Anyway, if you are thinking about designing and launching a studio website, already have one and want to improve it, or are considering a complete revamp of your studio website, you can get hundreds of dollars worth of fabulous advice just by reading his post with links to existing websites and his critique of each one. My studio website is badly in need of a revamp, and I know I’ll be studying this collection of websites and suggestions as I develop my new site. In fact, just reading the post inspires me to get a move on with several redesign projects! Hopefully the Music Matters Blog revamp (that has taken forever!) will be done soon and I’ll be able to spend some time working on a new studio website.

Also, if you have a studio website and want to include it on the Studio Website Listing, just send me an e-mail with your studio location and website address and I’ll add it to the listing. This page of websites will be much more prominent in the new blog design!

ManiacTools.com is my latest greatest find on the world wide web! Tagged “The Best Music Tools,” you’ll find a treasure trove of helpful software programs for a variety of needs. I was impressed with their free m4a to mp3 converter, so I signed up for their newsletter to be alerted to new developments and additions.

They just released a free YouTube to mp3 Converter Studio that I’m super excited about! YouTube has become my go-to site for musical performances and I have often wished there was a good way to capture the audio for later listening. ManiacTools.com has made that wish come true! You can add multiple YouTube videos just by copying the links and then download them all simultaneously. By default, the downloads are saved to the My Music folder as an mp3, but you can change the output folder and also elect to download as a WAV file instead.

The program is intuitive and easy to navigate. And so far it works seamlessly!

It worked beautifully! Pretty cool, huh?!

My beautiful 32GB, 4th Generation iPod Touch arrived at the end of the week and I’ve been in love ever since! It’s been great fun exploring some of the available apps, synching it with my iTunes account, configuring all the settings, and using their new Facetime feature to chat with my sister across the country. So, so cool!

And now I’m trying to rack my brain and remember all the great apps that everyone has told me about over the past several months. Any suggestions? What are your favorite apps? Any fun music education ones that you like to use with your students? I can’t wait to put this to good use in my studio!

Probably one of the most valuable skills I have learned on the computer is how to use tables to create forms and worksheets of all shapes and sizes. Whether it’s fully-customized assignment books (like I create for all the practice incentive themes), piano scale fingering diagrams, or simple charts (like these key signature charts), a good working knowledge of tables will help you get the job done!

Here’s a free scale and chord progress chart that you can download for use in your studio.

For those who are interested in having an editable template to start with to create their own charts, you can download the MS Word version of the scale and chord progress chart. The symbols may not render correctly (unless you have the Bach Musicological font installed on your computer), but it will at least give you a start with the table layout. Here are a few tips to help you along the way (for PC users):

• To merge multiple cells into one cell, just highlight all the cells, right click the mouse, and select the “merge cells” option.
• To change the type or thickness of the border (or to remove the border) around specific cells, highlight the cell, right click the mouse, and select the Borders and Shading option.
• To change the size of the cells, just hover the mouse above the line you want to move until it has the double arrows and then click the left mouse button and drag the line to make the cell/row/column as big or small as you want it. You can also specify exact dimensions using the Table Properties option when you right click the mouse while hovering over the highlighted cells.
• All of the table options are also accessible by clicking on the Table option at the top of the screen when you have highlighted the table or a portion of the table. Experimentation is often the best way to figure out how to best utilize all the options!

If you’ve never worked with tables before, there’s a bit of a learning curve, but every minute you spend to experiment, learn, and create, is well worth it. Consider it an investment with guaranteed returns as you find yourself creating all sorts of great-looking and well-designed materials for use in your studio!

Remember, if you have a question you’d like to contribute to next week’s Monday Mailbag, leave it in the comments below or send me an e-mail sometime this week with Monday Mailbag in the subject line!

However, the few tidbits of information I’ve been able to offer on this topic pale in comparison to the fabulous new book published by Oxford University Press: Recording on a Budget – How to Make Great Audio Recordings Without Breaking the Bank by Brent Edstrom. Mr. Edstrom is incredibly knowledgeable about all things audio, yet still manages to communicate in a way that is easily understood by those of us who don’t understand all the technical jargon. The clean, well-organized layout is accompanied by lots of helpful graphics and photographs that contribute to an even better understanding of the material. There is also a password protected companion website with sample audio files.

The book is an excellent fit for both the recording enthusiast who wants to dig in and understand the nuts and bolts (discussions of acoustics, microphone frequency responses, mixing essentials, etc.) and the creative musician and/or teacher who just wants to know enough to be able to make quality recordings of live music. It’s not the type of book that most people would sit down and read cover to cover, but it’s an invaluable reference that should find its way into the hands of every musician, band director, classroom music educator, independent music teacher, and anyone else who wants to effectively utilize the audio recording capabilities of today!

And you could win a copy of Recording on a Budget for free, compliments of Oxford University Press! Just leave a comment below and you will be entered in a drawing to win this book for yourself. The drawing will be held at noon (CST) on Thursday, March 31, using a random number generator. Enter now for your chance to win!

1. A USTREAM account.
2. Laptop computer with access to the internet (via a wired or wireless network).
3. Built-in video recording capabilities or a camcorder. I’m planning to use my digital camcorder to capture the video feed, while also recording to a miniDV at the same time.
4. Good sound capture capabilities. The instruments will need to be mic’d and you either need to use a built-in mic from the camcorder or computer, or use a direct line input from the sound board. We are planning to use the latter option in order to get the best sound quality with the least feedback.
5. Really smart, savvy equipment operators! I’m having a friend of mine run the sound board and another friend run the video camera and laptop. Both of them have lots of previous technical experience, so I’m hoping that even if we run into some glitches, they’ll be able to troubleshoot and find solutions!

Unless I’m forgetting something, I think this is all we’ll need. I’ll keep you posted, though, as we get things set up and I’ll let you know what all I learn along the way!

As you all know, it takes a TON of planning and preparation to pull off a recital, but it is so worth it! And the students love being able to invite their relatives and friends to be a part of the Christmas celebration with us. It is unavoidable, though, that every year there are far-off family and friends who would love to be here, but just can’t make the trip. Well…in one of the most exciting discoveries of the year, I think this will be a problem of the past because now there is a way that anyone can attend the recital virtually! Enter: USTREAM.

USTREAM is a free online television station that enables registered users to broadcast their shows and events via the internet to viewers around the world! I’ve been exploring the site this past week and not only can you broadcast through your channel, but you can also record and archive events so that they can be accessed and viewed at a later date. We are just itching to give this a try in my studio, so we will be live streaming the Christmas recital this year and you are invited to join us and be part of the experiment!

The recital will be on Thursday, December 16, at 7:00 p.m. (CST). Just go to my USTREAM channel: http://www.ustream.tv/user/nataliewickham at that time to watch the live broadcast. Since this is our first time giving it a try, there may be glitches, but hopefully you will bear with us and give us feedback that will help us make improvements in the future. And if any of you decide to live stream a studio event, I’d love to know about it so I can tune in and watch. Plus, I think there are tons of other possibilities for this technology. For instance, there’s an option to invite viewers to be co-hosts, so I could see multiple studios across the country connecting with each other for a joint event of some sort. If any of you are interested in trying something like this, we should brainstorm and see what we can come up with. What FUN!

It’s incredibly easy to set up a YouTube station. It’s considerably less so to navigate the site and figure things out once you’re signed in! YouTube is definitely not the most intuitive site I’ve used, but it is well worth it to set up an account and put in the time to figure it out. It’s actually very simple to use once you figure out how to navigate to the right options. There are a ton of features that I haven’t fully tapped into yet, but I’ve actually been exploring some of the options more in depth recently and had fun experimenting with uploading directly from my phone!

YouTube is the largest on-line video repository, but there are a number of other sites that provide similar services. Here’s a webpage that has a Video Embedding Comparison that I found helpful. Here’s another Online Video Sharing Comparison Matrix that gives a handy overview of the plethora of options.

If you opt to go with YouTube, once you sign up and sign in to your account, it’s as easy as clicking the “Upload” link and then either selecting the video file from your computer or choosing the “Record from webcam” option. YouTube supports a wide variety of video file formats. I have used clips from my camcorder, the lesser quality video recording feature on my digital camera, and (as I mentioned above) even from the video capabilities on my phone. With the camcorder and camera options, I just upload/transfer the video to my computer first and then it is available to upload to YouTube. With my phone, I was able to send it directly to YouTube using the unique address provided for my channel.

If you use the “Record from webcam” option, you either need a built-in webcam on your computer or a stand-alone webcam that can be purchased from any computer store. They are relatively inexpensive and would probably allow for even greater flexibility with placement than a built-in webcam (you should have seen the contortions I had to go through with my laptop when I was doing Skype lessons with a student in order to demonstrate something on the piano to her! ).

Uploading video clips to the computer and/or YouTube gives the student a larger image to view, but I frequently just do all the filming and viewing from the camera for the sake of time. Even seeing a small image and listening to less-than-pristine sound quality can give them a better perspective of their playing and help them understand what improvements need to be made.

If you’ve been trying to decide whether or not to set up an online video sharing account for your studio, I hope you give it a try. It’s a ton of fun! And keep in mind that you can make your channel public (viewable to anyone) or private (restricted to those to whom you grant access), so that you can protect the privacy of your students, if necessary. I have my studio families sign a release form granting permission to post their picture on-line. And they are always thrilled when I tell them that I’m going to post their performance on YouTube!

Remember, if you have a question you’d like to contribute to next week’s Monday Mailbag, leave it in the comments below or send me an e-mail sometime this week with Monday Mailbag in the subject line!

Sure! It’s a website I started last year as part of our Exploring a Galaxy of Music practice incentive theme. There are several options for setting up blog-based websites for your students. The one I prefer is WordPress. If you already have website hosting, you can set up a similar student site as an add-on domain. Or, if you don’t have a site, you can have it hosted for free on the WordPress domain. Or you can buy a hosting account and use it for a site. So, there are several options for setting it up! Blogger is another popular blog interface that you may want to check into.

Once you have the blog up and running, you can search for and select a theme that allows for multiple author listings on the sidebar. This isn’t essential, as WordPress automatically has the capability for multiple users, but I thought it would be nice for the students to see their name on the sidebar and for others to be able to click and go right to all the posts written by a particular student.

When you set up the installation, you will receive the admin login information that will enable you to access the “Dashboard” of the blog. This is where you control all the settings, themes, users, etc. If you go to the “Users” menu option, you can add additional users and define their role. I added all my students and made them an “author.” This allows them to write posts and submit them for publication, but then I have to review and approve them in order for them to be published on the blog.

As far as the actual posts, sometimes I would encourage a student to post something based on what they were studying or learning in conjunction with their lessons. Other times they just took the initiative to post video clips they discovered or thoughts that came to mind. We also did quite a bit of recording and posting audio clips on the blog, because this was pretty exciting for a lot of the students!

So…that’s some of the info about the student blog. I’ve been blogging for about five years now so it was pretty easy to get things set up for my students and walk them through how to access the site and write their posts. If you’re new to blogging, though, or are interested in learning more about how to start a blog, feel free to ask any questions and I’ll do my best to answer them. Also, does anyone else have a blog or website to which students contribute content? Do you have any platforms or tips on what has worked well for you?

Remember, if you have a question you’d like to contribute to next week’s Monday Mailbag, leave it in the comments below or send me an e-mail sometime this week with Monday Mailbag in the subject line!