Forward written by Katrina Proctor, Content Manager at Midnight Music.
2023 In Review
When we look back on 2023, it’s exciting to see all of the things we learned about together. Here at Midnight Music, we always hope to share content with you that feels relevant and timely for music teachers and that answers the question, “How can I use this in my music classroom?”
In 2023, we heard overwhelmingly that music teachers were interested in several key things:
- Artificial Intelligence (AI) – how it works, what it is, what we should be concerned about when using it, and philosophically, and where AI fits naturally into the music classroom system.
- Music advocacy and growth – how technology can help music teachers showcase the great things happening in their classroom and easily showcase that to their school community, and the larger community as a whole. Rebuilding programs in a post-pandemic era was a big focus this year.
- How to bring ease into planning and joy into teaching – music teachers this year were very interested in making lessons more engaging for students and easier to plan. There was a big push this year to re-establish work-life balance by sharing resources and ideas that work, finding tech tools that help students learn more “hands-on,” and a new excitement to explore tech tools that help students compose and share their learning digitally.
So, without further ado, here is the 2023 year in review; a countdown of our most popular blog posts that helped teachers survive and thrive in 2023.
Countdown: The Top 10 Midnight Music Blog Posts of 2023
In this blog post, we’ll dive into the world of Notion Mobile, a free music notation and composition app. You’ll discover how it’s revolutionizing music education, making it easier than ever to create, edit, and share compositions across multiple platforms. We’ll also explore its fascinating features, from an interactive keyboard and drum pad to its remarkably realistic playback, courtesy of the London Symphony Orchestra.
So, whether you’re a seasoned music teacher or a tech-curious novice, this post is your backstage pass to an incredible tool that can revolutionize composition in your music classroom. Read on to learn more!
I often hear from teachers who are excited by the idea of Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools like ChatGPT to help offload some of their mundane tasks, but they don’t believe AI can work for them because the outputs AI tools like ChatGPT give them aren’t useable. They’re either too basic, too informal, written in a style that doesn’t reflect them, or the outputs don’t seem to capture what they truly want. This is where the art of AI prompting comes in.
In this blog post, I’ll cover some detailed instructions on crafting more engaging and effective AI prompts that match your unique role as a music teacher and better capture your unique voice. I’ll also share with you 5 sample prompts that are written poorly and show you how to correct them using more specific language and factual information! Let’s get started!
Every year, we release an updated version of our Ultimate Free Music Tech Resources Guide, which features hundreds of free tools for music teachers across the web. Two innovative free tools featured in the Ultimate Free Music Tech Resource Guide that have gained popularity among music educators are Defonic and Soundscape. These sound generators offer unique opportunities for creating immersive soundscapes and background sound.
In this blog post, we’ll explore both tools, provide an overview of their capabilities, and suggest four creative ways music teachers can incorporate them into their classrooms.
Audacity is an open-source audio recording and editing software program that’s been around since May 2000 (yes, over 23 years ago!). You can download and install it on your Mac or PC and it’s totally free.
You can use Audacity to record audio or to edit audio (or both). Although some teachers have heard of Audacity, or maybe even used it a little, many are not sure what it can do, how to use it or where to get started!
Here are just some of the creative and surprising ways that a music teacher can use Audacity.
SlidesMania, created by the incredible Paula, is an amazing website that provides free PowerPoint and Google Slides templates and themes for teachers to use in the classroom. But it’s more than just presentation templates. SlidesMania has dozens of templates for activities, interactive games, lesson ideas, planners, digital notebooks, choice boards, certificates, and more!
Additionally, each template includes instructions for use within the template so that you can assign the templates themselves to students with no additional work needed!
In this blog post, we’ll highlight 8 SlidesMania templates that you’ll love using with students in your music classroom.
Moises is a platform that uses artificial intelligence to offer a range of features that can completely transform your music lessons. Its capabilities include AI Audio Separation, a Smart Metronome & Audio Speed Changer, Pitch Changer & AI Key Detection, as well as Chord Detection and other tools. It also allows you to remove or isolate vocals and instruments from any song, creating highly customizable teaching materials. The platform is accessible on multiple devices and offers a Cloud-Based Library for easy storage and retrieval of your work.
In this blog post, we’ll be diving deeper into each of these features and exploring how they can enhance your teaching methods and your students’ learning experiences. Whether you’re teaching instrumental lessons, directing a choir, or guiding aspiring future music producers, Moises is a very groundbreaking tool.
As a music educator, you’re not just teaching your students how to read notes on a page or play an instrument. You’re cultivating a deeper understanding and appreciation for the rhythmic pulse that underpins all music – the beat. Here’s an interactive lesson plan to help your students gain a better grasp of beats and rhythm.
This lesson plan is designed for students from the 6th to 10th grade and can be completed within 60 minutes, spread across one or two lessons. The core idea is simple yet impactful: it engages students in reverse engineering and replicating drum patterns using the Musicca Drum Machine (or another drum machine of your choosing).
A brand new major overhaul to MuseScore, MuseScore 4.0, was released late last year as a result of a new team in charge of development. This new version of the still completely FREE music notation software includes several major redesigns and exciting new features for musicians and music educators. In this blog post, we’ll explore seven of the most exciting changes in MuseScore 4.0 that music teachers need to know about.
From an updated look and feel, new ways to create beautiful scores, reimagined input, and even brand-new digital instrument voices, MuseScore 4.0 is a pretty brilliant redesign that’s especially exciting for potential use with your older students. So whether you’re a beginner yourself or a long-time user of MuseScore, and especially if you’ve tried it and written it off in the past, you’ll definitely want to read on to learn more about what’s new in MuseScore 4.0!
ChatGPT stands for “Conversational Generative Pre-Trained Transformer.” In simple terms, ChatGPT is a new, publically available AI website that can generate anything from an essay on a historical person to a recipe for the best chocolate chip cookies just by asking it to. This is leading to new ethical dilemmas for us as teachers, as this technology has already been shown to be somewhat limitless in its potential to cross moral lines, such as its reported ability to write phishing emails or even malware computer code.
It’s a lot, and understandably so. But after doing some research and thinking about it myself, I really believe, even in the face of all the negatives, that we should be optimistic about AI and our continued role in music education.
In this blog, I’ll discuss why music teachers shouldn’t be scared of AI and how we can instead use our natural unease to fuel opportunities in our classrooms where students can experiment and create with AI in responsible and ethical ways.
If you’re anything like me, you are always looking for ways to simplify your life and make your teaching more efficient. Artificial Intelligence (AI) including ChatGPT and JasperAI can help make your music teaching life even simpler. After all, music can be life-changing for our students, but the day-to-day grind of education, endless emails, and a neverending to-do list can make it a challenge to constantly craft exciting lessons AND maintain the heart you have for the music itself.
It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking ChatGPT and other AI technologies are too complicated for us to use in our teaching. The truth is, these tools can actually be incredibly helpful and easy to incorporate into your life because they act as perfect brainstorming and idea-generating resources. In this blog, I’ll talk about 5 easy ways to simplify your music teaching life with AI and demonstrate some example outputs from different AI writing software.
Want more resources for music tech teachers?
Hello! I’m Katie Argyle – an Australian music technology trainer and consultant with a passion for helping music teachers through my business Midnight 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 – the Midnight Music Community – where there are tutorial videos, courses, links and downloadable resources.
I like to focus on easy ways to incorporate technology into what you are already doing in your music curriculum through 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 the Midnight Music Community.
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