Use of Music Technology Software in Junior and Senior Cycle

Vanbasco’s Karaoke Player has also proved popular in schools as it displays and highlights words, provides music accompaniment for songs and is a great resource for choir and group singing as it releases the teacher from accompaniment duties to concentrate on conducting and other performance criteria. Once again its full benefits are realised when coupled with a data projector and students read the projected words from a whiteboard/screen. Teacher can also use the program to change the pitch of the music up or down (unlike a CD player or tape recorder), by simply dragging a slider in increments of a semitone so as to accommodate the vocal range of the choir. Developing musical concepts such as a sense of pitch, pulse, tempo and texture can be addressed at junior cycle with this program. Songs can be slowed down, instruments can be muted or allowed played solo and a variety of songs can be downloaded from the internet and integrated in to the program. Vanbasco’s Karaoke Player is free to download from the Vanbasco website so students can download it and have a free virtual band to accompany singing practice for Junior and Leaving Cert practicals at home.

Audacity  is another free to download piece of software that functions as a stand alone recorder and wave editor. It is a very useful tool to record student’s compositions and can present the recordings as a waveform – the default means of visualizing audio. The waveform can then be edited in a number of ways such as deleting unwanted mistakes and silences, transposing the pitch up or down, changing the tempo and adding effects such as echo and reverse. There are quite a few musical concepts that can be addressed with this software for example pupils who hear their recorded voices transposed in to chipmunk or monster territory gain an understanding of pitch by actively participating in the process themselves. Compositions can be saved in popular music file formats such as wave and mp3 files and can then be burned to CD or imported in to other programs.
   

There are some very simple free music programs available to download from the internet such as Keyboard Note Finder  and Basic Piano Chords  that have greatly helped teachers describe the stave and explain major and minor chords. Keyboard Note Finder provides a virtual keyboard on the screen that can be played by simply clicking on the keys. The notes in turn appear on the stave and a circular window displays the name of the note played. Basic Piano Chords will play any major or minor chord (plus a wide selection of other chords) on a virtual on-screen piano. Students can hear and see the notes being played and quickly get to understand what a chord/arpeggio is. 
  

Garageband  that comes pre-installed as part of the ILife suite of applications bundled with every new mac. Students can start making music straight away by using the supplied Apple Loops and simply dragging and dropping them on to the timeline. They can also record their voices and other external sounds; add effects, save their compositions as mp3 files or burn to CD. Standard music notation is also provided while students who wish to get involved in podcasts can now publish their recorded podcasts on the web with just a couple of clicks. Garageband is currently at version three and has become one of the most popular pieces of music software available.
   

In conclusion it would be true to say that music teachers who have embraced the use of music software in the classroom have discovered it to be an effective medium in teaching rudiments of music, and in developing musical concepts while students have responded with increased numbers of them choosing music technology as their preferred option for their Leaving Cert practicals. The challenges ahead however lie in the transient nature of computer technology and our ability to keep pace with new developments in music making methodologies.   
   

Read Teachers' Evaluations of software mentioned in this article.

Evaluation   VanBasco  Audacity  Keyboard Note Finder  Basic Piano Chords Garageband
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