenshots which are perfect for your visual learners!
Here’s a fun Halloween-themed Chrome Music Lab Song Maker lesson for your upper-elementary, middle and high school students! It’s a simple, straightforward music tech lesson which can be done on iPads, Chromebooks, Macs or PCs.
The activity asks students to recreate well-known classical musical themes in Song Maker from a provided image, listen to what they’ve created and then fill out a corresponding worksheet where they can identify the mystery piece of spooky music.
GarageBand For Mac, Soundtrap and Bandlab are all similar software applications that allow you to record and edit both audio and MIDI (software instruments). They are fantastic creativity tools for the classroom and work extremely well in middle school.
But which one is the BEST option?
Written by Katherine Miller
Concert season has arrived! Many schools and programs are beginning to rebuild traditions that were put on hiatus when live concerts were not possible over the last school year or even years in some cases. Honoring traditions and bringing live music back into the lives of our students and families is very important but it also might be a great time to start some new traditions starting with concert programs!
THE TOP POST OF 2022
Written by Katrina Proctor, Content Manager at Midnight Music
Music scanner apps have been around for a number of years. The premise of these intriguing programs is to give you the ability to take a picture of a musical score or choral octavo, hear it playback instantly, and then be able to export that picture as a MIDI or XML file, thereby magically saving you the time and energy of importing all of that information manually.
So the question is… do these programs actually work and do they do what they say they will?
In this blog, we will look at two popular, low-cost apps for scanning sheet music (PlayScore 2 & Sheet Music Scanner) to determine whether each app accurately recognizes different music and increasingly difficult notation, assess their overall functionality, to understand each music scanner app’s limitations and “quirks”, and to overall decide whether or not they are worth their cost.
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Looking for More Resources for Music Teachers?
Hello! I’m Katie Argyle – an Australian music technology trainer and consultant with a passion for helping music teachers through my businessMidnight Music.
I’m a qualified teacher but no, I don’t currently teach in a school. I help teachers through my online professional development space – theMidnight Music Community– where there are tutorial videos, courses, links and downloadable resources.
I like to focus oneasyways to incorporate technology intowhat you are already doing in your music curriculumthrough a range of creative projects. I also run live workshops and have presented at countless conferences and other music education events.
If you want simple, effective ideas for using technology in music education, I would LOVE to help you inside theMidnight Music Community.
