What is Noteflight?

Noteflight is an online web 2.0 tool that can create scores, activities from scores, scores that playback, print scores; in fact, it is almost like Sibelius/Finale in its input methods and scoring features but with a big difference – it is free and online!  This scoring tool will allow your students to compose, complete theory or composition activities and more from the comfort of their computer. Did I mention it is online?  Well if I did mention it more than once that is because I wish to emphasise that now both PC and MAC owning students can access this excellent tool!  A level playing field for music homework or composition activities.

Why use Noteflight?

I had a play around on Noteflight today after signing up to its free user account and produced an example from one of my students compositions.  We were composing Orff-Style vocal rhythms in Year 7 with percussive accompaniments.  This composition struck me as exceptional so I opened a new score, arranged my staves and entered in the notes using both the keyboard and mouse.  It was incredibly simple.  The noteflight editor is smart, clear and has all the tools you need for basic scoring.  I believe it is a great starter program for junior or middle classes in any music department.  Students could compose individually or in groups, then notate their creations online, listening to each part and finally producing a product that could be placed on a school or family website.  I’m sure my students would love to show their families and friends what they create in Music class!

Read more of Noteflight’s capabilities at their FAQ section.

When I am finished I can grab the embed code of the score and it appears below for all to see.
If your browser isn’t showing it (click here to view it at Noteflight).



For an introductory video into some of Noteflight’s excellent features watch the videos linked below:







Visit Noteflight and take it for a spin! I will be giving my students some tutorial videos on it in the coming weeks.

Term 2 began unit for year 7 on Tone Colour and for the first few weeks they focus on all the different instruments of the orchestra, their sounds, position in ensembles and how they produce sound.  At the end of the unit, the students use our computer lab to construct a keynote presentation, with some key slides of information, to solidify all they have learned.  It is an excellent way to gauge who has listened and understood the terms’ content: an assessable assessment if you will.

My problem was three-fold.  We had an excellent bank of computers but students needed inspiration on what they could do with Keynote to show their learning.  Secondly, this was Music! There had to be some way of including sound, or visual components into their assignments.  Then thirdly, how great & comprehensive did I want these assignments to be?  If students could only access their work at school, this put a limit on their creative output.  Maybe I could consider an online option for any user to create their assignment at school or at home?  The answer…

1. Students were given an example of an online presentation I made in Wix.com + links to visit various Orchestra sites on the internet.  I then demonstrated how to embed audio & video into both Wix and Keynote.  Students then got to choose which path they wanted to take to complete the project.

• Wix.com: Make a Website in two minutes
• Wix.com: How to with the Wix Editor
• Wix.com: How to Publish the project

2. Those who decided to use Keynote were provided with some websites that allowed MP3 downloads of orchestral sound-clips to embed into each slide (they also had to bring a thumb-drive to each lesson)

3. I monitored each assignment’s progress from lesson to lesson, demonstrating key skills from the IWB and had the students email me their Wix addresses so I could comment on them via email.

The Task went as followed:

1. Make 8 blank slides or pages in your chosen platform (Keynote or Wix) with these titles:
• Title Page
• Orchestra Seating Chart
• The Four Families of the Orchestra
• Strings
• Woodwind
• Brass
• Percussion
• Bibliography
2. The information for each slide was to be gathered from their given list of websites and texts used that term in class
3. The presentation should demonstrate some integrated sound or visual elements

This video is a collection of some excellent Wix Sites created by my students.  It details what I demonstrated from the IWB and how my students watched my demonstrations and excelled beyond them!

The final result has taken some time to collate but the video below is a presentation I made of my year 7’s efforts in an excellent online tool called Animoto!  This allowed me to take a series of screenshots & videos from each students project, add a track of audio, and Animoto puts it all together into a very clever video presentation with animations etc.

Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.

Cary was born in Tasmania in 1952 and loves to make music!  His lastest album A Fresh Wind is a collaboration with Etsuko Sakai for Guitar & 13 String Japanese Koto, available here with MP3 samples. Cary’s other albums are featured below and each has MP3 sample tracks at his website.

Cary also has sheet music to purchase and download from his website.

Teaching Music in the 21st Century is a blog and writer I recently came across in my twittering adventures.  His updates and insight into iPhone and iPad apps have been very useful.  Likewise James Morrison presented a demonstration in the Bondi Apple Store Australia, for all things music and iPad.  You can view his apps and ideas here. Find a blog, twitter feed or very tech savvy person and I can guarantee you will come across some amazing keyboard applications and synthesizers.

For example, I received an article in my RSS Reader from The Unofficial Apple Weblog about a particular a program for the iPhone or iPad called Hexaphone.   I teach a unit on Rock Music in Year 8 at my school and this type of textural layering combines knowledge of the 12 bar blues, musical texture and the blues scale beautifully.  I have already used it to demonstrate how the Blues Scale can be used to improvise, create riffs and even record it into Garageband to create my own blues backing loops!  Keep watching for the improvisation at the end of the video.

My Year 8’s learn the blues scale and we improvise over a class arrangement of Hound Dog (Elvis).  This application makes me think, “What else could I do with a bunch of these?”  Pentatonic compositions, record layers for collective improvisation, a unit of work imitating Kraftwerk perhaps?

As a instrumental tutor I take students through theory and performance exams here in Australia.  They need to understand aspects of their performance works and how to construct scales and interpret Italian music markings etc.  Then as a classroom teacher I need to make sure my students understand how to read and interpret scores from various eras in musical history.  It is all a part of learning that great and wonderful language we know as “Music.”  If you do not know what the terms or signs mean how do you grasp the full meaning of what you are performing or learning?

So the question becomes, “How to best instruct students in the required theoretical knowledge?”  I would highly recommend a trip to Music Teaching Resources.

The creator of Music Teaching Resources, Robert Hylton brought his wonderful resources to my attention over Twitter.  For $18.00 you can get a collection of 200+ music theory worksheets that deal directly with the theoretical requirements for your students.  There are examples for constructing intervals, rehearsing key signatures, relative minors and also graded tests.  Each worksheet is constructed in a manner that emphasises a theoretical concept and allows students to practice that concept before you ‘move on.’

I had some AMEB Examinations coming up this August so made a collection of Robert Hylton’s worksheets for each level of student, Grade 1 to 4 AMEB Musicianship, and gave them out to reinforce the concepts I taught in the classroom.  Each student commented on how simple the layouts were and how it drove home the concept.  I had students walk away from what would normally be a ‘boring lesson’ exclaiming they now have no problems with minor intervals or Key Signatures with flats!

The excellent price, quality and fast delivery (download of a .zip file) for the entire collection of worksheets means I can reuse them anytime I want, from year 7 to year 12 and in my guitar lessons.  Did I mention he also provides Guitar or Bass chord/fretboard charts?  Over 250 for Teaching Guitar or Bass plus a Guitar Teaching Blog!

Makes me think I should really start to get my music and lessons together or I’ll be left behind
Thank you Music Teaching Resources.

As part of the Australian Secondary Music Curriculum there needs to be a focus on Indigenous Traditional or Contemporary Music.  In year 7 I introduce my students to the sounds and roles of Aboriginal instruments as well as getting them to listen to such pieces through the lenses of the 6 Concepts of Music (Pitch, Rhythm, Texture, Tone Colour, Structure and Dynamics & Expressive Techniques).  The students become immersed in listening and performing activities that build up to a final project of Graphically Scoring a work by the Aboriginal Group Yothu Yindi entitled Wirrkul Girl (available from iTunes).

I received permission from David Hudson to upload parts of his Didgeridoo making and playing DVD to YouTube and my students watch the 10minute clips while answering questions on their worksheets.

Each video watched, question answered and Aboriginal work listened to builds up their awareness of how pitch, structure and tone-colour are utilised in Indigenous music.  This will then culminate in the assimilation and synthesis of a project (thank you Blooms Taxonomy) using Apple’s Keynote software to create a graphic score showing pitch, texture, structure, tone-colour and other characteristics that feature in Aboriginal Music.

Here is the Video of a Graphic Score Animated in Keynote that I use to inspire my students for their final task:




The Task
• Each student is to download a package of a Keynote Template file (with the MP3 embedded)
• Following the instructions on their school wiki page students place the provided ‘SYMBOLS’ onto the keynote slides
• Students complete the KEY slide listing and labeling each sound or instrument they hear
• Students then arrange their symbols into a time-line frame to depict the action of the music
• Students finally RECORD their keynote slides (with manual advances from space bar) and export as a QT Video

Download the Student Template Package by clicking on the arrow icon…>

The following worksheets have embedded audio should you wish to use them as preemptive lessons building to the graphic score task.  Click on the worksheets to see and hear the listening activities:

If you have anything to share please do!

Additionally, Bruce’s pieces helped me when I did my HSC because his website boasts Free TABS @Mathiske Tabs.  I can now teach them to my students as they all instruct independent playing, rhythmical parts and variations of tone on the guitar. There are jazz pieces and many more to choose from.  I particularly like his St.Thomas, Caravan & Wonderful World arrangements.

View some videos of Bruce Mathiske below and make sure you visit his website for some fun arrangements to play:

Somewhere Over The Rainbow
First by Bruce Mathiske and then Tommy Emmanuel

Tommy Emmanuel Video Series coming soon. A link for Tommy Emmanuel TABS is here: Tommy TABS
Here is the appetiser video:

The ‘levels’ of Bloom’s Taxonomy are Knowledge, Comprehension, Application, Analysis, Synthesis & Evaluation.

This series of domains and a series of questions are available to check when you are writing your program/curricula here.

As well as providing a basic sequential model for dealing with topics in a curriculum, Bloom’s Taxonomy also suggests a way of categorising levels of learning, in terms of the expected ceiling for a given program. Thus in the Cognitive domain, training for facts or theoretical ideas may cover knowledge, comprehension and application, but maybe not concern itself with analysis and above, whereas, in my classroom, authentic applicable learning may be expected to include this and synthesis/evaluation.

In a music classroom this would almost always be the case as theory would tend towards practical outcomes, back to listening and comprehension then towards synthesis and evaluation in composition and presentation.

For example, I can teach my students to recognise notes and rhythms from various syllables (ta te) and compose word rhythms for class activities.  But, if I ask my students to analyse a rhyme, build on prior knowledge and understanding to create or synthesise their own composition for their classmates complete with an evaluation of the final performance – I have addressed many levels of learning.  Which will result (I hope) in students retaining the information internally, gaining enjoyment from the task and ultimately their success in creating music.

Watch the video for a Pirate experience you will never forget when you go to plan lessons or programs.

(Courtesy of LearningandTeaching, ClassWeb.gmu.edu, Teachers.ash.org.au, EdTechVision & Xiongdudu).



Can you share any ideas on how you integrate Blooms Taxonomy into your classroom lesson plans or assessments?

I made a brief post about RSS Apps in my Homage to iusethis but this application wins hands down.

I found it through a Macupdate bundle purchase and it has been wonderful!  I can organise all my RSS feeds into pages & columns just like a newspaper!  It has been an excellent way to stay up to date with all the things I am interested in without having enormous RSS lists in my web browser or mail reader.  See the screen-cast I made below thanks to Screenflow:




What RSS Feed Apps do you use?

The video is below and here is the I knew it was you PDF to download, courtesy of Melbay Guitar Sessions. Guitar Sessions is an excellent online resource for guitar news, reviews and music. I have found so many works and student relevant materials they have aided my teaching for years now!

As you can see in the following videos, animations are set to the music of Mozart, but with emotive caricatures depicting chord changes. The effect is simple, stunning and educational.

How does one demonstrate chord changes through a body of work using images? Well the suggestion was to use Keynote and Garageband plus the piece of your choice to create a running timeline of How Harmony Works!

See the original idea below & maybe you could use this in your classroom?

If you come across any other videos demonstrating the same concept please let me know.

To finish I knew of one other video out there that discussed Should Joe Satriani Sue Cold Play Over Viva la Vida? through chord progressions.

This video was able to show comparisons between the two works by talking about the chords being used.  The only drawback is that I am a visual learner and just telling me the chords won’t make it ’sink in.’  So what did the video do?  Watch for yourself: