MusTech.Net!

Well, I haven’t been able to keep up with MusTech.Net this semester as much as I would like. I’m hoping my schedule will clear a little so that I can write about some of the many cool things that I’m working on both with faculty and colleagues and my students in the VERY near future.

I wanted to take a few seconds to write about a couple of things that are going on this month.  First, the Music Education Blog Carnival is being hosted by Discover, Learn, Play this month at http://discoverlearnplay.blogspot.com/. Make sure you that you participate this month in the Music Education Blog Carnival as I’m sure it will be a good one!  You can find out more information about the Blog Carnival here: http://mustech.net/muscarn. Also, if you would like to host a music education carnival, please let me know.

As many of you know, I am a huge WordPress fan. I’m thinking about hosting a WordPress Camp this summer in the Pittsburgh area. I know it would be of great benefit to the many educators, students, and business folks in our area.  I just finished a new WordPress site for our Borough Council (Yes guys, this one was Pro bono!). It is unbelievable how easy it is to turn WordPress into a content management system and the ease of the back end (how you write posts and pages) is so simple to use that you can show people how to maintain and change content in less than an hour. There is no easier way to go about putting together a Web site than WordPress.  I’ve quit using all other software to make Web pages now and I only use WordPress now…  This from Frontpage, Dreamweaver, Net Objects, and HTML!!!

You can check out the site here: http://grovecityonline.com

I’m still looking for the brilliant, the bold, the musical, to become the last folks in our quest for 100 Music Education Bloggers. If you are interested please visit or Music Education Blogger page, and contact me here. If you’ve submitted a contact in the last couple weeks, I’ve yet to get to them, I will though -it’s next on my list of mustech.net things to do!  If you’re worried I didn’t get your submission, please re-submit.

If you want to see a totally cool Christmas Flash Animation, I still contend that this one is the best!:
http://mustech.net/2007/11/30/the-coolest-christmas-snowglobe-flash-animation

If you know of any flash Christmas animations better than this (or on par), let me know in the comment section below!

Here’s to a great Thanksgiving to all of you!

Note: If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed for the latest news and information. Not Sure What RSS is or how to Subscribe? Click Here!

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.

(more…)

As many of you know that follow me and my WordPress exploits, I can honestly say that I have not found any website/blogging platform that is easier to use and yet offers, nearly, endless flexibility for creation and implementation.  I have recently finished the framework and template for a wonderful non-profit music honorary known as Phi Beta Mu, the Nu Chapter (PBM-Nu).  Phi Beta Mu is the International Bandmasters’ Honary and I’m proud to be an inducted member of the organization.

Anyone who has “mad computer skills” can relate to my plight… I’m constantly asked to perform magic with regard to anything electronic, whether computers, telephones, televisions, websites, building wiring, and just about everything and everything related.   So and thus… I found my leading the “team” to create a website for PBM-Nu.

In my quest for everyone to develop these “mad technological skills”,  I may be often found pontificating to my college students the benefits of learning how to become faster typers.   Let me type you a picture…

I’m in class telling my students the obvious: We are in a computer dominated world…You are the generation that is expected to utilize these technologies from before graduation throughout the end of your careers…The importance of gaining speed in your typing/keyboarding skills cannot be underestimated…Mr. Internet is your friend…Really the proxy DOES work…etc.

ENTER the SCENARIO:      (more…)

I had a great time and experience while in Michigan.  I got to spend time with good friends and meet new friends and colleagues.  I spent a lot time with V. Keith Mason.  We have had a number of conversations but have never officially met. 

The presentation about R.S.S. went very well.  I was a little bit anxious about it as it was very “cutting edge” material -however, the folks in attendance told me afterward that it was a great session.  I plan to post a web version of the presentation very soon.

I have a number of draft posts beginning to pile up and with the start of the college semester “off and running”,  it may be awhile before I get to them all BUT, I’m planning on posting the current, OFFICIAL list of ME bloggers tomorrow… Stay TUNED! 

If you are a ME blogger or planning to be one,  don’t forget to check out the official repository of ME blogging information from time to time here:
http://www.mustech.net/100-me-bloggers

(more…)