Midwest Wrap Up

As I sit sipping coffee at the Corner Bakery down the street from my hotel, waiting for my wife to arrive to Chicago for the rest of the weekend, I have some time to sit and reflect about Midwest. Recently, a colleague had asked me to start blogging again. Jes even mentioned it when I mentioned that I had a few free hours here. Finding a place to jump back in, especially after taking a new post in a new state, had been difficult. This does seem like the perfect situation. I apologize in advance for my return post being a “stream of conscious”

I hadn’t been to the Midwest Band and Orchestra Clinic since before grad school. I basically went to meet with a few professors in hopes of finding a mentor for grad school and I wasn’t able to through the conference. Some of the people I met seemed completely uninterested in music, but were more focused on looking through me, desperate to find someone to talk that held more stature than I. I don’t think I had a full understanding of what Midwest was about until I learned from Dr. Booth. I wish he would’ve been here, to share this with all week.

I went to a few clinics that were worth a listen, but the best experiences were hearing students perform great music! High school kids (word at 720 South was that the MS kids were killing it too) that were passionate about music, collaboration and performing. Teachers that were passionate about teaching and that had found a way to get their school and community to value art. Now, that’s inspiring!

I went to hear Owasso’s Wind Ensemble, thinking I would discover something I’d like to program for my band. I made it a personal mission at this conference to listen to new things so I can keep expanding my love for the repertoire. You never know where the perfect piece will reveal itself to you, right? What I discovered was passion for music making. This experience was repeated by The Woodlands and Marcus. I guess Midwest South is dominating!

The only thing that surpassed these experiences musically, was Leonard Slatkin conducting the Lonestar Wind Orchestra. I mean the Pines of Rome with 30 or so additional  antiphonal brass players!?! It was inspiring.

There were some good non-performance moments too. I listened to Frank Battisti have a casual interview with Dr. Tim. I felt like part of history. Battisti, at age 82, has more life in him when talking about music than anyone I've ever seen. I heard the stories of the Ithaca HS Band. The room was packed as we hung on his ever word and laughed with him. It was great to experience that with one of my mentors, Shelley Jagow. Truly a once in a lifetime event. I'm so glad Dr. Booth had made sure I had taken "with-it-ness 101" during grad school.

As I sat back to write this, I had a wonderful interruption. One of my friends and colleagues, maybe the person in the field I've known the longest, Justin Davis happened to walk by the window. I was so glad he recognized me and came in to chat. We talked for a few hours. It was the most musically in-depth conversation I had the whole week. I was very thankful for the talk and the rekindling of a friendship.

The conference was all about thanking our mentors which means I owe some people some emails and calls. What a great career it's been so far, I can't wait to see what's in store in 2013.

Music Education Blog Carnival- February 2011 Edition

Welcome to my first Music Education Blog Carnival

Following a month filled with activity in the field of music education. I got some great article submissions from teachers all over the world. Between hosting an honor band, filling in as the WSU Wind Symphony conductor, running my pep band, and presenting at IMEA I was engulfed in music this past month! I was glad to have @PisanoJM cheering me on and sending a lot of "Retweets" to help put this together.

Hopefully you'll find some new folks in here and maybe even a new blog to add to your RSS feed. I have also included their twitter usernames, get on twitter and join our conversation! Without further ado, please enjoy your Carnival!

Music Advocacy

Dr. Joseph Pisano(@PisanoJM), TI:ME 2011 Teacher of the Year, presents MMC Keynote: The New Relevance Of Music Educators posted at Music, Technology and Education: Mustech.net - Dr. Pisano's blog post includes his PowerPoint titled 21st Century Skills - The New Relevance of Music Educators from his recent presentation at the Michigan Music Conference."

David Ahrens(@MrAhrens) presents Music Life Lesson #5: Getting Along posted at Sound Education - Music teaches us more than how to play or sing. The life skills taught through music are invaluable. This is #5 in a series of posts by Mr. Ahrens about what else music teaches and his reflections on a #MusEdChat discussion on the topic.



Professional Development


Keith Ozsvath(@band_techie) presents Part I - IMEA Recap: Using Facebook for Professional Development posted at Teaching & Technology [in music]Keith and I presented a session on "24/7 Professional Development, Creating a PLN" at IMEA this past week. Here he has outlined the first part of our presentation, Parts 2 and 3 to follow!


Amy Cook presents When Does Technology Work for K12 Teachers? - posted at Information Technology DegreeThis article includes link to discussion about making technology "work" for teachers and dispelling myths about technology in a study done by Walden University.



Music Education


Yoon Soo Lim (@DoremiGirl) presents Visiting Artist Week: Learning from Other Teachers posted at sing imagination - What a great idea! This post explores what both students(and teacher) learned by bringing professional artists into school.

Nick Jaworski(@JaworskiMusic) presents Why is it that the music we prefer to listen to is so vastly different from the music we teach our students? | posted at Moving Forward With Music (Nick Jaworski) - "This article attempts to examine the discrepancy between the music that music education undergraduates listen to and the music that they are expected to teach when they get into the professional world. By trying to understand our future teachers' own tastes, maybe the profession can start to ask the necessary questions about what music should be taught within the classroom." - Nick Jaworski. Personally, I like the nerdy stuff I am "supposed" to teach...then again Celine Dion is ok too :)


Samuel Wright(@WrightStufMusic) presents Making Music Fun posted at Wright-Stuff Music - this is a collection of links for all things fun, musical, interactive and wizbang(his words, not mine) on the internet. It is technological, but also pedagogical and useful in performance. Great for early learning to junior high classes.


Elizabeth Heist(@Heistes) presents Dealing with Instrumentation in Ensembles posted at Music Education Highlights from an Undergrad - Miss Heist lists resources to help with instrumentation issues of school band programs. She is a student teacher, currently dealing with this issue in her co-op school's program.


Thomas J. West(@thomasjwest) presents Teaching Expressive Music Making - Beyond The Black Dots - Thomas J. West Music posted at Thomas J. West Music - Mr. West discusses music beyond the page. He says, "One of the most challenging things to do in teaching music is guiding students towards performing music expressively. Performing music is such an intricate and complex process, or is it? Basic music expression is really quite natural and fundamental to humans. As the guitar teacher at my school is fond of telling his students, "Music is about communication.""


Emily Farrell(@EmilyRFarrell) presents A Percussion Discussion posted at Waiting For a Story - A humorous and very honest look about the need to really teach percussion as a opposed to just letting them "Hit what they want. When they want. How they want."


Brandt Schneider(@BrandtSchnieder) presents Who is in your Top Ten? posted at Things To Come - "Is there agreement on what artists we should teach?" Probably not. Go weigh in on Mr. Schneider's post that was started by a NY times series.


@jmonteo presents Componiendo JUNTOS posted at Componiendo JUNTOS - "Composing together. A Spanish collaborative project to compose a song with all the schools who want to participate." Completely in Spanish.


Samuel Wright(@WrightStufMusic) presents Programmatic Learning ? Pictures @ an Exhibition posted at Wright-Stuff Music - This is a lesson you can take out of Mr. Wright's playbook. He says, "A small but useful AIR application to get students listening, comparing, score reading and analysing the music of Mussorgsky. Firstly as orchestrated by Ravel and then by Emerson Lake and Palmer."

I hope you enjoy your monthly ME Blog Carnival. From here I turn it over to the March Host, Miss Justine Dolorfino(@Justine_Robin). You can submit your blog article for her edition of Music Education Blog Carnival by using our carnival submission form.

Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page.

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Next up on my blog will be some reflection articles about this past few weeks! Stay warm out there if you're being affected by these big storms across the US!

The Virtual Podium is Hosting the Music Education Carnival this Month!

I'm proud to present the February 2011 edition of the Music Education Blog Carnival here at The Virtual Podium!

It's exciting to be hosting this months Music Education Blog Carnival on my blog. It's such a big deal I even rolled out a new header for everyone! We are now accepting submissions for the upcoming Music Education Blog Carnival. With so many professional development things happening the upcoming weeks, this is the perfect time to get involved and keep it going right into February.

Please click here to be automatically sent to our Music Education Carnival submission page.

Who came up with this great idea?
The Music Education Blog Carnival was created and is maintained by Dr. Joseph Pisano of
MusTech.net and Joel of SoYouWantToTeach.com in order to promote the great works being done
by Music Education Bloggers across the Internet and to provide useful Music Education related
information into the Internet “mainstream” quickly.

The Music Education Blog Carnival is published on the 1st of every month and is a recognized
member of the communities of blogs as indexed by BlogCarnival.com. All writings submitted to the
Music Education Blog Carnival are examined to ensure that they are valid, interesting, and related
to the topic of Music Education.

What is a Blog Carnival?
A Blog Carnival is way to extend and/or create a community of bloggers (and readers) that have
great things to say about a particular topic… in our case, Music Education. I know it's been help to this very blog.
A Blog Carnival functions as a mini-magazine or an online journal that is focused around a particular topic and is created by experts in the online community that submit their entries for inclusion. All entries are reviewed, each month, by the host to make sure that they are well-written, timely, topic-related, and of interest to the Blog Carnival’s readership.

Can I participate in this Carnival?
Anyone that has an online article or post, new or old, that has something positive to contribute to the topic of Music Education. Again, anyone may submit topic-related articles to the carnival; however, not all submissions may be included in the monthly edition.

How do I submit my article/blog post?
The online process is actually very easy. The Blog Carnival is being organized by http://blogcarnival.com and you can find the direct Music Education Submittal Page by following this link, http://blogcarnival.com/bc/submit_4443.html

When can I submit?
Anytime you're feeling it! Just head to the Music Education Submittal page!

I look forward to reading your submissions, share this with friends/colleagues, and feel to check out the rest of my blog.

Book Review: "The Wind Band" by Richard Franko Goldman

"The Wind Band: It's Literature and Technique" by Richard Franko Goldman. Published by Allyn an Bacon, INC. Boston, 1961



The front page

In my study for the literature of my medium, "The Wind Band" was a text I was instructed to pick up from the library. I'll be honest it took me far too long to complete the 270 pages of this volume by R Goldman (who is the son of bandmaster Edwin Franko Goldman). I enjoyed it more as I read, but it's not something that gripped me from page one.
The book is divided into four parts; "The band as a Musical Insitution", "Technical Problems of the Band", "The Repertoire of the Band", and "Improving the Band". This includes a few chapter under each part, totalling ten in all.

The first 100 pages or so focus on the military band movement and such leader/composers as John Philip Sousa, Edwin Franko Goldman, and Patrick Gilmore. While this is certainly of interest, it was not something that was really touched on by my teacher this past term. This is alarming because we were covering the 1500's through 1909 in Wind Band History and Literature. The "heyday" of the march was 1829-early 1900's. A curious point I will be sure to bring up as classes resume.

Of course the book is outdated in some areas. Chapter 4 talks of "contemporary bands" but this was as of 1961 so there have been some changes. Fennell and the Symphonic Wind Ensemble is discussed by page 140, but this is where the trail ends for modern band.

One of the most interesting aspects of the book were the many lists of programs and instrumentations of various groups. As I program works that were written from earlier periods in our history, the size of ensembles that were playing at the time of composition is useful knowledge.

Part 3, which focuses on the repertoire of the band was the most helpful in terms of my study. I wish I would've skipped ahead and read chapter 8 first. This section has information that is relevant today and valuable in the study of transcriptions vs. original works for the wind band. It seems that an explosion of our "core rep" happened during this time. I am finding Edwin Franko Goldman and Frank Battisti are largely responsible for this fact.

The last part, reads kind of as an after-thought on practical problems of the band. I wish more of the book would've been written on the history of wind works before 1760(especially since I was trying to find info on that anyway) instead of tacking on this small section on teaching and conducting. There are many fine texts written on those subjects.

As someone who is so driven by technology this statement in chapter nine amused me. "The band has tuning devices, tape-recorders, and all manner of equipment that would've been unbelieveable only a short time ago. All this is well and good, provided that it does not become an end in itself, and that all of the equipment is put to some profitable use. It might, on occasion, simply be recalled that band and other musical organizatios did manage to exist, and fairly well, before all of these things appeared on the scene." I wonder what Goldman would have to say to us today(he passed in 1980).

The text does include a nice index, which I'm sure will come in handy when I go to check it out from library again to take a more in depth look at it. For now a once over must be enough as I try to get through at least one more book before break is over. It's an important read, but I don't think it had any information that can't be found in another text. I found the language to be a little stodgy(which accounts for my struggles diving in to the book).

It'll probably sit on my IKEA bookshelves someday, but on the "Grad Assistant getting Married" budget, it's not something I'll run out an buy, especially since it's out of print. I imagine the Dunbar Library will check it out to me a couple of times before I'm done here.

Everyone Seems To Hate Scale Study...

As you may have noticed. I have moved out of my comfort zone in good, old Illinois. I'm here in the SW part of Ohio living the dream. I work/study at Wright State where I have a sweet assistantship. I work with one of the best HS marching bands in the country. Yep, I'm pretty thrilled.

So far my experiences primarily with the CJB and I have determined that even though I was once thought the kids in this band must be super heroes, they're just normal high school kids. How did I find this out, you ask? They don't know all their major scales. Not only do they not know them, but *gasp* they hate practicing them. I know I was amazed too. I also had a little pat myself on the back moment(my little band at El Paso, IL was going to town on some scale studies!!)

One of the directors and I set a check off goal for the brasses. Yes, the woodwinds checked off major scales in mid-July. They always seem to be ahead of the brasses, anyone know why? I have my theories, but I digress. The other director also discussed the fact that if a F# concert scale appeared in their show music, they'd memorize it. Yet, the scale sheet in their binders goes unlearned.

I'm glad their making a push for scales, because it's something I always pushed for with my ensembles. As I was browsing around on www.musicpln.org (which you should check out) I found a great blog post about Lisk and scales by Thomas J. West. Check it out by clicking...HERE! 

Now go practice your scales. I played my Circle of 4ths today, did you?

Aggregators?

I'm trying to figure out RSS feeds. I started reading about them this morning because I'm currently trying to follow too many things! I know I'm really late to the game here so if anyone has advice please post in the comments or find me, KFreesen on Twitter.

I read about web-based vs. app based and went the web route because I'm on different machines all the time. School, home, etc...but I also wanted something I could get on my smartphone. I ended up going with Bloglines service. It says I can get it mobile and that I can link news, blogs, whatever so I'm going to spend the next half an hour playing with it.

I think the button below will create a feed to this blog...Like I said just playing with it today as school days wind down with many trips and parties.

Teaching Portfolios

http://langwitches.org/blog/2009/07/17/digital-teaching-portfolios/

I just took this from Brenda's Plurk. Basically I'm just posting this to remind myself to go check it out.

This is blog about E-Portfolios for teachers. Check it out!