Technology in Music Education

                                    Technology in Music Education

         Technology is changing music education. Today we have apps for our phones that act as metronomes, A -440 pitch tuners, key transposition apps that make the life of the music teacher and music student easier. Music theory software is also teaching our students about music theory and is especially helpful in teaching students who do not already play an instrument. Students can just put on headphones run the programs and answer music theory questions that are also played so that students can hear their answers in real time. 

         Music technology has made recording music cheaper and accessible to everyone. Youtube would not exist without cheap recording software. This website is filled with garage bands, amateur singers and even choreographed musical numbers in schools. Music technology now affords our students to feel like real musicians by putting on their own music videos that can be seen by millions of people world wide. Students are engaged in real performance art and can see for themselves just how difficult it can be to create a polished music video or studio audio recording. This gives them a greater appreciation for the work of the artists that they already know and listen to. Furthermore, video and audio recordings do not just create more excitement and engagement in classroom work but also allows students to see and hear their own performances and to correct their own errors.

        I think though that the biggest change caused by technology is in composition. Today composition is a more real and viable element in music education. Students can work on projects online potentially using dozens of instruments that they would not have access to in the classroom nor would they likely know how to play. Now we have access to composition programs that allow students to create their own music and to hear it in real time. Two excellent free online composition programs are Noteflight and Muse Score which can be found at http://www.noteflight.com/login and musescore.org respectively. Noteflight has the advantage of being able to share your music with other users of the website. More sophisticated programs that required students to build their music from the ground up include Finale which has a limited free version, both can be found at www.finalemusic.com. As a first step some students are introduced to music looping with the product Garage Band from Apple but this is more music sampling and requires less musical thought as compared with the previous products.

         For blog sights that you can research for more information, I suggest visiting http://mustech.net which has online classes, reviews and explanations of music tech programs and http://musicianswithapps.com which gives reviews elementary school music play apps.