Tales From The Podium

The personal weblog of Chad Criswell, MusicEdMagic Webmaster.

Finalists Announced in Finale National Composition Contest

musical notes The folks over at MakeMusic just announced the results of their nation wide composition contest on February 1st. There are three finalists and a dozen other honorable mentions in the list. Read on to see the complete press release regarding the announcement.

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Tales From The Podium

Chad Criswell

OnSong for iOS Makes Chord Sheets Easy - And Free

OnSong for iOS is an iPhone and iPad application that turns your phone into a neat little chord sheet tool. From the app's description:

With OnSong, you can manage huge collections of chord sheets for your band or worship team on a simple, lightweight device. Quickly pull and reorder lists and flip from one song to the next with ease. Transpose and highlight chords or change font size with a brush of your finger! Playing music has never been more simple. This software is built for live performance musicians.
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Tales From The Podium

Chad Criswell

HTML 5 Lays Groundwork Easier Online Music Publishing

There are many different ways today to publish music notation on the Internet. Using services like Noteflight or uploading Sibelius Scorch files are two of the options that thousands of people use on a regular basis. Now however, a new addition to the HTML standard (the language that allows web pages to be displayed on the screen) allows for actual music notation, and a few individuals have come up with ways to fairly easily incorporate any MusicXML file into a web page with just a few lines of code.

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Tales From The Podium

Chad Criswell

Get A Free Extra Gig of Dropbox Space By Doing The DropQuest Scavenger Hunt

Okay, I talk a lot about Dropbox on here but it is only because I don't know how I ever managed to work at four different buildings without it. It syncs all of my computers together so that all my teaching materials and music files are always up to date on each machine that I use and I can even use it on my iPhone (plus I never have to worry about losing a thumb drive ever again).

Well, Dropbox is currently giving away an extra gigabyte of storage space for free for going through their DropQuest scavenger hunt. It is only good until January 29th so get hopping and read on to find out the details on getting the extra space.

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Tales From The Podium

Chad Criswell

ThetaMusic- Imaginative and Fun Online Ear Training Game Web Site

ThetaMusic Screen Shot I subscribe to a lot of news feeds and newsletters trying to find new and interesting stuff to use and pass on to others in the music education community. Well, this time I have to give props out to a source outside the norm of our little genre. Today's Kim Komando Cool Site of the Day was a web site called Thetamusic that has some very interesting ear training games that I have to admit are pretty awesome as well.