At this time of year letters are issued to the parents of successful applicants for guitar tuition, including information on the price of recommended guitars. The quick way to do this is to open the letter of the previous year, change any necessary details and re-save under a new name. The resultant digital trail has […]

Some days you think you’ve nothing to say and then you chance upon an idea and off you go. I read with interest a new blog by a former depute whom I knew at Knox. Now at Liberton High School, Donald McDonald has launched Head’s Blog.
I was struck in this post by the idea that […]

Last year I wrote a series of posts about musical arranging, one of which attempted to outline the various possibilities involved. One of them was incorporating accompaniment styles from a culture different to that of the melody.
Had the option of embedding video been around at the time, I’d have encouraged you to listen to what […]

How many stumbling blocks are there between the instrumental teacher’s vision of home practice and the reality? Take the idea of isolating an individual phrase for concentrated practice. The pupil needs to be sure:

where exactly to begin and end
how long they will have to get back to the beginning
how many times are required to ensure […]

Last year I flagged up a great resource for pupils and teachers of Music put together under the auspices of Learning & Teaching Scotland. At the time, I was struck by the A - Z Dictionary of concepts with audio samples. However, there is much more than I had realised on offer e.g. short essays […]

Passing the towering bookshelves at home it often strikes me that there is more reading matter there than I have hours left on Earth. The sands of time continue to flow while I visit websites and blogs. Why then do I compromise further by dallying with websites boasting massive archives? To paraphrase the ego-centric shampoo […]

Our gaming for learning guru, Derek Robertson, has temporarily become LTS’s man in Singapore, pictured here catching up on some Christmas shopping. He’s earned a break, though, having taken some of Scotland’s gaming for learning work to the other side of the planet for the large ICET Conference and Exhibition.
As well as representing LTS, Derek’s […]

The Argentinean newspaper Clarín has compiled an archive of guitar composers. Having selected a composer/player you"ll be led to a page where, in addition to audio samples, there are free downloads of high quality pdf scores (descargar partitura).

The Asus EeePC is a tiny, open source and highly affordable wireless laptop computer, no bigger than a paperback, which could open new possibilities for learning in Scottish classrooms.
Andrew Brown, one of Learning and Teaching Scotland new technologies team, has already blogged about the potential of the wee EeePC, and here takes us on a […]

Cross-posted to Alan Coady’s Musical Blog
A little over a year ago I made a vow to try to learn Polish. Apart from the stated reason and the fact that it would be interesting, I hoped it might be helpful in school which, I’m pleased to say it has on one or two occasions. Unfortunately, I […]