Norwell High School Music Department

Greetings, and happy summer!

The 2009-2010 NHS Music Department Calendar is now accessible on the “Calendar” tab at the top of the page.  If there are any changes or additions made, we’ll be announcing them during class time and posting that information here, as well as making the changes to the calendar as we go.  We’re going to try to make sure the calendar is set in stone by the first day of school.

Please remember that students and their families are responsible for checking the calendar at the beginning of the school year and informing their ensemble director of any possible conflicts as soon as possible.  Excusals from any event on the calendar are handled on a case-by-case basis and are at the sole discretion of the director.

While everybody else was gearing up for exams, playing graduation, going to prom and attending those end-of-year graduation parties, a group of intrepid musicians was working their tails off to make sure that the Fourth Wall Players production of Urinetown was a success.  Here they are, hanging out before the Saturday show:

Thanks to the efforts of Norwell Central Administration, we’ve been able to acquire new pieces to add to the Music Technology Lab.  Among our more exciting acquisitions:

1. Sibelius 6.  Sibelius has quickly become the industry standard in computerized music notation, and we adopted it back when it was still Sibelius 4.  The newest version features some really great upgrades to score/part engraving and playback sounds, and students will get to try it out when they get back in the fall.
2. Musition 3.5.  Musition is a companion program to Sibelius, built to walk students through progressively more challenging concepts in music theory.  It features a whole host of theory topics as well as built-in practice examples and quizzes; it also tracks student achievement on teacher-specified tasks for easier and more thorough evaluation.
3. Auralia 3.5.  Auralia is another Sibelius companion program, built for ear training exercises.  All aspects of musicianship–performing, composing, appreciating–rely very heavily on being able to listen critically and accurately.  Auralia helps develop the skills necessary to do so, tracking student achievement in much the same way as Musition.

By expanding our offerings to a wider range of the programs in the Sibelius suite, we’re going to be able to train our students much more thoroughly.  All three of these programs also allow interaction via MIDI keyboard, which I’ll be writing about in our next installment, having to do with hardware!