Jazz It Up, with Music Technology!

As the song goes, “Don’t know much about His-to-ry, don’t know much about Tech-no-lo-gy! ” But what we do know is that music technology now plays a crucial role in most schools. Fully integrating this technology requires much greater awareness. From Mozart to Madonna, technology has forever changed the field of music. Although accessing music through the Web and through digital storage devices has been remarkably significant, perhaps to an even greater extent, music synthesizers and editing software have dramatically changed the very nature of music. Technology provides powerful aids to composing, notating, editing, and performing music that even elementary school students can learn to use. Cakewalk Sonar (Image 1) represents affordable state-of-the-art digital recording software that compares to expensive studio facilities. There's a lot of flexibility built into Sonar to achieve a variety of musical forms including recording audio, creating MIDI files, looping and sequencing, and adding effects. Any style of music can be created using Sonar's MIDI and audio systems and there are also DX instruments and automated effects. Band-in-a-Box (Image 2), described as an intelligent accompaniment software, is a powerful and creative music composition tool for exploring and developing musical ideas with near-instantaneous feedback. It contains features to display notation, enter lyrics, create melodies, add harmonization, and program a variety of musical styles. The Soloist generates professional quality solos over any chord progression. The Melodist creates songs fro