https://hookpad.hooktheory.com

This is a great digital tool to introduce the idea of music composition to students. I would suggest that teachers use this for younger students (years 1-6).

Often students struggle to express music in a way that resonates with them, and I have found that students tend to dislike composing because what they write isn't perfect. They compare themselves to the great compositions they hear in every day life, and that they heard since they were young and go, "why doesn't my composition sound like that?"

Hookpad is a tool that takes a lot of the stress away from composing. Its design is very intuitive and easy to use by students of all ages and musical abilities. There isn't any 'typical' music notation involved with Hookpad, and instead students can compose via numbers or piano keyboard (in the software). The great part of Hookpad is that it teaches students how to compose. Hookpad shows what notes are usually used in accordance with the selected chords. Hookpad also has pre-programmed chord sequences that students can use. Whilst this might seem like it limits the student's creativity, what it really does is allows students to focus on writing simple, high quality compositions.

https://www.apple.com/au/mac/garageband/

Many people are already familiar with GarageBand. In fact, it comes pre-installed on all Apple devices. However, music teachers often overlook using this tool to help students with composition. It should be noted that GarageBand is only available for Apple devices.

From my personal experience, having worked in numerous schools as an instrumental teacher, music teachers often use GarageBand only with younger students (years 6-9). When students reach senior music, teachers prefer composition software such as Sibelius or MuseScore. Whilst these programs are wonderful tools, there are often students within these senior classes who struggle reading 'traditional' music notation, and who will inevitably struggle, even potentially fail, when using these aforementioned composition programs. There are no theory or aural requirements in the QCAA senior music syllabus (QCAA, 2025), and as such, a program like GarageBand is a wonderful composition tool for these students.

Example of how to use GarageBand to transform student learning and understanding:

The unit my students will be completing this term is ‘Music for the Screen’. This is a great unit that looks at how a composer’s manipulation of the elements of music and compositional devices depicts what is happening on the screen. One of the best ways of learning about this, is through composing music for a specific scene. In this way, students can apply their knowledge and understanding practically.

The summative assessment for this project is a collaborative composition designed to accompany a specific scene. This links in with the notion of using Project-Based Learning to improve student learning outcomes (Vasconcelos et al., 2023). By using technology including GarageBand, students are able to transform their learning, deepening their understanding of how a composer can manipulate the elements of music and compositional devices to evoke a specific emotion, mood, or character that is being reflected on the screen. The original task of analysis is modified/redefined as a collaborative composition, where learning becomes student centred allowing for greater impact on student learning, demonstrating that technology usage is aligning with the upper levels of SAMR (Blundell et al., 2022). This also allows for greater differentiation, as students are able to learn at their own pace, applying their own knowledge and skill level in an appropriate manner (Walker, 2015). The teacher is also able to easily modify the assessment requirements, such as length of composition, to support all learners.

The main reason GarageBand is the suggested composition software that students use for this task is because of its intuitive design and broad capabilities. Users are able to import the video file they are composing for into GarageBand. This will enable the students to watch the video whilst they are composing. Attached below is a YouTube video explaining the process (Spitfire Audio Clips, 2021). It is important to note that students will still have to use a program such as iMovie to combine the composition and video into one file.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PN-2oQTORo

Another key feature of GarageBand that makes it perfect for this unit is its music library. GarageBand has an extensive library of rhythms, instruments, and sounds that users can utilise when composing. These sounds are all royalty free, meaning students are allowed to use them in their compositions. For the purpose of this unit, students are encouraged to minimise their use of samples, to ensure the composition is as original as possible, but they will still be allowed to use the extensive library of sounds and effects for their composition.

Whilst GarageBand does not allow multi authoring (2 or more people composing at the same time), GarageBand does have great uploading and exporting capabilities. This means that whilst students wouldn’t be able to compose together, each student would be able to compose different sections and then combine them in one GarageBand file. Alternatively, students could focus on composing just the melody, or harmony, or the rhythm (percussion) and then add each of these components together thereby creating one composition. Attached below is a YouTube video exploring how you can combine different songs/projects in GarageBand (Johns, 2019).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPAPl58x8to

Students are also able to compose using the Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI) within GarageBand. This allows students to compose through their performance skills by either plugging in a microphone and singing or connecting a guitar or piano keyboard to GarageBand. This will aid some students in this unit who struggle with composition, as they will be able to use their performance skills to help them in their composition. This feature also greatly helps music students who struggle reading traditional music notation. For example, many guitar students only ever learn to read TAB. As such, using software such as MuseScore or Sibelius makes composing extremely difficult, as you compose using traditional music notation.

It should be noted that this is one of the digital tools used in my AT1 for Digital Learning and Teaching. Some of the context and content from this insight comes from my AT1.

References:

ACARA. (2025). Music – Years 9 and 10| V9 Australian Curriculum. https://v9.australiancurriculum.edu.au/f-10-curriculum/learning-areas/music/year-7_year-9_year-8_year-10?view=quick&detailed-content-descriptions=0&hide-ccp=0&hide-gc=0&side-by-side=1&strands-start-index=0

Blundell, C. N., Mukherjee, M., & Nykvist, S. (2022). A scoping review of the application of the SAMR model in Research. Computers and Education Open, 3, 100093.   https://doi.org/10.1016/j.caeo.2022.100093

Cleyn, C. (2020, May 6). Garageband Tutorial - Learn Under 10 Minutes [Video]. YouTube.      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-y1cEwaQK0s

Johns, P. (2019, May 2). How to combine multiple songs in one project [Video]. YouTube.          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPAPl58x8to

Spitfire Audio Clips. (2021, July 17). How to Import and Export a Video File into Garageband [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PN-2oQTORo

Walker, T. D. (2015). Differentiating Learner Outcomes: A Student-centered Approach with Value-added Benefits. The Journal of the World Universities Forum, 8(4), 9–18.         https://doi.org/10.18848/1835-2030/CGP/v08i04/56874

Vasconcelos, M. J., Caspurro, H., & Costa, N. (2023). Problem-based learning: Composing in the classroom as a Music Learning Challenge. Revista Electrónica de LEEME, 52, 111. https://doi.org/10.7203/leeme.52.26865 

https://forscore.co

One of the many challenges as students get older and more advanced with their music playing is being able to have, on hand, all available music they will need. One tool to alleviate this is forScore. forScore allows users to upload PDFs of sheet music to the forScore app to store in a digital library.

There are many features on foreScore that make the app extremely easy to use and efficient. For example, there is a metronome feature that allows users to have the metronome playing whilst looking at their music. Other features such as half page turns allows people to turn their pages with ease. Users are also able to mark/write on the PDFs. forScore is unfortunately only compatible with iPads.

https://www.tonalenergy.com

Tonal Energy is a music tuner app that helps users to discern whether they are playing in tune or not, and if they aren't, if they are too sharp or flat. This is a vital music performance skill that all musicians must master. Personally, having tried many tuning apps as a student and now a teacher, Tonal Energy is my favourite.

There are many different functions of the Tonal Energy tuner, however my favourite two are the 'Sound' and 'Analysis' functions. Sound allows users to play different notes on the tuner to help with tuning. You are even able to play chords, and have these sustained whilst tuning. Analysis is a mathematical graph showing the precise tuning of each note and whether the note was too high (sharp) or too low (flat). Analysis also allows you to record yourself so you can listen back and see tuning for each note. These features make Tonal Energy an amazing music performance digital tool, that is sure to help all musicians improve their performance abilities.

One such Facebook group I recommend all Queensland based Music teachers join is the ‘Queensland Music Syllabus Teachers Group’. This is a group of senior music teachers in Queensland who are more than happy to share their wealth of knowledge.

Another group worth joining is the Queensland Music Teachers' Association (QMTA). One of the main benefits of joining this organisation is the professional development and networking they offer. There are a range of online courses, workshops, and even demonstration lessons available to members.

• The teacher writes a rhythm on the whiteboard and then starts clapping random rhythms for the students to clap back.

• If the teacher claps the rhythm written on the whiteboard (the poison rhythm) the students are not supposed to clap this back.

• If the students do clap the poison rhythm then the teacher gets a point.

• If the whole class doesn't clap the rhythm then the students get a point.

• It is super fun, and the difficulty of the rhythms can be increased depending on the age of the students.

Blessinger, P., & Carfora, J. M. (2015). Inquiry-based learning for multidisciplinary programs : a conceptual and practical resource for educators (1st ed.). Emerald.

This is a great book that can be borrowed from the CQU library exploring Inquiry Based Learning!

I have been playing music since I was four years old, as has my three brothers and twin sister. In fact one of my brothers is in the Sydney Symphony Orchestra now (try to figure out which one he is!!). My orchestra director at school had such a profound impact on my life, that when the question came up 'What are you going to do after school?' the only real answer for me was be a musician.

Since then I have studied classical French Horn and have been privileged enough to play with amazing groups such as the Australian Youth Orchestra, Queensland Symphony Orchestra, and Melbourne Symphony Orchestra!

Whilst I love all styles of music, for me nothing will ever beat classical music from the Romantic era. My favourite composers are Mahler, Wagner, Strauss and Dvořák. Below I will post some especially enchanting classical music that I adore.