It has finally happened!  Auralia and Musition have been updated for the MAC!  They are now rolled into one program and I bet they will give EarMasterPro a run for its money.  Available in December this suite of excellent theory and aural training software will run on both MAC and Windows platforms and it is packed with new features and an updated interface.

Release Date: 26th January 2010 @ $199 per single copy or $99 per student copy

I did a review on the older version of auralia in this post when I looked at Sibelius 6.   I own both the Sibelius notation and Sibelius Instruments suites and these have been invaluable for my teaching in the classroom, research at home and general composition/arranging.  The Sibelius Instruments Suite (pictured with annotations below) is an excellent resource for teachers and students.  It has interactive audio and how to notate with mutes on brass instruments or con sordino on violins.

Click on the images to get a better look.

With this latest addition of Auralia and Musition rolled into one suite Avid Technology will be (in my opinion) one of the best companies to buy music educational software from.  Sibelius as a company have been more than helpful for me personally and with the schools I have worked at.  You can see more on their website here.

The ease to which students can adapt and then learn from these training programs shows me just how tech savvy the creators of Sibelius are!  What better way to engage students then by showing them something new and exciting on the computer that they can use and gauge their improvement by!

Here are some other excellent Aural Training tools:

Aquallegro – I recommend this app to every music teacher I come across with aMac  It is free, tests everything from chords to intervals to note names and scales and cooperates with most midi keyboards.  A great classroom tool.

Earmaster – this is an outstanding program that filled in the gaps Auralia 3 left behind.  It is aimed at all levels of musicians and a demo is available from their site.  It also has the ability to measure your ability to sing intervals correctly or clap back rhythms. Earmaster also comes with jazz tutorials and other customisable features.

G Major Music Theory – This is an online resource.  This site deals with theoretical training but also CONTEXTUAL Listening.  They have real audio examples in mp3 format of cadence types, intervals used in famous pieces and so on.  I use it for test creation and helping my students understand the composition techniques prevalent in a music era/genre.

iFlipr – Is a virtual flash card source with every topic under the sun (not just music).  This link will take you to a series of cadence flash cards with real audio examples.

I have had students requesting arrangements of tunes from the film one student is even playing River Flows in You for an examination.

I have attached in this post three arrangements of themes from Twilight for Guitar.  They have been based upon the original tunes and written for my guitar students to perform.  Please tell me what you think!  You can print or download them for your own use.

* Make sure you have the Scorch plug-in installed

River Flows in You (Guitar Duet)

Bella’s Lullaby (Guitar Duet) – Coming Soon

Never Think (Arranged by one of my students)

I personally enjoy the ‘flashy interface’ to read a published PDF. Pages turn on your screen like a real book!

This is an aural booklet I created for my Stage 5 & 6 students.  It is a combination of any musical concepts sheets I could get my hands on.  I condensed the material and made a concise version for my students, with pictures of course.

I have begun to use ISSUU as a means of uploading student notes and samples for them to download or read in preparation for examinations.  It is amazing how my students always manage to lose important handouts.  With the help of ISSUU they can read them online, download and print them or even show their parents what they are up to in class.

Here is a topic test I made for a unit entitled ‘History of the Guitar.’

On the teacher side, I can read other professional publications from Orff Associations around the world, learn some techniques in the Guitar Group, or collect a series of music childrens books to show my classes.

ISSUU is also fully customisable and you can include audio with each publication.  This is a feature I will be looking at soon for delivering virtual lessons or interactive worksheets to my classes.

ISSUU.com is a fantastic and innovative resource for the ICT savy teacher, give it a try!

Visit my ISSUU Homepage by clicking here, or, click on one of the above publications to view them.

Here is just one more example of how Pages helps students present tasks creatively and with relative ease.

If you don’t have a MAC this is one reason to get one – this student produced a series of musical analyses based on Mozart’s The Magic Flute – this presentation could be seen in a textbook one day.

The embedded version of this student’s assignment comes courtesy of ISSUU.com.

Click on the page to view the assignment and turn the pages by clicking the bottom of the page

I have also attached my Blank Musical Concepts Mindmap Sheet in PDF Format

iWork is a suite of software apps that can be bought from the Apple Store online – it is cheaper than Microsoft Word and has more creative features for students.

Students are to form groups of 3 to 5 and choose a fairytale that I provide.
It can be anything from the Three Little Pigs to, in this case, The Emperor’s New Clothes.
Then, using everything from class percussion, keyboards, guitars, Garageband or Sibelius/Finale, the students are to:

Steps:
1. Choose which main characters/ideas in the story need a theme
2. Describe the SOUND of each theme in words, using the Concepts of Music
3. Once the descriptions have been finalised they move onto experimenting with sounds and melodies
4. Students notate draft copies of their themes onto manuscript
5. Students present the Fairytale via narration and play each theme as the character/idea appears in the story.

I have attached here my Fairytale Composition Task in PDF format

Yr 7 Fairytale Assignment

What I am very excited about is the work of one of my students, who, using Finale Notepad, created some outstanding themes with the help of his group.  I have ‘cleaned up’ his MIDI files and presented them below in SIBELIUS format.

Click on this link to see the students’ themes for the “Emperor’s New Clothes”

* Make sure you have the Scorch plug-in installed

TheEmperorsNewClothes

Click on this link to see my score with Scorch: YoHoHeaveHo

* Make sure you have SCORCH installed on your computer.