At some time in your life you've probably asked (or been asked) some version of the age-old question about being stranded on a desert island. You know — if you could have only one food to eat, one song to listen to, or one companion to pass the time with, what (or who) would you choose?

FIG. 1: This screen shot shows Torrington High School’s Music Technology Web site.

I thought it would be fun and instructive to pose a similar question regarding music-education software and hardware to three music educators who use technology comprehensively in their jobs. I came up with the following: If you were stranded on a desert island and had to limit yourself to just three music-technology items to help you with your teaching assignments, which would they be?

Our castaways include Wayne Splettstoeszer of Torrington High School (Torrington Public School District, in Connecticut), James Frankel of Franklin Avenue Middle School (Franklin Lakes School District, in New Jersey), and Karen Garrett of Central Park Elementary School (Birmingham City School District, in Alabama). The items that they chose for their hypothetical desert-island technology toolkit reflect a selection of some of the best technology tools that are used by music educators today.

Splettstoeszer teaches band, jazz ensemble, orchestra, and two levels of music-technology courses at Torrington High School in Torrington, Connecticut. Roland Corporation has recognized Torrington's music-technology program as a model one. The school's Web site (see the sidebar “Contact Information”) is often tapped by other middle-school, high-school, and university programs for its wealth of materials and has received the Golden Web Award for Education every year since 2002 (see Fig. 1). Splettstoeszer chose the following three items for his mix of instrumental lessons, ensembles, and music-technology electives.

FIG. 2: According to high-school music teacher Splettstoeszer, PG Music’s versatile Band-in-a-Box is “the one piece of software that everyone should use.”

Splettstoeszer chose Band-in-a-Box (BIAB) for its versatility. He uses it for music technology, jazz ensemble, theory, and his History of Popular Music class (see Fig. 2). “It is the one piece of software that everyone should use,” he says. For jazz-ensemble students, the program is perfect for practicing and working on improvisation. Students can slow down chord changes and work on outlining chords and scales at their own pace to develop improvisation skills. Splettstoeszer uses BIAB to teach music-technology students about chords, chord progressions, improvisation, and more.

BIAB files can be saved as Standard MIDI Files and easily ported over to a sequencing program. Once in the sequencing program, students can perform tasks such as deleting the BIAB drum track and composing their own. The same can be done with bass, keyboard, or any of the other BIAB parts. Using BIAB in this way gives students a sense of accomplishment that can be transferred to other aspects of the class.

Acid Pro is a looped-based, multitrack music-production program and, like BIAB, is quite versatile (see Fig. 3). It can be used to record MIDI or audio tracks and facilitates the use of loops. Acid can import a variety of audio file types. Most important for Splettstoeszer, however, is the way students respond to and succeed with Acid. “Every student that walks into my class loves using Acid Pro,” he says. “All students can feel successful and create great music using looped-based software like Acid Pro.”

FIG. 3: Sony Media Software Acid Pro has grown from a pioneering loop sequencer into a powerful digital audio workstation, but its looping features remain its greatest strength.

One cool Acid Pro assignment that Splettstoeszer shared is a sound-effects story project (see the sidebar “Effective Storytelling”). For this project, students have to tell a story using parts of a short story that they either select or write themselves — a great way to infuse writing and interdisciplinary aspects into the music curriculum. Sound effects and music accompany the story as it is read, using Acid to arrange and produce all of the elements.

Other projects undertaken by Splettstoeszer's students with Acid Pro are producing radio commercials, doing film-scoring assignments, building a techno mix, and remixing (creating an alternate mix arrangement of a song, usually incorporating elements of dance or club music). Visit Torrington's Music Technology Web page for the specifics of many such lessons, including practical, step-by-step plans and evaluation rubrics. As of this writing, some links at the site were still under construction, but you will still find some great ideas and lesson-plan outlines.

“I would be lost without my iPod,” Splettstoeszer's says. “It has revolutionized my teaching.” In the band and orchestra room, Splettstoeszer uses his iPod with powered speakers to play selections from current or past concerts and to listen to recordings of rehearsals. In his music-technology courses, he uses the iPod with the room's sound system to demo examples of previous students' projects and to share song clips that feature different concepts they're studying in class.

Splettstoeszer uses his iPod almost every day in his History of Popular Music class. Together with the companion iTunes software, he can easily organize course materials. He creates playlists for each decade and artist that his class studies; he also creates playlists for each of his listening tests, which consist of short audio clips prepared in Sony's Sound Forge audio-editing program (Windows) and saved as MP3 files. If all of that weren't enough, he uses the iPod as an external hard drive and can easily back up and transport class files, including large multimedia documents. While many school districts may see it as an extravagance, when you think of all an iPod can do for today's music educator in terms of function and convenience, it truly is a bargain. “To have all my recordings in the palm of my hand,” says Splettstoeszer, “is simply perfect!”

Frankel teaches primarily middle-school instrumental music but also covers sixth- and eighth-grade general-music classes at Franklin Avenue Middle School in the Franklin Lakes School District of New Jersey. Franklin Avenue's general courses have evolved to the point that the eighth-grade students have a true music-technology course, in which they learn keyboard skills, composition skills, and music fundamentals through the use of a 10-workstation lab. Sixth-grade classes study the history of American popular music, which includes everything from music of the colonies to the pop music of today. Here is Frankel's desert-island short list.

GarageBand's allure is the large number of music-production tasks that students can engage in with intuitive ease. “GarageBand is the most user-friendly music-composition program that I have ever seen,” remarks Frankel. “It is perfect for my middle-school students in that it can do very cool things — loops, importing digital audio, Podcasting, movie scoring — that are important from a pedagogical standpoint. As a teacher, watching my students make critical decisions about music is a wonderful experience.” Frankel also likes the way GarageBand's attractive and compelling interface motivates his students. Whether they are recording themselves playing “Lightly Row” or rescoring a scene from their favorite movie, they are always focused on the job at hand.

Frankel's sixth-grade general-music class uses GarageBand to create folk-music Podcasts. Pairs of students are assigned an American folk song, around which they build their project. In addition to researching their song, students must find a MIDI file of it, which they import into GarageBand. Then, using GarageBand and the headphone microphones from their SoundTree lab, the team members record themselves singing the song's lyrics. Next, they write and record a script talking about the song's history and import images that illustrate the song.

Frankel uses GarageBand for a number of recording tasks that enhance his instrumental teaching. Using a microphone attached to an M-Audio MobilePre USB interface, he records sectional lesson groups, larger ensemble rehearsals, and even concerts directly into GarageBand tracks. According to Frankel, this straightforward configuration is “very easy and requires virtually no setup time once you know what you're doing.” The feedback that these recordings provide gives students an accurate idea of how they're playing and is great for self-assessment and for hearing progress over the course of a marking period, semester, or school year.

Some other uses that Frankel finds for GarageBand include creating accompaniment tracks with which the students can practice and using the tuner function in the transport controls (you'll see a tuning-fork icon when an audio track is selected) to visually demonstrate, with the help of an LCD projector and a projection screen, how intonation works.

Frankel is enthusiastic about GarageBand's design and integration with other programs in Apple's iLife suite, such as iTunes, iMovie, and iPhoto. The integrated applications enable his students to create audio tracks, master CDs, produce Podcasts, and even score movies. “GarageBand 3 has become such an important instructional tool for me,” says Frankel, “I couldn't teach nearly as effectively if I didn't have it.”