MakeMusic CEO Karen van Lith

Juan Costello, senior analyst for the Wall Street Reporter, recently interviewed MakeMusic CEO Karen van Lith.

In addition to highlighting our Finale, SmartMusic and Garritan products, the investor-focused conversation covers:

• Recent corporate developments and partnerships,
• Karen’s perspective on future education and technology trends,
• MakeMusic’s advantages in the marketplace,
• Karen’s background and experience in transforming companies, and much more.

If you’ve ever been curious to hear about the business strategy behind MakeMusic, this is a great opportunity to hear it directly from the top.

Take a listen to the interview here: http://www.wallstreetreporter.com/2012/05/make-music-nasdaqmmus-ceo-interview and let us know what you think by clicking on “Comments” below.

Composer Christopher Theofanidis with students at Betsy Ross Arts Magnet School in New Haven, CT

BandQuest® is a project of the American Composers Forum (ACF) that pairs up world-class composers with middle school bands. The program recently came up in conversation, and I realized what a great story it would make for our blog. So I scheduled a call with Suzanna Altman, the manager of education and community engagement at the ACF, to help me fill in the details. As you’ll see below, the timing of our conversation was very fortuitous.

Scott Yoho: What are the origins of BandQuest?

Suzanna Altman: Back in the 1990s the ACF underwent a very extensive survey of music educators. We were trying to learn what the forum, as an organization with a really great resource of national composers, could do for the field of music education.

What we discovered, through an overwhelming response, was a shortage of repertoire for middle school bands. We recognized that we could help by commissioning composers to write new music for middle school band, and we could publish the results nationally.

SY: How does the program work?

SA: BandQuest has two parts: There’s the initial commission, and the residency process. So there’s one specific school that has a very personal experience with one composer. The composer writes that school a piece that’s really for them – they get to premiere it and have a great experience with that composer.

We set up the residency; the composer visits the school several times, and then works on writing the piece for the school. We stay in contact with the composer and the school through the process of the writing. As the composer finishes, they send us files. Hopefully they are Finale files, if they’re not we convert them because we do all our editing in Finale. We can ensure that the final look is always consistent by using Finale. Then we publish the music. Hal Leonard distributes for us, so the pieces get really widely distributed not only throughout the U.S. but also around the world.

SY: How much repertoire have you created?

SA: We’re about to publish our 19th piece with the series – at first we did a few a year, now we do one each year. It’s been highly, highly successful. We’ve added a lot of new pieces to the repertoire that have a very different feel than what was available before.

Michael Colgrass wrote a piece that’s been very popular called Old Churches that calls for metal mixing bowls to be played by the percussionists to kind of sound like church bells in the distance – and there’s a little bit of graphic notation involved in that piece. He spent a lot of time with the students in the school where he did his residency to write the piece, talking to them about graphic notation, and encouraging them to write their own pieces using graphic notation.

The piece that came out last year was by an up-and-coming composer named Chris Theofanidis, who is a professor at Yale. He wrote a piece called Sweet like that for a band in New Haven. He went into the school and asked the students: “This is going to be a piece for you. What would you want?” One student asked to play drum set, other percussionists wanted to play fun percussion instruments, and of course the flutists all wanted to play piccolo (some, but not all of them get to play piccolo in the piece).

The tuba player wanted a solo because he so rarely gets to be heard, so the piece starts and ends with a low brass emphasis. It’s been a really well-received piece in part because Chris responded to what students were looking for and what they wanted.

SY: And Michael and Chris are just two members of an amazing list of participating composers.

SA: The goal was always to get the best composers we could to be a part of these. Our advisory board has a dream list of who they’d love to have participate, and it’s remarkable how many of these composers have agreed to participate and add to the education repertory, and affect the lives of children.

Okay, here’s where the story gets even better. The very day I spoke to Suzanna, she received some exciting news. She learned that this year’s BandQuest composer—who is currently working with the Scarsdale Middle School in Scarsdale, NY—had won the 2012 Pulitzer Prize in music. He is, of course, Kevin Puts!

SA: Kevin is actually the fourth BandQuest composer to win the Pulitzer Prize. It’s fun too, because he’s not done with the residency, so I just got to email the teacher to share the news!

Imagine being a band director and sending home a note that your students have been studying with a Pulitzer Prize-winning composer.

You can learn more about BandQuest at the official site. Here you can listen to all the pieces, and several include additional curriculum materials (and more are on the way). In addition, many BandQuest pieces are also available in SmartMusic, so feel free to explore them there too.

Check out the compositions and let us know what you think by clicking on “Comments” below!

Have an iPad? A new version of the SmartMusic Inbox app is now available that puts the iPad’s added real estate to great advantage.

If you’re not yet familiar with the SmartMusic Inbox, it’s a free mobile app, created for SmartMusic educators. It provides an alternative means to review, grade, and comment on student assignments any time, any place.

Like its predecessor, the latest Inbox app also supports Android® and Apple® smart phones as well as the iPod touch®, while adding fully dedicated support for iPad, including:

• A new editing view that allows educators to see and hear student performances simultaneously.
• A landscape view displaying the list of Inbox items and the details of a selected assignment at the same time.
• An improved interface that automatically removes graded assignments from the Inbox list and cues up the next assignment in the list.
• Additional improvements including academic year selection, and iOS 5.0 compatibility.

The new SmartMusic inbox app is available now on the App Store and in Android Market.

Let us know how it’s working for you by clicking on “Comments” below.

Much has been written, in this blog and elsewhere, about using SmartMusic with young band and orchestra students. Less ink has been devoted to using SmartMusic to guide the development of sight-reading and aural skills, particularly at the college level. MakeMusic’s Leigh Kallestad recently spoke to Matthew Shaftel, Associate Professor of Music Theory at Florida State University, about how SmartMusic has been implemented in their programs.

Leigh Kallestad: What is your role at Florida State University?

Matthew Shaftel: It’s my eleventh year as a faculty member at FSU. I’m a trained singer and I have my three degrees in music theory and music education from Yale University. My job here entails teaching upper-level graduate music theory classes, upper-level undergraduate classes, and music theory core classes; basically the whole curriculum.

Each year 340 freshmen and sophomore students take sight singing and ear training. We needed a way to guide their aural skills training in a productive and focused manner, but this was virtually impossible to do to the extent we wished with the available human resources. Today the students are all using SmartMusic.

LK: How did you guide aural skills before you used SmartMusic?

MS: Since we have such a large group, it has been a challenge to find a way to give them guided practice. We tried three different textbooks before my colleague Evan Jones and I developed and adopted our own textbook. We tried two different computer-assisted instructional models, and an older model of pre-recorded practice CD’s with live singing juries before we settled on SmartMusic. Basically, we were using various software programs for dictation practice, but were completely dissatisfied with the products. In all the cases, there were a number of support issues, and crashing made them virtually impossible to use. In addition, we were seeking a solution that could accommodate real musical repertoire.

That’s about the time that we looked at SmartMusic. The SmartMusic gradebook had just been developed and I realized that the SmartMusic instructor/student suite intersected our own materials perfectly.

LK: You were using SmartMusic before we had vocal assessment content. Did you create your own content?

MS: Yes. We developed these materials over a two-year period. The first year, we experimented with SmartMusic; by the second year we decided that we were just going to adopt it for all 340 students. We released a chapter of the materials and a set of SmartMusic exercises each week. It was very intense because overall, we have between 450 and 500 excerpts drawn from real music.
Some of these are just short excerpts, but others are entire pieces that have been arranged for multiple voices. These excerpts are drawn from a broad range of styles--Folk music, popular music, etc., but the majority of the excerpts are classical works that have been adapted for multiple student voices. The idea is to replicate a real-life musical experience while providing exercises of increasing difficulty.

LK: Did you have the students singing harmony exercises?

MS: Yes, and that’s one of the things that we found lacking in other software. We wanted students to sing melodies, harmony-lines and bass lines, but always with other parts playing. That’s one of the places where SmartMusic really excelled. In fact, it’s really the only option.

LK: Have you adopted a curriculum for your aural skills classes?

MS: Yes. Our book has been through three major revisions and we are in the process of our fourth revision, which I’m really happy about. We have developed units for each week; we have a good sense of where we are going and how our aural skills assignments interlock with a written theory curriculum. Things have been very smooth.

LK: How do you compare your aural skills class results using SmartMusic to your pre-SmartMusic days?

MS: There is no question that there is a vast improvement. Here’s what I really love about SmartMusic: When students are sight reading a line with SmartMusic, they are invited to participate in a musically relevant process. They are thinking about dynamics, they are thinking about articulation, and they are thinking about harmony, because all the other parts are participating in them. Also, SmartMusic encourages a musical fluidity, which is such an important aspect of literacy. That fluidity (because of the cursor and the ability to draw students through an exercise at certain tempo) means that when they go to their studio teacher and are asked to sight read something, they are able to replicate a complete musical process with a certain level of musical fluidity. We are getting reports from the studio teachers that they are happy with the skill level of our students.

On the written tests, it’s very clear that the time that they have put in practicing their aural skills has really paid off. In fact, that’s one of the advantages of SmartMusic, because I can see exactlyhow much time a student has spent practicing. Also, I can see that they have practiced regularly and that makes a huge difference.

LK: Have your students been able to transfer their aural skills SmartMusic experience to other parts of the SmartMusic program?

MS: Yes, especially the students who see teaching in their future. They begin to see that this is a tool that they can use throughout their careers and in many contexts. I think that it’s pretty obvious to them that this is the way to go.

There is a local middle school teacher that graduated from our program just last year. She is aiming to get SmartMusic at school and use it with her students.

LK: What would your advice be to other music teachers that are dealing with aural skills classes?

MS: The old paradigms of aural skills are falling out of favor, and with good reason, because they focused on a curriculum that is more than 100 years old. In that curriculum, you only learned intervallic, note-to-note reading, often in less-than-typical musical contexts, but it really wasn’t successful.

In certain national studies, our Florida State University aural skills program using SmartMusic is the top-rated music skills program compared to other universities.

LK: Thanks so much for sharing your story with our readers. Do you have any closing comments?

MS: My colleagues and I are all energetic people that just can’t rest with “lukewarm.” I would like to see other programs find better ways to prepare their students for what is out there today.

I’d like to thank Matthew and Leigh for sharing their insights with us. Please share yours with us too by clicking on “Comments” below.

SmartMusic 2012a is here. If you don’t plan to create SmartMusic accompaniments with Finale 2012, you don’t need the SmartMusic update. No action is required: you’re off the hook.

If you create SmartMusic accompaniments with Finale 2011 or earlier versions of Finale, you don’t need SmartMusic 2012a either.

If, however, you’d like to create SmartMusic accompaniments with Finale 2012, you will need to use Finale 2012a AND SmartMusic 2012a, and both “a” updates are now available.

That said, there is one very compelling reason to create SmartMusic accompaniments in Finale 2012a: this is the first version of Finale to create SmartMusic accompaniments that support vocal assessment. If you’d like to create accompaniments and assignments for your vocal students, Finale 2012a is the ticket.

Don’t own Finale 2012 yet? You can download the free trial and use it to create SmartMusic accompaniments for 30 days – for free.

Have any questions or observations to share? Please do so by clicking on “Comments” below.

Butchart Gardens, Victoria, BC

MakeMusic announced today that it has signed an agreement to purchase Garritan Corporation, makers of Garritan Personal Orchestra and several other best-in-class virtual sound libraries. Founder Gary Garritan will join MakeMusic as director of instrumental sciences.

My wife, Becca, and I enjoyed spending some time with Gary and his wife, Marianne, when we visited beautiful Vancouver Island near the end of October. Among the many beautiful places they shared with us were the Butchart Gardens, seen in my snapshot above. Since we assumed that late October wasn’t peak season for the gardens, we were delighted at all the color and blossoms – quite a contrast to Minnesota.

While Gary and I have spoken by phone and at tradeshows many times before, this was the first time we’d shared meals and museum visits, and he and Marianne proved to be wonderful hosts AND tour guides. I wish that I could look forward to seeing them both in our offices often, but for some reason they have yet to express any interest to moving to Minnesota. Go figure.

Lest you think I’m a mover and shaker, integral in the planning of the Garritan purchase long in advance, I should clarify that I’m not. In part because MakeMusic is a public company, great care must be made in not revealing pending acquisitions, and so I wasn’t aware of the negotiations until very recently. It strikes me as funny that Becca and I traveled to British Columbia and spent time with the Garritians when we did. Perhaps I had an unconscious premonition! Thank goodness I didn’t scare them off.

Please join me in welcoming Gary and Marianne to the MakeMusic family.

Tomorrow is the first day of the Midwest Clinic, an international band and orchestra conference held in Chicago every December. Music educators from around the world attend this event to discover new techniques, literature, and other tools to aid them in guiding their students in the pursuit of musical excellence.

Being selected as one of the groups to perform at Midwest is a once-in-a-lifetime honor; only the top 2% of applicants are accepted. Among the groups selected this year was the honor band from Cross Timbers Middle School in Grapevine, Texas.  In the video above, director Asa Burk talks about how SmartMusic has helped his students to play more challenging material, and prepare to perform at Midwest.

Are you headed to Midwest? Have you performed there? Hve you heard Asa’s students? Have a comment on the video? Please share your insights by clicking on “Comments” below.

Our repertoire development team just added 26 new concert titles to SmartMusic, which I've listed below.

Concert Band:

Full Orchestra:

String Orchestra:

Of course, you can search for these pieces by title, composer/arranger, publisher, skill level, and more, both online as well as from within SmartMusic. You can also request future titles and view other recent blog posts highlighting repertoire additions.

Did this batch include a title you've been waiting for? Let us know by clicking on "Comments" below.

Earlier this month we announced that MakeMusic would be purchasing MusicXML and Dolet software from Recordare. Yesterday the agreement was completed. What's more, the Dolet software is now available – for free – at MakeMusic.com!

If you'd like to create SmartMusic accompaniments from Sibelius files, this is great news.

Why?

The Dolet software allows users of nearly any version of Sibelius to save MusicXML files. These files can then be read by Finale, where they can be saved as SmartMusic accompaniments. While Sibelius 7 included the ability to read and write music XML files, users of previous versions had to purchase the Dolet software for $199. Now it's all free, and the free software even includes improvements upon the MusicXML support found in Sibelius 7.

Let us know how the free software is working, or ask any question, by clicking on "Comments" below.

It’s your worst nightmare come to life: a big truck races toward your marching band. It’s all part of the job for Brian Timmons, director of bands at Bergenfield High School in Bergenfield, NJ.

Last March I blogged about the Bergenfield band’s appearance on the Today Show, and at that time Brian mentioned that that they’d also recently participated in some scenes for “Tower Heist,” an upcoming film starring Ben Stiller and Eddie Murphy. On the heels of its November 4th release, I thought I’d share the YouTube video featuring a few different angles of the band's action scene, just to raise the blood pressure of marching band directors everywhere.

These scenes were shot on two chilly days in December 2010, with the Bergenfield High School Marching Band performing as the Macy's Great American Marching Band. You can also catch some even more exciting (albeit shorter) glimpses of the band in action in the official trailers.

Brian was kind enough to offer some details of the experience:

“We received the uniforms from Macy's the day after their Thanksgiving Parade. Beginning Monday, we had two professional costumers and a seamstress at the school for a week, fitting all of the students in uniforms during their band rehearsal period. We also had a casting associate on site to process all of the film permit paperwork. By Friday afternoon the uniforms were tailored and on their way to Manhattan. Miraculously, it all fell into place in time for a 5:00 A.M. call time on Saturday morning.

The students met at the school early in the morning on both Saturday and Sunday and were brought into NYC on buses. The band's holding area was at a private school near Lincoln Center, a few blocks from the set. There, they relaxed and worked on schoolwork while waiting to be called to the set. They also were fed very well from craft services.

When we arrived on the set, the director explained the scene to me. He explained that it was an action/chase scene, which I already knew. I wrongly assumed, however, that it would be Ben Stiller or Eddie Murphy running through the band on foot, chased by an FBI agent. Instead, it was a vehicle chase, with a box truck being pursued by an unmarked FBI car! Fortunately, just as I panicked for the safety of our students, a crew of stunt people came on the set dressed in the same uniforms and carrying rag-tag instruments. Throughout the shooting, it was always the stunt actors near the vehicles—our students were safely out of harm's way.

Just this week, our Friends of Music organization rented out our local theater so that the students could see themselves on the big screen.

This was a once-in-a-lifetime experience for our kids (actually twice for me and a few older kids, since we also appeared in "Bounty Hunter" with Gerard Butler and Jennifer Aniston). The opportunity to experience the inner workings of a major motion picture film set was priceless. Now we just have to wait for the casting director to call for our next film!” 

Had any near misses with your marching band, or care to discuss something more closely related to SmartMusic? Let us know by clicking on “Comments” below.