Thoughts on Technology Troubleshooting

My last blog gave an example of how technology can enhance student learning in music classes.  When technology is working, it can be a real asset.  What happens when technology doesn't work?  Reliability and consistency are definite issues (for example, when your internet connection is slow or off or when someone changed your settings).  We have become accustomed to incorporating technology into various scenarios and we have expectations that technology will be useful to our work.  A couple of recent situations demonstrated how technology could help or hinder depending on whether it is functioning as expected.

I had a dress rehearsal last Wednesday with the community orchestra I conduct.  Our rehearsals take place on stage in the new fine arts center, which is outfitted with state-of-the art audio and lighting.  The sound room is completely computerized with pre-sets for different types of events that are activated with touch screens.  On this particular evening, the stage was rather dark and shadowy with seemingly random lighting.  Much of the light was coming from spotlights throughout the house.  Some of the musicians on stage were in dark areas and others had lights blaring in their eyes.  The normal pre-sets had been turned on, but the lighting was completely different from usual.  Somehow the settings must have been changed.  (Perhaps altered for drama rehearsals?)  We tried to change the light settings to no avail.  So, we all made the best of the situation and had a good rehearsal in spite of the poor lighting.

Prior to the computerization of auditorium lighting, it would have been easy to flip on a row of lights with a simple switch.  And, back in the day, candlelight and daylight streaming through windows may have sufficed.

In another situation, I was planning on playing an excerpt from a piece of music through iTunes on the class computer for one of my high school music classes.  I had played the exact same excerpt just the day before for a different class.  Somehow the file had become corrupted and it would not open and play for the second class.  Many students and several music teachers share the computer.  Since the plan was not possible, I ended up going a different direction with the class that day.

Perhaps educational programs should provide more training for future educators in setting up, maintaining, and troubleshooting hardware and software.  The use of audio equipment, such as microphones, computerized recording systems, and soundboards is very different from what was in use ten years ago.  Lighting is often operated and manipulated through computer systems.  Some schools may have an engineer who oversees lighting and audio needs in the auditorium.  In many cases, though, the music teacher may be on his or her own.  Technology training and troubleshooting would be really useful skills for the modern music teacher.  No one wants to have a surprise at the concert or dress rehearsal!

Do Shared Audio Libraries Make CD Technology Obsolete?

Situation:  It's 7:25 AM in the orchestra rehearsal room.  I planned on playing an excerpt from Rimsky-Korsakov's Capriccio Espanol today.   As the students come in and get set up for our 7:40 AM rehearsal,  I walk over to the stereo cabinet and feed it my CD on which the movements of Capriccio Espanol are not tracked.  I search for the fast-forward button -- what? no fast-forward button??!! how old is this machine??  Completely unwilling to waste class time, I reach for the mouse of the donated Apple G3 on top of the stereo cabinet.  Click, I'm on iTunes.  I attempt to import the CD, but I discover that the G3 in our classroom has a tiny amount of memory and it won't be able to handle many more imports.  Thankfully, my MacBook Pro is in the music office just steps away.  I open iTunes on my Mac and click "Preferences", then "Sharing".  I make sure my library is shared on the network.  I walk back into the orchestra room and, sure enough, my library has appeared on the G3!  I quickly find the excerpt I wanted to play for the students and begin playing it.  Let's see - setting it up and playing the music took just about as long as it probably took you to read this anecdote.

Not long ago, I was pretty intimidated by technology.  Lately, I've been expanding my techno-skills by leaps and bounds and I'm finding that technology is not only useful - it can also be fun.  I have to admit, I felt a bit proud of myself for solving my morning conundrum.

It's so important for students to hear great recordings in music classes and over the years, the CD player in the stereo cabinet seemed adequate.  Today, that technology definitely showed its limitations.  Students tend to lose their focus fairly quickly - they are used to having the sounds they want to hear right at hand.  It seems as if every student comes to school with one ear plugged into an iPod and the other ear connected to a cell phone.  They are fascinated by technology, and putting "old music" on iTunes through a wireless connection makes it seem more hip and relevant to their age group.  Sometimes I hear people say that classical music is for old people, and that makes me sad.  I'm finding, though, that technology enhances the experience for high school students in unexpected and amusing ways.  It's not too unusual for my high school orchestra to sightread a piece (like an arrangement of Mozart's Symphony No. 40) and to have at least one student exclaim "Hey! That's my ringtone!!  Check it out!"  The sounds of classical music can come from acoustic instruments that been played for hundreds of years, but it can also come in recorded form through a laptop, an iPod, or a cell phone.  I think it's really important for teachers to understand the world that today's students are growing up in.  (It's really different from the world I grew up in at their age!)  Making connections to the past and to the future are keys to understanding an ever-changing present.

Blog beginning...

I'm entering the blogging universe today for the first time.  I'm sitting at the kitchen table thinking about what to write, and as I look out the window I see my husband in the backyard looking intently into the sky with a violin in his hands.  He makes violins and violas and ultraviolet light will cure the varnish he applied to the instrument this morning.  The sun was out a moment ago, but a dark cloud just came overhead - will it rain?  He's bringing the violin back indoors for now.  I'm a violinist and violist, and music is thoroughly woven into my life.  As a musician and educator, I play and teach instruments that have been around for hundreds of years.  Yet, our world today is very different from a time before technology became such an integral part of everyday life.  In this blog I'll be reflecting on music and technology, and since I love orchestra I decided to name my blog "Orchtekker Musings".