Catalysts & Connections - Evan Tobias

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 […]

A computer based practice system called In The Chair was recently featured at a large Web 2.0 conference. The software allows students to practice music from the system’s music library and play along with professionally recorded ensembles. Is this a possible evolution of the method book? With more and more students having access to […]

As many readers know - ABC world news tonight broadcasted a story on the use of American Idol in the music Classroom recently that included me and many of my 5th-7th grade general music students. In this post I want to provide some background information on why I chose to use the show in my […]

The American Idol and music education story didn’t make it on air tonight but did make it online.
You can see some of my students responding to questions about the contestents performances and what the judges were saying. You can also see how 2nd graders in a school in PA use American Idol in the classroom […]

This past week a crew from ABC weekend world news report visited my classroom to interview me and observe how I infuse the show American Idol in the classroom. It will probably air on ABC around May 21st or 22nd - I’ll post the details when I know them. I posted my response to […]

The recent International Association for the Study of Popular Music conference gave me a lot to think about. I will discuss some specific issues that were addressed at the conference in the next few days. The overarching feeling I had leaving the conference was that our field really does need to make more connections with […]

The BBC news website recently asked readers to submit questions and comments to music industry leaders regarding digital music issues. They then consolidated the most frequent and what they viewed as the most important questions and posed them to various leaders of the music industry, mostly from the UK. Take a look at the […]

Here is my response, with additions, to a question about the effect the show American Idol has had on music education.
“I have addressed the show American Idol in my 5th grade general music classroom in relation to the idea of assessing performances. After my fifth grade students create original compositions and perform them for […]

Do we have a responsibility to address racism on radio stations that many of our students listen to? Many of our students probably heard the racist Tsunami Song that was created and broadcast by HOT 97 (a station of the Emmis Corporation) employees that dealt with the horrible Tsunami in southeast Asia earlier in 2005. […]

Here’s a label that would be interesting to see on CDs in your favorite music store. In case you missed all the news on SONY’s DRM disaster read up here or here. Speaking of the music industry, in NY last year many public school music programs received a box of CDs from the state […]