Catalysts & Connections - Evan Tobias

I was interested to read about Roger Bourland’s approaches to teaching music theory and making it more meaningful to his students. One of the approaches that stood out as a great idea was having the students bring music they are working on to his class to analyze. This makes so much sense! What types of […]

In the livejournal music education forum a Director of Education for a mid-west professional orchestra wants to know ” if there is something that you, as educators in schools, would love to have from your local performing arts group, such as programs, support materials, etc.”
If your local orchestra director of education asked you what they […]

How long will it be before we refer to instruments, not as electric, but as digital? The Gibson digital guitar maybe the start of the trend. The fact that the guitar is digital is interesting, but the possibilities that exist due to its design are more so. If students were to begin using digital guitars […]

I’m currently in Michigan for the first ever International Society for Improvised Music conference. So far the conference has been excellent, bringing together people interested in improvising from a wide variety of perspectives. There are music educators present but there should definitely be many more in attendance. Once I get back home I’ll pull […]

Chances are that if you have any students who play the electric guitar either at school or at home they have secretly or maybe even publicly tried their chops out in their own version of Guitar Canon Rock. The viral video phenomenon that has grown since Youtube and Google Video has made it as […]

Drew McManus over at Adaptistration has been evaluating orchestra websites based on a list of criteria that includes education as a sub-category. Starting with the post on Sept. 18th there are several very informative entries related to these evaluations. Some orchestra websites can serve as great resources in the classroom. Many of my students, […]

The potential for collaborating with others is one of the most exciting and powerful aspects of the internet. Initiatives such as collective music education blogs, the Vermont Midi Project, The Mayday discussion forums are some different ways of collaborating online. Recently Owen Bradley over at The Digital Music Educator posted about the potential to have […]

I’ve always enjoyed having my students compare various arrangements of the same piece, discussing style and various musical elements that are similar and different. Over at the riddimmethod, wayneandwax gives an interesting example of tracking the development of different versions of a piece of music. Focusing on the various versions of “Solomon linda’s “mbubeâ€? […]

The topic of composing and performing with a laptop will be a theme running through this blog I’m sure for a long time. Over at newmusicbox Marc Weidenbaum recently wrote an interesting article tracing the history of musciains using the laptop, focusing on some recent composers/performers making use of it in their own work. After […]

The Willie Mae Rock Camp is looking for volunteers and campers for the 2006 summer rock camp for girls. Based in Brooklyn, New York the camp is modeled after the Rock n Roll Camp for Girls in Portland, Oregon.
If you happen to work in New York, whether you work with student rock bands in your […]