This was back in 2008 – the Joey Stuckey Band had a gig at Buena Vista University in Storm Lake, IA. It was an awesome time, and an incredibly well-taken-care-of piano that I got to play. That’s a Roland keyboard on my right – at times I would play both during the concert.   I love the ...

I had a composer friend who is trying to setup his computer to do notation. We talked a bit about whether to also include audio recording . I thought I would post and edited version of what I emailed him. First decision: Do you get a box that does just MIDI, or both MIDI ...

Music Technology: Basically divides into a few categories: 1. Student skill development 2. Recording, A. audio B. video C. MIDI 3, Playback/Distribution – how will the student hear it/view it? Email the file? Make a CD/DVD? With any technology, DO NOT start with “how do you get it to work”, also ...

There was a posting on a LinkedIn group  about how to go about recording your students. Although the post was primarily about what gear to use, it sparked some thoughts about it. Here is what I shared with the group: Remember that quality is a relative term here . If ...

Yup – that little game system can indeed be a useful tool when teaching piano. It has several advantages – it’s cheap, relatively speaking, is easy to use, and the “wow” factor is pretty high (thereby making YOU more interesting to your students, which is a great motivator).More details in the coming weeks!

What’s the Difference – from teaching, learning, and Musician’s perspective? Some semi-random thoughts. There’s nothing like playing a well-maintained concert grand. NOTHING. But few people have access to a concert grand, much less a well-maintained one. The new Roland V-Piano is supposed to come close, though. At roughly $6,000 it’s a lot cheaper than a ...

What’s the Difference – from teaching, learning, and Musician’s perspective? Some semi-random thoughts. There’s nothing like playing a well-maintained concert grand. NOTHING. But few people have access to a concert grand, much less a well-maintained one. The new Roland V-Piano is supposed to come close, though. At roughly $6,000 it’s a lot cheaper than a quality grand, ...

First, my setup: 1) I teach on a digital piano (not a great one, but it’s what I have available in the music store where I teach) 2) I have a 10-year old Mac (Powermac Tower – 266 MHz PPC processor running MacOS 9.2.2) that has 2 midi interfaces. 3) I also have a small sound module (a ...

At the risk of sounding like an old geezer…… this came to mind as I taught my last Music App class of the semester. My first Music App classes were taught using LPs – the CD had only just been introduced, and of course new tech takes FOREVER to weasel its way into educational settings. Finding ...