Industry and education. Music production software to support tomorrow s education

Transcription

1 191 Industry and education. Music production software to support tomorrow s education Andrea Pozzi Midiware Srl Introduction: a little bit of history The software companies have always had a very good relationship with the scholastic institutions and the tie between the market leaders that develop applications and the world of school is very strong and lasting. In the present time, the growing power of computer processors can guarantee the availability of software and operating systems more and more complex and advanced, in order to support all the learning phases of a student as well as the refreshment courses for the teacher. Of course, for the music area the rule is the same; as a matter of fact, it has been clear from the start that the interactive and multimedia features of a digital audio workstation can represent a real revolution for all the music education. Since the beginning of the digital era, the software developers and the electronic engineers have attempted to challenges in the music world both for business and for pleasure. The three main circles are: sound recording, sound generation and score editing. Then the actual subdivision in the three main categories of software: sequencers for hard disk recording, virtual instruments and notation softwares. From the first MIDI sequencers to the most advanced software samplers that virtually carry entire orchestras in a laptop computer, last twenty years have seen authentic revolutions in the way to think and to manage music using new technologies. All this in the educational area has had an increment not always equal to the increment reported in the areas connected to music production and to the professional audio-visual area. The teaching methods and the resources that teachers and pupils have with specific applications are changing and the new tools can provide simple and at the same time very advanced methods for the learning of music theory, composition

2 192 NET MUSIC Project 01 - New Education Technology in Music Field and execution techniques of an instrument. Many didactic methods are already available for every level of training and for every scholastic level based on multimedia software online where the interaction man-machine, the total flexibility of quizzes and valuation test and, often, the games part, guarantee a complete and optimal platform for e-learning. The road by now is for a long time marked and the future perspectives are for sure encouraging. The international experience and the top brands: Sibelius, Propellerhead, Steinberg and Magix The actual scenario of an interconnected world delimited by borders more and more virtual allow us to analyze the main structures that represents the good practises in the relation between the musical software companies and the schools all over the world. A brand that has always been a reference in the development of didactic applications for teachers and students is for sure the English software house Sibelius. Sibelius is the world s market leader in music notation software and the Sibelius products are used in the world s classrooms every day to enhance music education and help students achieve great results with music from an early age. Sibelius provides a range of music software for Primary/Elementary schools, Secondary/High School and University/College; this product range is rapidly gaining adoption across the UK and the rest of the world and the Sibelius notation software is now used to teach music in 60% of schools in the UK, Australia and New Zealand. When the company s founders Ben and Jonathan Finn first set out to design Sibelius in 1993, they never imagined that it would end up being used in thousands of schools, colleges and universities around the world, with children as young as 7 or 8 using the same software they had conceived to make composing and publishing music as simple and elegant as possible. But of course that simplicity and elegance has helped the software become a valuable learning and teaching tool for educators and students of all ages, to the point where the majority of Sibelius users are involved in education in one form or another. Over the years the Sibelius team has added various features to try and make their software as useful as possible to teachers and students. An obvious example is the Worksheet Creator from Sibelius 4, which was the product of many months of painstaking research into music curricula in the UK, US, Australia, New Zealand and Canada. Another obvious example is the network licence server software, which makes it really easy to set up and administer Sibelius across a school s local area network, or even over a district or state s wide area network. One of the products that the English team has developed over the past few years is the redesigned Licence Server software that was released in September 2007, allowing teachers who aren t IT experts to get the license server running on their

3 Industry and education. Music production software to support tomorrow s education A. Pozzi 193 network with fewer than a dozen mouse-clicks, and presents all the common server admin tasks in a single window: it s a real example of how this application try to make things that could end up complicated as simple as possible for the benefit of the users. Most secondary schools in the UK and in the rest of the world, and an increasing number in Italy, now have dedicated computer labs in the music department. However, it s difficult for teachers to switch between demonstrating concepts for students, perhaps using their interactive whiteboard or digital projector, and having the students work alone or in pairs at workstations running Sibelius and other software. The problem right now is that there are a variety of approaches, from having all the students gather around one workstation to having the student take the work to the teacher s station on a USB flash drive, or ing it, to other schools where the computer lab is fitted out with a lab control system, which is basically a means of the teacher having an audio and/or video link from his own workstation to each of the students workstations. However, rarely such a system is used effectively. For sure there are also some very good practise. This is a short story related to an experience really done by the Sibelius product manager, Daniel Spreadbury: I was attending a junior year elective music theory class, and one student in particular was having problems approaching a specific compositional task. Without any of the other students in the classroom being aware (and therefore avoiding the student feeling awkward about the difficulties she was experiencing), the teacher was able to take control of her computer via Apple Remote Desktop, demonstrate something to her directly on her screen, and then talk her through repeating the action for herself. It was truly personalised learning, and it was a case where the technology enabled the teacher to really assist that student in a direct and yet discreet fashion. Now Sibelius offers also some integrate solutions hardware and software with a all in one ready solution for the schools. This packages, called Sibelius Education Packs, have been created specifically to fulfil the hardware and software requirements of the UK music and music technology curricula from ages 11 through to 18. They bring together Sibelius products with industry-standard hardware and software from the sister companies Digidesign and M-Audio. Another brand that has a strong presence in the educational area is EarMaster. EarMaster ApS is a Danish music software company founded in Being musicians their selves, the Earmaster mission is to provide musicians with the most interactive and efficient ear training tool. Their most important application, EarMaster School, is an experiential ear training tool, a motivating and effective teaching tool. It s highly interactive the students see, hear, and most importantly, they do. EarMaster comes with a jazz tutor and a standard tutor with a total of 651 lessons. Lessons are ready to use or can offer inspiration to create customized lessons using the Tutor editor. For example, is possible to make lessons function as tests, setting time limits and many other restrictions, and insert these test-

4 194 NET MUSIC Project 01 - New Education Technology in Music Field lessons in between regular lessons. These custom-made tutor lessons can challenge each student individually, based on his or her performance, and they will also receive feedback instantly. As a teacher, is possible to focus on the most difficult questions and concepts. The teacher can access to live statistics on the students performances, which gives him the opportunity to approach the students individually or in groups to work out their difficulties, while working with EarMaster. Students can do ear training homework lessons after class in their computer lab. The teacher can also his own tutor lessons to the students, so they can work with EarMaster at home. Consequently, the students can their results to the teacher from their home computer, or bring them to school on a storage device. Then the teacher can add the received results to the EarMaster statistics tool and view them together with the other users existing and incoming results. The high score feature will motivate the students to compete and devote extra hours to ear training. Another top brand is for sure Propellerhead Software, a privately owned company based in Stockholm, Sweden. Formed in 1994, Propellerhead has created some of the world s most innovative music software and technology standards. Musicians, producers and the media have praised the products Reason, ReCycle and ReBirth for being inspiring, great sounding, easy to use and superior quality. Technologies such as ReWire and the REX file format are now defacto industry standards, implemented in all major music software. Today, Reason is used all over the world by professionals and enthusiasts for all kinds of music making. The Propellerhead s most complete application, Reason, provides students with access to new, easier and more manageable forms of musical creation. The virtual synthesizers are perfectly suited to teaching the basics of subtractive synthesis and sound design. The Propellerhead team has also developed a special package called Teaching Music with Reason, a stand-alone, entry-level classroom package that focuses on learning about and making music using technology. Principally designed for use in secondary and high school music classes, the package includes material for 21 complete lessons and turns each individual classroom computer into a self-contained, easy-to-use music studio, with a realistic rack of equipment that you could expect to see in any professional studio set-up. Teaching Music With Reason is designed to allow integration with other areas of the particular national, state or college Music or Music Technology curriculum that students are currently following. Fundamental skills include: listening, understanding musical elements, developing technical skills and applying these creatively. One of the most important thing is that the Propellerhead Software s entry-level classroom package that focuses on learning about and making music using technology - Teaching Music with Reason - is now available as a free downloadable licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution- Noncommercial 2.5 License.

5 Industry and education. Music production software to support tomorrow s education A. Pozzi 195 MAGIX Technology GmbH is another very important software house with a strong relationship with the school area. Based in Berlin, their DAW Samplitude is one of the most popular solutions for audio and MIDI recording, editing, and mastering on the PC and is very used in most of German schools and all over the world. The latest edition of Samplitude Pro version 11 offers many innovations based on the Hybrid Audio Engine along with improvements to track, object and master automation that provides with different automation modes as well as an automation controller in the track editor. Samplitude Pro offers everything that a digital audio work station requires: recording, mixing, editing mastering in fact everything up to and including the burning of manufactured Red Book-compatible audio CDs/DVDs. Is also possible to carry out DVD productions in the standard 24 bit with up to 384 khz. The feature set allows a complete in-the-box-work, from composing and editing with MIDI using Matrix Editor, Listen Editor, Drum Editor, Score Editor and VSTi up to the final CD/DVD in one software. But talking about German music software houses, one of the most important brand is for sure Steinberg Media Technologies. Steinberg has been providing award-winning, technologically advanced music and media production products for musicians and producers of music, video and film since Today, Steinberg is one of the world s largest audio software houses with more than 1.5 million users worldwide, offering software and hardware solutions as well as providing business customers with license management and copy protection systems. The Steinberg range of products has long since found world renown in all aspects of modern digital audio processing, and form the backbone of facilities specializing in music composition and production, mastering, restoration, broadcast, sound design, audio post for the film industry among many others. In April 2006 Steinberg Media Technologies GmbH has initiated a new pilot project for the music education sector in its home country of Germany. The Steinberg Reference School project is an initiative between the private and public sectors that aims to establish regional centres of excellence within the state school system in each German federal state. Each appointed school will become a reference platform for training and networking both music educators and students in the region and will offer new possibilities to learn, utilize and exploit the latest computer-based music composition and audio production techniques. Through the scheme, each appointed Steinberg Reference School will become a focal point for music educators who want to receive additional information via seminars and hands-on workshops on how conventional musical lessons can be enriched and expanded when using the latest advances in computer-aided music and audio technology, including Steinberg s recording software Cubase and its range of virtual instruments. Steinberg Reference Schools are selected according to distinct criteria, including the development status of music within the school, technical infrastructure and

6 196 NET MUSIC Project 01 - New Education Technology in Music Field availability of traditional musical instruments. Each Steinberg Reference School will be open as a training resource for all schools in the area that cannot afford this level of equipment, so that the teachers and pupils at other schools in the region have a way of completing digital audio projects. Another important function of each Steinberg Reference School is to offer a communication and information platform for all forms of educational facilities and their staff in the region. The aim here is to provide a way for educators to exchange information and practical experiences, their teaching methodologies in relation to audio software as well as to create and develop practical, hands-on examples of how to use digital audio software in the classroom. The first Steinberg Reference School has been established in the new music computer classroom at a comprehensive school located in the Horn area of Hamburg. Employing a network with a server PC as well as six PC workstations, the new facilities were opened on April 6th 2006 to a large audience comprising music teachers from the area, representatives from the music press and education publishers, as well as officials from Germany s leading music teaching organizations and the regional government. This high-profile opening was seen as being of particular significance because Hamburg-Horn is perhaps better known for its difficult social climate than for its educational initiatives; a positive signal encompassing new opportunities for expression and community development. Under the auspices of the new scheme, the school has been equipped by Steinberg with a special software package including Cubase SE, WaveLab Essentials and Virtual Instruments Collection, plus MI4 audio interfaces for all workstations. Steinberg s entire product range of software tools was permanently installed on the server PC, creating a training centre for computer-based music production, which is closely allied to the extensive range of traditional music instruments already available at the school. The initiative couples the new software with the ready availability and close proximity of both practice rooms and acoustic instruments. Music sessions can be easily recorded and subsequently mixed at the computer stations. This is a very good way of attracting pupils who aren t able to play an instrument to music lessons, states Lars Meding. They are able to play a key part in the creative process, playing virtual instruments or loops via MIDI keyboards, or working on finalizing the recording session. All of these are vital components in contemporary music production, especially seeing as the computer is rapidly becoming the centre of a multi media studio in schools. Steinberg strongly believes that the ability to make music can also be a force for social good by fostering both intelligence and communication skills. Pupils and students can therefore now produce their own audio and music projects on CD ROMs in a school environment. At the same time the music computer facilities are also suited to advanced training for music teachers and/or students from other schools and universities who want to learn modern music technology

7 Industry and education. Music production software to support tomorrow s education A. Pozzi 197 or find approaches to applying digital audio production in a familiar classroom environment. A further goal of the new project is to help prepare the teachers of tomorrow in terms of getting in touch with music technology and software. Steinberg will announce more reference schools in each German federal region, with further plans to extend this network worldwide, and aim to establish closer networks between universities and all public and private key institutions and associations in the field of music education. Steinberg Reference School projects are supported through public or private sponsors. Another very good example from Steinberg, is the Classroom Resource Pack (CRP) that provides teachers with comprehensive resources for teaching music to year olds in schools. It contains all the necessary elements for teachers to deliver a wide range of innovative, modern music lessons and uses Cubase/Cubase Studio 4 or 5 as the technology platform. The Teacher Manual, 370 pages of detailed lesson plans and activities meticulously prepared for the teacher, is supported by two easy-to-navigate content DVDs; one provides printable PDF worksheets and assessment materials in addition to video tutorials and other support materials, and the other DVD provides original music as multitrack Cubase projects, audio files, audio loops, MIDI files and video files intended for project work in the classroom. The Italian scenario and the Net Music project Apart from a few software houses which develop music software with a specific target (IK Multimedia, i3 and Redmatica), the Italian experience is closely related to distribution companies which have fully represented in our country the international companies operating in this field during the last twenty years. The market leader in this area is MidiWare, the first company in Italy to import and distribute hardware and software for music production. MidiWare s name is certainly related to the history of Steinberg which, as said above, has been one of the first companies to develop music software and today is one of the world leaders in this field. MidiWare represents not only Steinberg but also many other producers of interfaces, control surfaces, hard-disk recording systems for audio production and post-production, new-generation synthesizers and samplers which integrate sound synthesis and sampling in what today we call integrated computer music system. Yet in the early stages of its activity, at the beginning of the 90s, the MidiWare Educational section was created to integrate new computer technologies into the traditional educational methods used by Conservatories, Music Schools and Academies, Public and private Schools, Universities and professional training centres. The goal was to develop a complete educational

8 198 NET MUSIC Project 01 - New Education Technology in Music Field program and a training solution as a solid base for new professional roles introduced by the vertical growth of IT and digital technologies: audio editing, mix and post-production sound engineers, experts in the management of live music performances and in the whole entertainment business, together with all industry roles connected with music composition for television and cinema, music publishing, multimedia, advertising, conservation and restoration of musical works, music therapy and all disciplines requiring the use of new technologies applied to music. Every year since 1996, MidiWare Educational has organized and managed in Italy the National Program for Steinberg Certified Teacher, a highly professional role who coordinates and supports teachers and institutes in organizing and delivering computer music training course. The Italian section is one of Steinberg s best divisions in the world for the number of conceived and delivered courses and certified teachers. The result has been the growth in these years of a wide network of hundreds of teachers, who have then carried out their educational activity in public and private institutes attended by thousands of students. These educational institutions have been awarded with the Steinberg Training Center certification for their constant and high-quality training activity regarding the use of Steinberg (and other) technologies in music production and audio editing processes. One of the main tasks of the MidiWare Educational division is to keep the teachers expertise constantly up-to-date by organizing seminars and courses throughout the country. In addition to this activity carried out by the Educational division, which has helped to create a large database of advanced trainers, MidiWare can also count on an extensive archive of contacts and references built during 23 years of activity. Leader companies such as RAI and Mediaset, as well as specialized resellers and companies providing solutions for the entertainment business, organize internal training and refresher courses: for all these MidiWare is a constant reference point regarding both technical consultancy and the delivery of training programs. In the educational area, MidiWare has given its contribution to the Net Music project by defining network structure and coordinating the testing of the vocational training target made up of educators, professionals and training students. For this target all main tools of knowledge transfer (training courses, tutorials, project areas and common platform operation) have been integrated with courses and materials already used by MidiWare (and naturally its Educational division) for vocational training. Based on this experience, a network of 12 nodes was created, each of which corresponds to a single training centre located in the national territory. This project helped the development of a real integration between the educational and professional sectors, thanks to their common intersection between technology and creativity in music. The successful testing stage that involved several hundred students, and the following transfer phase during which the Net Music platform became a reference portal for all main