Freebee Friday: Tap the Digital Ivories

Forget about having a room full of pianos to teach kids music because with Dream Cortex’s Baby Piano, an iPad can be a good starter keyboard. The screen becomes a 7-key piano keyboard that plays lets kids play freeform or along with popular nursery rhymes. The keys are marked with Do, Re Mi names and the app plays notes or animal sounds and kids can record their work for mom to hear. It’s too basic and juvenile for any kid older than second or third grade, but who cares, it’s a freebee and a whole lot cheaper than a room full of pianos.

 

 

Tickling the Digital Ivories

Pianos are pianos and tablets are tablets, right? Wrong. Ion Audio’s 88-key digital Concert Piano can hold an iPad on its music stand that can display the score or a music theory app. Though it’s small, the piano has a full rich sound with has weighted keys. The piano has high quality built-in speakers and includes downloadable music-teaching software.

Software of Note

Schools that teach music have to be encouraged and applauded in these dark days of budget shortfalls and reduction of non-core subjects. I found a piece of software that can make teaching reading music and note recognition much easier. It’s called Smak-A-Note and it turns recognizing notes into a game. Although it works with Windows and Mac computers, the software runs as a small window and not full screen. Students are presented with a note and hear it played and try to bang on moving letters with what looks like a miniature tympani mallet. If it’s correct they get points. There are different levels and a slew of customization options. It costs $30, but there’s a free demo.

Learning in the Key of Music

I’ve often thought that the best way to teach kids about how to use a computer keyboard is to have keys that light up when students are supposed to hit them. This way a positive association can be made between the keys, the characters and what shows up on-screen. Casio does this idea one better with a keyboard that does just this, except that instead of teaching typing it’s a keyboard that teaches children (and adults) music and how to play the piano.

The breakthrough is that the keys on Casio’s LK-230 keys glow red when they need to be hit. It’s as simple as that, but it’s a big step forward for teaching the piano to kids. The electric piano comes into its own with the included songbook that includes sheet music for 110 songs that are contained in the piano’s electronic Song Bank.

Divided in four groups of increasing difficulty the songbook works well with the piano’s repertoire. While the arrangements can be a bit corny and they will likely get tedious after a while, the book includes everything from Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” to Foster’s “My Old Kentucky Home.” In other words, more than enough music for an elementary- or middle-school music class.

Like many other digital keyboards, the LK-230 has 61 keys, rather than the piano’s standard 88-key layout, but has the ability to play 400 tones and 150 rhythms. It has a metronome built in and the keyboard can sample any sequence for the teacher to playback later or for incorporating in a group project. The piano’s USB MIDI files can be used on Windows or Mac computers.

It won’t replace a grand piano for concerts but the LK-230 is a gem of a digital device that sounds surprisingly good, particularly when plugged-in to external speakers. The plastic keys have a quiet subtle action and the LED key lights are bright. All are plastic for easy cleanup for the after-lunch music lesson.

For schools stretched tight by decreasing budgets, it can inexpensively integrate music instruction into any curriculum. Watching several 13-year olds try it out, the LK-230 mesmerized them and they couldn’t get enough time playing and practicing, which is a big change when it comes to music lessons.

The only downside is that it’s hard to get in sync with the piano. There’s an 8-beat lead-in but it takes a lot of practice to be able to smoothly join with the material and play the notes with the piano.

Casio’s StepUp lessons can help with keyboarding without the need to read music. The keys light up a musical phrase or one hand at a time and you can repeat any portion as many times as you like. It’s a great way to hone a piece a passage at a time.

On top of a wire music rack, the LK-230 has a pair of built-in speakers for playing for the class. There’s also a headphone jack so that a classroom of future Mozarts can play away without disturbing each other. A room full of the keyboards can help students independently learn the basics of piano playing while the teacher concentrates on those not getting it or excelling.

A big step forward for teaching is the LK-230’s Voice Pad. Just speak, sing or hum for up to 10 seconds and the sequences can be mapped to individual keys. Plus, the keyboard has a line-in jack for connecting a CD player or iPod to add background music.
 
As versatile as it is, the LK-230 lacks the ability to add new songs to its repertoire. The upcoming LK-270 will be able to download new songs either through a USB connection or an SD card.

The $130 keyboard requires 6 AA batteries or you can use the optional AC adapter, which costs $30. You can get a full classroom kit that includes the LK-230, foldable stand, AC adapter and headphones for $170.

It won’t replace a music teacher but with the Casio LK-230 a class can learn how to play the piano in a few months with surprisingly good results.

A

Casio LK-230
$130

+ Inexpensive
+ Keys light up when they need to be played
+ Surprisingly good sound
+ Includes 110-song Song Bank
+ Can connect to computer via USB
+ Metronome

- Hard to get in sync with the start of a song
- Corny arrangements

Drum Roll, Please

Now that we have that out of the way, Roland has revolutionized drumming and how it can be taught with its Octapad SPD-30 digital drum pad. The 8 sensitive pads can be independently programmed to any of 30 different types of drums from 670 different instruments. Great for a variety of band and orchestra uses, Octapad weigh 8.5 pounds, so it travels a lot easier than a kettle drum or snare kit. It costs $700.

Friday Freebee: Making Beautiful Music

If you’re tired of writing music for students on a blackboard and going through pads of score paper, MuseScore may be just the thing to get you and your class making beautiful music together. It’s still a beta, but version 0.9.5 is well executed, professional looking and the software is free for the download. It’s available in 20 languages and works with PCs, Macs and Linux computers, and kids can be writing music in a matter of minutes.

Audio Card Games

Most classrooms have a boombox or stereo for listening to books on tape, music and even the occasional radio broadcast, but Califone adds an SD flash card player with the Spirit portable stereo. The oval machine costs $150 and includes an AM-FM radio, CD drive and an SD slot for digital tracks. Students can listen to material or record their own with the built in microphone. It can run on AC power or batteries and can work with SD cards up to 2GB.

Musical Monday

Music today goes beyond the piano, saxophone and glee club, and Radica’s Ucreate Music machine can turn loops and samples into beautiful music. The small device sells for $35 and lets kids (and music teachers) mix and match various pieces of digital music, distort it, mix it and add a voice track. It can create final works that are up to 85 seconds long that can be saved to a PC via a USB cable, and the company offers a good assortment of samples online.

I’ve found that the music classes that veer off from traditional orchestral and band pieces are the most successful these days. Beat Kangz Electronics Beat Thang Virtual can help provide a steady background to a variety of music projects. The system comes with 3,000 professionally recorded samples, the ability to add your own and high-end electronics for editing and customizing the sound. For example, a project can start with a snare drum that you add reverb and delay to, followed by changing the pitch and adding the scratchy sound of an old record. Anything created can be saved as a .wav file for playing for the class or later use. The software works on either a PC or Mac and costs $149.

 

Throw Out That Pitch Pipe

Tascam has come up with the perfect replacement for a music room’s worth of gear. The PT-7 not only can put out a variety of perfect pitch tones for tuning and getting the choir or glee club on the right note, but is a precise metronome as well. As if that weren’t enough, the PT-7 is a high quality recorder that can capture up to 20 minutes of performances with its own built-in microphone. It costs $100.

Feelin’ Groovy

Putting together a 21-st century music lab with the ability to help students write and present digital compositions might seem out of reach for all but the best endowed schools and districts, but with the latest software it’s easier and less expensive than you might think. Sibelius’s Groovy City can give elementary and middle schools a taste of what creating digital music is all about, but the software takes time to master.

The third of Sibelius’s Groovy series, the $69 City program runs on both Macs and Windows systems, although there are currently compatibility issues with the upcoming Windows 7 release. The company offers teacher tips and add-ons for nothing. It is based on a futuristic urban landscape with buildings, roads and space ships hovering above. In each, the student has his or her avatar interact with the program’s deep audio library to create anything from hip hop or jazz to the blues or some new form of music unknown to man.   

The program’s database has hundreds of melodies, bass lines, rhythms and cords that can be arranged in a near-infinite variety of songs with the program’s 128 different instruments from violins to trumpets. On the downside, some of the sounds have an artificial sound to them. At any time, the student can use a plug-in keyboard to add their own riffs and chord progressions to a composition. 

It’s all in an effort to teach children about complex sounds, music notation and the terminology of a band or orchestra. It works so well, most kids won’t realize they’re learning while playing and making their own compositions. My advice is to get headphones for each system using the software, because the sounds can get quite intense.

The best part is that while the creation phase is a very individualistic pursuit, once their done, the kids can share their songs with the class or upload them to Groovy Music’s Web site. If it’s really good, it’ll end up on the site’s top 10 listing.

As deep and inspiring as the program is, it’s not without faults. While it can teach a motivated student all about creating music, it takes a bit of trial and error to master the complicated interface. Plus, you can’t run Groovy City full screen, so it wastes much of the display’s real estate.

Groovy City is a program that every school music department should own and use. After all, it could bring out the next Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart or Sean Puffy Combs among us.

B+

Groovy City

$69

     + Inexpensive music software

     + Good variety of instruments and effects

     + Perfect for fourth- through seventh graders

   

     - Doesn’t run full screen

     - Complicated interface

     - Sounds too artificial