MusTech.Net!

If you have not been following along here at MusTech.Net…it’s time to catch up!   Travis Weller and I, decided to test some of the educational “outer limits” of using SKYPE in the classroom at a performance in May of 2008.   What we accomplished was nothing short of “ground breaking” in the music education/performance and related arenas.  At Travis’ Spring Instrumental Concert we SKYPED three of the composers of pieces being performed that night, LIVE via VIDEO, into the concert to talk with the performers, conductor, and audience that were present that evening.  The composers SKYPED in were, Dr. Andrew Boysen, Dr. Scott Watson, and Mr. Brian Balmages.

Today, on the front page of Campus Technology, is an article by Linda L. Briggs, about our project entitled: Bringing Composers into Classrooms Through Skype.   Travis and I have been interviewing with a number of folks about our usage of SKYPE in the educational setting and this is one of the articles that has resulted from that collaboration with the SKYPE folks and others.

I have started a 4-part series about our SKYPE CONCERT and have finished the first two parts; you may find those articles here:

Part I, Out of the Box, Connecting the Audience, Performers, and Composers through Skype
Part II, Connecting the Audience, Performers, and Composers

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This is the second post in a series about an “Out of the Box” experiment by myself and Travis Weller about using SKYPE as a bridge to connect the audience, performers, and composers, together, during a concert.   This post will contain a flash video of the highlights of that concert.  The video is over 20 minutes long and will allow you to see the process which we used to make this hybrid concert a reality.

The video was created using Pinnacle Studio 10. and an incredible freeware flash converter that makes embedding video, like this, into a website with playback controls a breeze, Free Video to Flash Converter.  This  video is hosted here at mustech.net; please let me know if you would like a copy of it to use for educational purposes. 

The Bridging the Gap Between the Composers and Audience Video in Brief:

1. 0:00 Color Bars
2. 0:10 Title Sequence
3. 0:20 Brief Introduction and description
4. 0:46 Part I, Concert Introduction
5. 3:22 Part II, Composer, Mr. Brian Balmages
6. 8:04 Part III, Composer, Dr. Andrew Boysen
7. 15:06 Part IV, Composer, Dr. Scott Watson
8. 19:40 Part V, Ending Text, Wrap up
9. 20:24 END

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If you’ve been following my articles about the International Music Score Libary Project (IMSLP.org), you’ll be happy to know that I’ve been recently been made aware of another similiar site that looks to be very promising.   MusOpen.com offers a music library of copyright free, public domain music.  MusOpen also offers a service called MusOpen:  Bid  that allows you to bid for them to create an engraving (computer entered) of any public domain, copyright free music.

MusOpen does a great job of allowing people to search through their music by offering search categories that include: Composer, Instrument, Period, and Form.  One of the great unique options with their Free library is the ability to preview and listen to each piece.  Using a great free publishing service called Scribd, users are able to preview, email, download and play any of the music they offer. 

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The International Music Score Library Project is to be re-established on July 1st, 2008 at 12:00 AM EST according to a front page message on their temporary WIKI page.  If you don’t know what the IMSLP project is or was I can tell  you that you were missing out on something amazing…

The IMSLP housed over 15,000 copies of public domain scores that were available completely free as downloadable documents.  The service was literally priceless, especially to people, groups, and organisations that did not have the financial resources to buy reprints or compilations of these public domain documents.

Approaching a year ago, on October 13th of 2007, IMSLP was forced to shutdown their noble project because of pressures from countries that were still making money off of these documents (As you may not know, copyright lengths vary from country to country).   Because IMSLP was being operated by a group of individuals without tremendous resources they, no doubt wisely, decided to take the IMSLP offline until they could muster background information, new ideas, and support for the project.

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