Last week, I had an epiphany. See, I was teaching Sight
Singing 2 to a bunch of students who had already failed it the first time and
we were all frustrated. I was frustrated that they weren’t able to grasp the
material and they were frustrated that I wasn’t yet dead so they could
automatically move on to Sight Singing 3.
Both sight singing and ear training have a unique challenge
built into the course- No textbook in the world can possibly help you learn
sight singing or ear training by yourself. You can never practice either by
yourself, because how do you know if you are right?
Practicing with others works well, but unless you have a
very dedicated friend who is available 24/7 and willing to listen to you struggle
through examples, then you can’t always rely on other people.
There are always apps and programs online that help, but the
good ones cost money that you nor the school really has to offer.
I knew the solution was making some kind of available
resource, online, that students could practice with any time and get real-time
feedback. But I also knew that my skills as a webpage designer could easily be
compared to Bill Gates, if he lost both arms and legs, went blind, deaf, and
dumb, and was then placed in a dark cave in the middle of nowhere.
The answer came from my a cappella group. We had already
started building a new website and our alto Melanie had shown me something
called Wix. Wix is a free website builder that lets you add all sorts of
things, like movies, and music, and photos, provided you use their template.
With WIX, I built a sight-singing practice website for my
students, with audio clips, a metronome, and sheet music examples.
Before you start thinking that I now currently work for WIX
and this is just some ploy to gain more customers, it isn’t and I don’t work
for them. But I did think that WIX could have multiple a cappella applications
that you probably haven’t thought of yet…
1)
A place to hold your MIDIs
You could possibly make a website where your members could
log on, practice their music with midi files they would never have to keep
track of, and follow along with sheet music that you posted online.
2)
Blog
When Docacappella.com finally comes (I’m working on it), I
will house it on WIX, because even a computer-nobody like me can make a decent
website.
3)
Links
Chances are, your members have lost the links to your Google
calendar/doodle page, documents, and other really important things you use all
the time. Why not put up the links on WIX?
And in case you think I’m being biased towards WIX, I also
recommend Squarespace. So there.
Marc Silverberg
Follow The Quest For The A cappella Major:
Twitter.com/docacappella
Acappellaquest.blogspot.com
Docacappella.tumblr.com
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