The Traveling Music Therapist – Apps I LOVE part 2

When I posted about the apps I love to use on the road, there are a few of my absolute favorite that I forgot!  Here are a few bonus apps to round out the bunch I listed yesterday!   Enjoy! 1. On Song – A wonderful app for downloading, organizing, and creating lyric and chords sheets that you can always have on hand digitally. 2.  Music Notes – I have an account with musicnotes.com where I download the majority of music for my students.  What’s nice about the app is that once you purchase the song, you also have a digital copy available that can be transposed into most any key!  You can also add any of the notes you need, highlight specific words, notes, or parts, and easily flip between pages. 3.  Wordpress – Because my website it done through wordpress, I love having the app handy.  This way I can write blog posts from Starbucks, my car, or hotel room (at conferences or on vacation) without having to lug my computer along!   I can also make several Read More

The Traveling Music Therapist – 12 Apps I LOVE

Whether I am on the road, in my office, or with clients, I almost always have a device with tons of apps I like to use for a variety of purposes.  The following apps I’m going to talk about are apps for business and travel.  Enjoy! 1.  Triplog – mileage tracker.   I loved this app when I started using it because I could press “start trip” and it would use GPS to track my miles.  However, I have poor GPS signal in several of the rural towns I go to so I have taken to manually inputing my miles.  This is a great apps for people in larger cities or areas with great signal strength 2. iCal – I have my google calendar synched with my iCal so that all my events pop up and sometimes even have alarms 3. Chase – I do not live near my bank and am always on the go so I use my Chase app ALL the time 4. Maps – I have given up trying to use my Tom Tom for the Read More

Apps I Love for Songwriting – MOGUL

I was in a lesson with a teenage student when I saw they were writing down the lyrics to a new song using an app.  Within the app she was able to look up rhyming words, synonyms, antonyms, download beats, and more.  I was really excited by the idea of this app and had to share it with you all!  I have not personally used it, but it looks really interesting! The App is called MOGUL and is for the iPhone and iPad. The following is part of a description from http://prmac.com/release-id-46722.htm Songwriting: MOGUL is a simple to use, yet fully featured songwriting app. Songwriter’s can use the built in reference tools to define words and find rhymes, synonyms and antonyms. Words can be collected and saved in an idea bank for later use. It allows users to create and store all of their lyrics in one place and for the serious songwriter it provides the ability to easily search and sort through hundreds of documents. Recording Studio: MOGUL comes equipped with three vocal tracks for recording audio and one beat Read More

There’s an App for That! – Music Therapy Ed Course

This past summer we bought an iPad for my business.  I was so thrilled!!!   At the same time I was terrified!  Technology and I have not always had the best relationship but I knew how much my clients would benefit from using an iPad within sessions.   Because I had never used an iPad or iPhone before, I had no idea where to start.  Thanks to the awesome team at Music Therapy Ed and their 2 iPad courses, I have become much more comfortable using the iPad! Bonnie Hayhurst of The Groovy Garfoose has put together two amazing courses detailing over 150 apps, best practices of how to use the iPad appropriately in sessions, tips on keeping your iPad in tip top shape, and ideas on how to choose the best apps for your clients! Within the courses Bonnie has divided the apps by category.  So whether you are looking for an app to support sensory needs, expression, motor development/planning, instruments playing, or nearly anything else, Bonnie shows you that there is certainly an App For That!  Bonnie walks you through how Read More

Apps I Love – Dust Buster

As I’ve mentioned in previous posts (DoReMemory, Piano Monkey, and Apps I love For Teaching), sometimes my students need a little extra help comprehending and practicing what we are learning in lessons.  I use the iPad at the end of lessons both as a reward for doing good work and as an reinforcement of what we worked in the lesson. Dust Buster is an app both my students and myself love.  Unlike the other apps I have posted, Dust Buster feels a little more like a game, uses full songs, can be used with or without a keyboard, and can be played by students who are not yet reading the staff. When you view the home screen you have the choice of using either an on-screen touch piano or using a real piano/keyboard. You will then be guided to a screen where you can chose from the simple “Germ Attack” game or the more advanced “Staff Master” game. In “Germ Attack” mode, the notes fall from the top of the screen on to the key that needs to be played. Read More