Symphony of Science - Scientific Knowledge and Philosophy through Music! This site is simply AWESOME!

Symphony of Science could be one of the coolest sites I have found in a while.  The site was created by John Boswell, who was heavily influenced by the Internet Legends The Greggory Brothers (Double Rainbow All The Way Across the Sky Music Video) and DJ Steve Porter (who created the awesome Rap Chop Music Video).   Symphony of Science features 11 full length music videos heavily influenced by the classic PBS Series Cosmos with Carl Sagan.  Many of the videos and the words to the songs are remixed episodes from Cosmos, Ted Talks and more.  To quote Mr. Boswell on the site: 

"The goal of the project is to bring scientific knowledge and philosophy to the public, in a novel way, through the medium of music. Science and music are two passions of mine that I aim to combine, in a way that is intended to bring a meaningful message to listeners, while simultaneously providing an enjoyable musical experience."

Did I mention this site is AWESOME?  The Music Videos are so well done and really engaging.  I shared them with an 8th Grade Science teacher of mine yesterday who was actually talking about Quantum Theory.  He immediately included the video from Symphony of Science called "Quantum World"  about Quantum Theory in his presentation for discussion today. 

Here is the Quantum Theory Video from Symphony of Science.

 

You can visit Symphony of Science at:  http://symphonyofscience.com

Read more »

UJAM - Collaborative Online Music Collaboration & Creation

UJam is an awesome online, web based music creator.  Your music can be shared between students and they can make their own edits to make each jam even better.  This is a great site for creating your own music for podcasts, presentations, classroom rap songs, news shows, classroom videos, and more!

One of the coolest features of UJAM is the option to have a student sing freely into the microphone, and UJAM converts their voice into an instrument and creates a song.  Meaning, UJAM recognizes the notes you sing, then converts your voice into an instrument hitting those notes.  If you want to create an original song, you do not need to know how to read sheet music.  All you have to do is sing or hum the way you want the song to sound, then you can tweak it in UJAM!

You can also sing freely into the microphone or to the beat of a metronome, and have UJAM create music to match your song.  This is just like SongSmith by Microsoft or the Songmaker APP on iPhone.  You sing, then the program creates music to match and go with your own words.  It is pretty awesome.  Your students will LOVE creating their own songs from scratch.

The site has some very easy to follow tutorials that can help get students started.  You can check out the tutorials here.  Students can even record their own vocals in their "jam" or create their own songs.  I wouldn't put UJAM ahead of Audacity for classroom recordings.  However, for browser based music creation and audio recording, you may be hard pressed to find a better alternative.

Students will have to create an account in UJAM so they will need an email address.

Read more »

Soundcloud - Easy Podcast and Original Music Sharing!

     Soundcloud is a site that lets you share your copyright free music or podcasts easily on your blog or website.  In my Rap It Up Project, I always wanted to have a neat way to share my students' original Rap Songs.  This is the answer.

       A Free account allows you the ability to upload 2 total hours of your own music files.  You can then create sets out of these files such as "Podcasts" or "Historical Interviews" and share only these specific files on your blog or website (worked great on my Moodle Site).  You can even see an example of one of my SoundClouds uploaded on this blog!

Here is an example of the SoundCloud Player on my Moodle Site.

You can even allow for commenting on the files (which I turned OFF).  The player shows how many times each file has been played so you can track popularity.

Soundcloud would be a great site to share any podcasts, interviews, original songs, etc with your community.  I was able to upload 52 songs on my Free Account to share my classroom's rap songs.  I now want to create another account (hint, hint) so I can upload and share our podcasts.

Read more »