MusTech.Net!

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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There are a number of websites and programs that allow musicians to “collaborate live” with each other available online now.  Although the software/sites listed in this post are cutting edge and in some cases, a little rough or BETA versions, this genre of collaborative music/musician sites is steadily increasing and becoming easier to use and implement. 

In most cases, I have not had a great deal of experiences with the sites listed here, but can see the benefit that they all offer.  If you are an active user of any of these sites or other related sites/software please share with us your experiences with them and/or how you are using them them in the comment section below!

photo credit: johnnyalive

1. Ninjam: “NINJAM is a program to allow people to make real music together via the Internet. Every participant can hear every other participant. Each user can also tweak their personal mix to his or her liking. NINJAM is cross-platform, with clients available for Mac OS X and Windows. “
2. ejamming: Currently free during its public beta!  Connect, jam, and record online.
3. jam2jam:Improvise with others online and creative grooves and music without having to have “music chops”.

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I’ve decided to go “high-tech” (like that’s a new one!) and put a number of the terms that I require my instrumental conducting students to know, by rote, on the super-cool site, Quizlet.  Quizlet is a free to use site that boasts: “The End of Flashcards”.  Quite candidly, it really is an amazing learning tool that more people need to become aware of and utilize.

Quizlet pokes fun at vocabulary learning by stating there are 5 ways to learn vocabulary:

1. Brain injection
2. Quizlet
3. Flashcards
4. Reading a list a gajillion times
5. Praying

Screenshot:
 

I’ve had a quizlet account since I became aware of it last year, but had not done anything “officially” with it until this morning after I promised my conducting class a new way to help them learn the enormity of vocabulary that I require of them.  Quizlet offers a number of great and fun ways to learn your “list”.  You can:

• View one sided (flip type) flashcards
• View two sided flash cards (term and answer)
• Take true/false tests
• Take rote tests
• Take matching tests
• Take multiple choice tests
• Play games
• Print the terms
• Print flashcards (kind of funny since they claim the “end”!)
• Create favorite lists
• Export the list so that you can use the terms in other applications

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