Season Finale & Coming Features

Leah, David and Greg reflect back on favorite moments of first season of Notes from the Staff, and chat about coming features for uTheory.

Links:

Solfege Sally

uTheory.com

Show notes:

0:00:00 Theme Song

0:00:20 Introductions

0:01:00 How David jumped in and sang a Mozart Requiem with Greg on 5 minutes notice

0:03:45 Reflecting on the 2022 Pedagogy in Practice conference

0:05:30 Favorite moments from season one of Notes from the Staff

0:06:14 Theme 1: Using multiple systems to reach learners in multiple ways

0:08:15 Theme 2: Making learning engaging

0:10:30 Theme 3: Trends in Music Theory Pedagogy today

0:14:10 Solfege Sally -- our silly Simon-like solfege game.

0:17:35 What we've accomplished with uTheory this year: a complete backend and frontend rewrite into modern frameworks, over 120,000 lines of code written (or rewritten)

0:18:20 New features coming to uTheory

0:19:00 The ability to create practice assignments

0:20:15 Consolidating all assignment types into a Learn tab, and allowing assigning of content to entire classes, groups of students or individual students within a class.

0:21:10 Rolling out the new uTheory extended curriculum: a curriculum designed to be used over a two-three year period, especially in a high school or middle school context, to allow a carefully paced introduction with ample time for building fluency.

0:22:05 The lessons and exercises will be customized for the student's primary clef, whether its treble, bass, alto or (for pianists) grand staff.

0:22:48 The curriculum will interweave written music theory, rhythm, ear training and improvisation together.

0:23:20 The curriculum will be a spiral curriculum, so that concepts are introduced at a basic level, and returned to with review and more advanced work frequently throughout the curriculum.

0:23:50 And the curriculum will be much more gamified -- with little touches like confetti, badges, and games like Solfege Sally.

0:24:30 With these changes, configuring lesson and assignment order will become as easy as dragging and dropping -- one of the most frequent feature requests we hear from teachers who are using uTheory.

0:25:40 Practice vs Mastery Assignments

0:30:00 The new curriculum should make it even easier for teachers to use uTheory with their classes and students, because it will do even more of the work of customizing the learning for individual students.

0:31:00 Previewing a new game, "Pitchy Fish" to help teach pitch matching and vocal control.

0:35:30 Previewing some of David's new music theory songs which will make appearances in the new curriculum: Where the Half Steps Live, and Black Notes on Pianos

0:38:50 Chit-chatting and signing off for the summer!

Transcript:

0:00:00.0 [Theme Song]

0:00:21.2 Leah Sheldon: Welcome to Notes from the Staff, a podcast from the creators of uTheory, where we dive into conversations about music theory, ear training, and music technology with members of the uTheory staff and thought leaders from the world of music education.

0:00:34.6 Greg Ristow: Hi, I'm Greg Ristow, founder of uTheory and Associate Professor of Conducting at the Oberlin Conservatory.

0:00:40.8 LS: I'm Leah Sheldon, head of teacher engagement for uTheory.

0:00:44.6 David Newman: I'm David Newman, and I teach voice and music theory at James Madison University, and I write code and create content for uTheory. A quick thanks to listeners for all your comments and episode suggestions. We love to read them. Send them our way by email at [e-mail]. And remember to like us and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

0:01:06.3 GR: So it's episode 11, and it's our last episode of the first season. Today, we're gonna look