Junior Music Apps for Composition Lessons

J UNIOR MUSIC APPS to accompany lessons on

composition concept from Musyc

Composing with iPads

This was always going to be a challenge as it requires a new set of skills. As schools embrace IOS into their curriculum the aim is to build better pedagogical approaches. Approaches that the iPad can be used alongside of. This list of apps follow my process in teaching junior composition ideas for the IOS device at a recent presentation.

1. Developing patterns of rhythm & pitch 2. Placing patterns into layered textures 3. Organising the patterns & textures into structures

Look for arrows & explanations on each page.

The rest is up to you to explore!

Don’t forget Evernote & Skitch are integral to playing & organising charts for the iPad in Music.

Garageband for the IOS device has many wonderful playing features.

Starting with smart instruments you can have drones & accompaniment patterns using the chords & autoplay dial.

Drag your fingers up & down the ‘bars’ for sustained bowed strings or tap for pizzicato (plucked).

Loopy HD a magic app on the iPad With this app you can tap a circle & it starts recording...anything you want, as long as you want.

Think classroom pieces, ostinatos, layering & singing, this is a fantastic tool.

Best of all, you can copy the audio to Garageband!

Percussive Orff bar-instruments Percussive is a collection of bar instruments that I use to record student ideas & to test arrangements.

Each of the instruments sound beautiful & work well in a classroom setting.

This is Latin Percussive and it has everything you need for sound effects to samba & those funky percussion parts.

Musyc an amazing selfgenerating composition tool Imagine a space, containing objects that interact physically with other objects to produce harmonious sound.

Now imagine arranging those objects into any shape you want to create music!

Paint & draw in your notes using the piano roll on the left or just anywhere for fun. You change the colour/instrument at the top.

My Little Rhythm drilling students in rhythm This application allows you to choose your difficulty level (seen here) and then a series of rhythmic tapping exercises follow.

You choose which instrument to play along to the click-track.

Storybooks are important as they can introduce ideas or concepts in an engaging and memorable way. ...also, ‘Nighty Night’ is a great one for composing to the animals in the story.

Have the students move to the music, re-enact the story and then compose their own animal orientated soundscapes!

Introduce students to the Instruments of the Orchestra with another great application from Naxos.

Stomp HD noise, rhythm & beeps With this app I have recorded soundscapes, rhythmic ostinatos & drum grooves.

You can record layers and compositions as you work out various rhythmic patterns.

There is the Garage view and a basketball view.

MadPad HD Composing made simple Whether it is rhythmic patterns, a group of notes or found sounds, this application can take a few taps of the piano and turn it into a composition immediately.

You can create your own ‘sound trigger’ or use many of the ones already available.

Learning with an iPad is incredible.

Here you can learn to compose in Solfege!

By tapping on a syllable it plays the note and sound of ‘sol.’ You can then string these together for playback.

For junior students this application is a colourful toy piano with the do re mi applied for singing and pitch reference.

Myrhythm allows you to learn through a series of games how to combine and play rhythmic patterns. Great, fun, revision.

Any more iPad ideas? Please share them at:

wrightstuffmusic.com

Junior Music Apps to accompany lessons on composition by Samuel Wright is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Based on a work at www.wrightstuffmusic.com.