MusTech.Net!

I would like to wish all those folks that celebrate this holiday with me a very happy Thanksgiving.  Here are a couple of quick links that have some great information about Thanksgiving and Thanksgiving activities:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thanksgiving
  Wikipedia’snformation
• http://www.history.com/minisites/thanksgiving
  History.com’s information
• http://www.scholastic.com/scholastic_thanksgiving/
  Scholastic.com’s activities for students
• http://allrecipes.com/Recipes/Holidays-and-Events/Thanksgiving/Main.aspx
  Allrecipes.com’s Thanksgiving Recipes
• http://www.tnpsc.com/thanksgiving.htm
  Free screen savers for Thanksgiving

Enjoy! and.. Don’t eat too much Turkey today!

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Here is an article/post for all of the WordPress users that utilize the open-source software found at WordPress.org.  These particular plugins are directly related to music and particularly useful for musicians, whether players, composers, or educators.

The following is a list of current, useful, and hand-picked plugins that I’ve worked with at some point that allow for musicians to begin using their WordPress sites better, more efficiently, and more importantly- what they are looking for in a music specific WordPress Site (see my article about WordPress as a Music CMS):

Performers:

GigPress- A great plugin that allows musicians to let folks know about their upcoming concert schedules, playing venues, and even ticketing information.   I use this on my site, MusTech.netin the sidebar.  Gigpress is an easy way for bands to list and manage tour dates on their WordPress-powered website.

Gig Calender- This plugin is geared toward bands and musicians to manage and display a calendar of their gigs within WordPress. It’s meant to be as easy as possible for both the musician and the fan. It even manages venue data complete with mapping and ticket links.

Events Calendar- Events-Calendar is a diverse replacement for the original calendar included with WordPress adding many useful functions to keep track of your events. The plugin has an easy to use admin section that displays a big readable calendar and lets you add and delete events. The plugin is widget ready so you can easily add a small calendar to the main sidebar with the ability to roll over the highlighted event day to see a brief description of the event or click the day to get a full description of the event without ever leaving your current page. If you are not using a widget ready theme, you can still have the calendar on your sidebar. 

Organizing Music:

Discography- Musicians need a way to easily organize information about their music. This plugin exists to do just that. It lets you publish a list of albums and auto-generates a WordPress page for each song, so that fans can comment, save links to your songs and share them with friends.

Podcasting:

PodPress- PodPress adds tons of features designed to make WordPress the ideal platform for hosting a podcast.  This is what almost all users use to integrate Podcasting into WordPress sites.  A very useful alternative to PodPress is:

Podcasting-  Created for the Google Summer of Code 2007, Podcasting brings complete podcasting support to WordPress. Taking advantage of the latest and greatest in WordPress 2.5, WordPress podcasting has never been so easy.

Media Players:

Inline Mp3 Player- Inline mp3 player replacing any link directly to a mp3 file, such as ‘http://yoursite.com/musicfile.mp3′ into a special link. Clicking it will turn the link into a small media player with a html slider interface. It works simple, click the link the music starts playing.

Embedded Video- The plugin is made for easily embedding videos into a blog post. The videos can be integrated from external portals (like YouTube, Google Video and many many others) or they can be uploaded to the web server or a remote server and integrated as well. Additionally a corresponding link to the video on the particular video portal page or a download link to the local file can be generated automatically, if demanded.

Music Notation:

ScoreRenderer- A WordPress plugin that renders inline sheet music fragments inside posts and comments into images. It supports ABC, GUIDO, Lilypond and Mup music notations.

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It must be time to talk about this again as I am getting a number of students asking me where they can obtain staff paper!   There are a number of GREAT sites online where customizable music staff paper templates can either be designed or are already templatized.

One of the very best sites to print staff paper (and highly customizable) is blanksheetmusic.net:
http://blanksheetmusic.net  They offer the ability to print blank treble, bass, C, percussion, piano, guitar, bass, mandolin, and other TAB based staves.  In addition, you are able to choose the scale, orientation, brackets, and contrast of the print.

Newly to the list of printable staff paper is a great site, from the folks at virginia.edu, that has compiled a list of blank music papers and ensemble staffs in PDF format including: solos, duets, trio, quartets, quintets, full concert band, marching band, jazz band, orchestra, SSA, SAB, SATB, ans SSATB!  A great new resouce… I hope it is maintained for a long time!  You can find it here:
http://people.virginia.edu/~pdr4h/musicpaper/

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One of the last projects that I had my music technology students perform this year was to search http://go2web20.net and find web 2.0 applications that they thought would be beneficial to an educator or musician.  If you haven’t been to Go2Web20’s website, you are in for a real “shocker” when you finally do.  You will not believe how many online Web 2.0 applications are available to you -the majority for FREE.  Many of them are awesome and some, well, not so awesome… Hopefully this list will shed some light on the more useful programs for music educators!

The following are Web 2.0 sites (and their comments) that my students found to be interesting and useful to them in some way:

1. http://songza.com
   This website is a music search engine and jukebox, meaning that you can pull up any song that can be found on the site and listen to it.  This is inclusive of major works (motion picture soundtracks, top artists, etc.).  As a music educator, this would be a great resource to teach popular music.
2. http://buddyschool.com
   This site is a resource where people can give and receive lessons on schoolwork.  It provides a medium for tutoring to occur outside of traditional methods.  In this way, students could receive help on demand.
3. http://www.engrade.com
   This Web 2.0 site is an online grade-book.  A teacher can use this to keep track of student grades.  Students and parents on the other hand can be given access to see their child’s achievement and grades.  This provides a way for students to track their progress in a class, and a way for parents to diagnose problems that their students may be facing.
4. http://www.musigy.com
   This website is a platform for sharing music in near relatime with other people.  More specifically, it provides a medium for having jam sessions with people across the globe.  This could provide a way in which a cyberschool could put together a rudimetnary performing ensemble.  It could also introduce students to improvisation.
5. http://www.clickforlessons.com
   This website keeps track of people who are willing to give lessons -particularly lessons in the performing arts- and provides a search engine to find these people.  It also provides a map and locates where these teachers are located in relation to an address or zipcode given.  You can even get directions to the house or studio that the teachers operate from, thereby helping to locate and receive work as a private instructor.
6. http://trymango.com
   Mango.com is a free enterprise language learning course website.  There are twelve different language courses available each including 100 lessons.  This site would be great for voice students or a choir who is/are studying a piece of music in a different language to provide more background and pronunciation guidelines, etc.
7. http://www.myschoolog.com
   Myschoolog.com is a web-based application that allows teachers and students to organize their schedules.  You can organize everything that happens at school with this site including, lessons, exams, notes, schedules, and more.
8. http://visualthesaurus.com
   Visualthesaurus it an interactive dictionary and thesaurus that provides visual aids to all of its subjects. 
9. http://quzlet.com
   Quizlet is a completely free, ad-free, website that functions to help people learn vocabulary.  It allows a list to be entered and creates tests, flashcards, etc.   It has a social aspect to it that will allow classmates to help each other with their vocabularly or just chat.
10. http://www.soundsnap.com
    Soundsnap is a repository for sound clips, sound loops, and other audio effects.  The site is designed for sound designers, filmmakers, web designers, sound artists, and music producers. 
11. http://mp3realm.org
    Mp3realm is a search engine designed to search the web for audio in mp3 formats.  It can search for title, album, artist, or genre.  It also has an index of lyrics which allow you to sing along with the songs or look at the lyrics.
12. http://www.triporama.com
    A website that will help you plan trips for large groups and “bid” out pricing for you so that you can select from a number of options and price ranges that best fit your needs and budget!
13. http://clockingit.com
    A free to use application that helps you keep track of your tasks and the TIME you spend on them. 
14. http://kindersay.com
    A fun, simple website that is very educational for young children.  It includes, learning activities, games, and videos/audio clips.  This site is especially useful for ESL children as it includes fun ways to learn vocabulary.
15. http://scriblink.com
    This site is a virtual online whiteboard that can be shared with up to six people by emailing a link to them.  It also allows conference chats with the people utilizing the whiteboard. 

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