New toys- silent brass, pocketpod, digital drums

Been a while since I posted, but I’m still alive- seems like I have been preparing for one festival, concert, performance, etc. after another! Non-stop as I’m sure the band directors in the crowd can attest. My wife has also been sick, and we are dealing with tests, etc. but enough about me…

I recently got a grant for $5,600 to upgrade our keyboard lab- (subject of a future post) and integrate my “alternative” class with silent brass, line 6 pocket pods, Alesis digital drums, and a cool midi controller that doubles as an electronic drum as well. I have been working on this for almost 3 months, and Thursday the silent brass came in- I got 2 trumpet sets, a french horn set, baritone, trombone, and tuba along with a mixer board to tie them all together. When I get it all up and running, I’ll be able to have the class interact without an overwhelming amount of sound in the room. There is a bit too much to tell here in this short post , so I will post photos/video of the whole system when it is installed.

I also plan to post about the results of the “alternative music” gig- what an experience! Good and bad, we sure learned a lot about what it takes to put a performance together!

This entry was posted on February 14, 2008 at 11:52 pm and is filed under Music Education. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

4 Responses to “New toys- silent brass, pocketpod, digital drums”

Kyle Gardner Says:
February 15, 2008 at 1:40 am
I’m excited to see some pics. Where did you get the grant?
J. Pisano Says:
February 15, 2008 at 10:42 am
Owen,

Nice to SEE you again. I’ve been using silent brass, personally for almost 10 years (is that when it came out?). I love it. You can literally have all of your brass students rehearse different things sitting next to each other! It’s great.

All the best,

~J. Pisano -
obradley48 Says:
February 17, 2008 at 10:32 am
Kyle-

I got the grant from the NeXt Generation teaching initiative in my county. Basically, I had an audience with the asst. superintendent in charge of the project and made my pitch. He loved the idea and made the funds available.
obradley48 Says:
February 17, 2008 at 10:36 am
Joe-

“You can literally have all of your brass students rehearse different things sitting next to each other! It’s great.”- J. Pisano

That’s what I plan to do. I simply don’t have enough practice rooms to allow all my students to get the time they want on their instruments- and practicing all together in the same bandroom is impossible. The SX-6 module

(http://www.yamaha.com/yamahavgn/CDA/ContentDetail/ModelSeriesDetail/0,,CNTID%25253D30740%252526CTID%25253D551151,00.html)

is going to help them “jam” together without disturbing the other students!