Choral Directors

Just found this site for choral directors. I was led to it by one of the articles written by a member. Haven't had much of a chance to look at it yet, but it seems promising.

What was the band director thinking?

OK, so this Youtube selection at first glance seems funny, but listen carefully (painful as that may be) and figure out what is going wrong. I think that many of us who conduct beginner bands have made the mistake in the past of attempting music that our students were just not ready for. Fortunately most of us, I hope, would have had a reality check before concert time.

Beginning Band Reviews

This is a review from Tempo, reprinted here with permission. It gives some good ideas about what teachers should look for when choosing music for elementary band, and it also gives some good reviews of several selections.

Blog: Ideas and Imagination

If you have a chance take a look at my husband Chris' new blog. For the musicians take a look at the blog about Dylan and Suzie.

http://ideasandimagination.com/

For Marching Band teachers, but also something for everybody.

A good site for marching band teachers, but it has some good links that will appeal to just about any music educator.
http://www.marching.com/

NPR Blogging about music

NPR continues bringing great features to the music lover through the web. Their blog sites cover everything from classical to folk to Hip Hop to World music. Definately worth looking at. This particular site "Deceptive Cadence" covers the classical music scene.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/deceptivecadence/

A new online music magazine

Leading Notes, a new online music magazine looks very promising with shared articles about the music profession and music education.

http://leadingnotes.org/

Excellent lesson about music ownership rights

Discovered this site while looking for a material about music ownership. The lesson and accompanying video is a excellent resource when teaching about copyright and music ownership. Haven't had time yet to look at the rest of the site, but it looks very promising for further lessons and resources.

http://www.itvs.org/educators/collections/copyright-criminals/lesson-plans/can-you-own-a-sound

Music Theory Lessons for Free

Found this site while looking for some simple music theory worksheets for my recorder students. There is at least a years worth of lessons. The lessons are well written with links to additional work. After reviewing the lessons I definately could use them for just about any beginner class, sixth grade and up.

http://www.gmajormusictheory.org/Fundamentals/workbooks.html

Bicycle Built for Two

http://www.noteflight.com/scores/view/cb25ea0074c737742418845908296e0409aab13b

Click on the link above to go to a version of Bicycle Built for Two that I created on Noteflight.
I found that this notation system was not as user friendly as Musescore. However, pushing buttons around as I like to do I found that there were several shortcuts that made it easier to use. Still, overall I prefer Musescore.
This would definately be a great tool for my classroom. In fact I will be using it with my students starting this week. After their compositions are done I like the easy way that the comps can be shared with me and with each other through email.

Keeping Score on PBS

These are great videos for general music class. They star Michael Tilson Thomas and cover different composers such as Beethoven, Shostakovich and Stravinsky. They are produced by PBS and give us a great free resource  for music class, plus they cross over into Social Studies.

http://video.pbs.org/video/1295305133

Alex Ross: Music Critic for the New York Times Web Site

If you  have read the book by Alex Ross, The Rest is Noise, then you will find this website extremely interesting. If you haven't read it, I highly recommend it. Especially interesting is his page on Shostakovich and Stalin.

http://www.therestisnoise.com/2007/01/book-audiofiles.html