Personal — Hugh Sung

Cunningham Piano Online Ensemble: The Final Result

What began as an experimental project to help answer a choral teacher’s questions about working remotely has turned into one of the most beautiful videos I have ever had the privilege to produce. Words cannot express how grateful I am to all 111 musicians from 9 countries and 18 states who shared their musical gifts to collaborate in this performance of Mozart’s Ave Verum Corpus - translated as, “Hail To One True Body” - with music, we are truly united as one voice around the world, no matter the separation surrounding us in this challenging environment!

Hugh SungMarch 30, 2020ensemble, virtualensemble, musictech, virtualmusicianship Comments

How To Put Together An Online Musical Ensemble, Part 1

In the midst of our current pandemic and state mandate to close all non-essential businesses and maintain “social distancing” practices, I’ve been focused on helping piano teachers make the transition to become online teachers and learn how to teach one-on-one live lessons online through video conferencing apps, like Zoom. I, myself, have had several years of experience. I started out in 2009, creating a YouTube series called Clair de lune From Scratch. I am still presently to this day, teaching Online Popular Piano at ArtistWorks. Last night, I got an interesting question from someone who was asking for my help, to help a choral teacher in Canada. Is there a way that she could still meaningfully work with her students, even though she’s restricted to staying at home, and restricted to using online collaboration tools like Zoom? Is there a way that a choral teacher can still work with her chorus, when they can’t be in the same room together at the same time?

Hugh SungMarch 22, 2020musiceducation, musictech, ensemble, onlinelessonsComment

Online Virtual Chorus and Orchestra Project

In the midst of this Covid-19 pandemic, we’re seeing an unprecedented closure of schools and arts institutions worldwide. I’ve been focusing on helping piano teachers transition to teaching one-on-one live lessons online through video conferencing platforms like Zoom. But the other night, a friend of mine messaged me on Facebook asking if there was any way I could help his sister-in-law, a choral teacher in Canada, continue to teach her choir of 50+ students online while everyone is quarantined. The problem with playing music together online is that there will always be a slight delay between the transmission signals, so that staying in sync is virtually impossible. So, what is an ensemble choral or orchestra/band teacher to do in these challenging times when everyone is required to maintain “social distancing”?

Hugh SungMarch 22, 2020musiceducation, musicproduction, musictech, tech Comment

2020 Mid-Atlantic Flute Convention

I’m here in Washington D.C. to perform with Jasmine Choi at the 2020 Mid-Atlantic Flute Convention, presented by The Flute Society of Washington. The last time I attended a flute convention was several years ago at one of the national conventions, when I was exhibiting for AirTurn. As big as the national convention was, I’m really impressed with how big this one is as well! Of course, as a former exhibitor, I just had to check out the exhibit hall and take the temperature of the level of commerce, which is critical to helping sustain the arts.

Hugh SungFebruary 15, 2020flutes, convention, composerComment

Newzik Updates

I wanted to update everybody on a response that I got from the co-founder of Newzik, the sheet music reader app for iOS that I’ve been very impressed with recently. When I posted my five recommendations for improving the app, Aurelia, the co-founder, got back to me and said that at least two of the things that I had suggested were already part of Newzik. How cool is that? And I'm sure she's going to have her team look at some of my other suggestions. But I wanted to update everybody because I think these things that they already have (that I didn't know were there) are real game changers. I'm very impressed at how they implemented them.

Hugh SungFebruary 14, 2020newzik, digitalsheetmusic, musictech, appsComment

5 Suggestions for Newzik

I've been having an opportunity to do more of a deep dive into Newzik, the sheet music reading app that I've done a few videos on, and now that I'm using it as a daily app just to see what it's like, I'm really finding myself enjoying this. Especially as I've said before, my favorite thing is being able to mark the music and turn pages hands-free with my AirTurn without interruption. That is a game changer for me. That one feature makes this app so worthwhile, just in terms of my productivity and the speed at which I can write notes in rehearsal. But I do have a couple of things that I'm noticing that I wish the developers could improve on, and so I thought it'd be fun to make this quick video of five things that I would like to see as improvements for Newzik.

Hugh SungFebruary 12, 2020apps, newzik, digitalsheetmusic, musictechComment

How to get Amazon Echo to play downloaded songs

Now of course in this day and age we don't have CD players, so it’s a little strange to still have a music service with that name. To be honest, these days I am absolutely in love with my Amazon Echo and I have several Echo units all around my home. My main one is an Echo Show, which is on my kitchen counter, and I use that to play music whenever I want to hear something, usually from a streaming service like Amazon Music.

So I thought, wait a minute, there must be a way to get these files that I've just purchased and downloaded onto my MacBook computer and ask my Amazon Echo to play them for me. I did a little bit of research, and I found a really interesting service called My Pod, which you can find at mypodapp.com. You can link your Amazon account with this free service, upload your music to a Google Drive folder, share that folder link, and then you simply ask your Echo device to play that song. So I'm going to walk you through the steps to set My Pod up with your songs and your Amazon Echo device.

Hugh SungFebruary 9, 2020apps, musictech, recordingsComment

How To Run 2 iPad Apps At Once (And Why You'd Want To)

Inspired by my interview with Newzik co-founder Aurélia Azoulay-Guetta, I’ve been trying to put this sheet music reading app through its paces. As I said in the interview, the ability for me to be able to mark up the music with my Apple Pen while turning pages hands-free with my AirTurn is an absolute game-changer, making my rehearsals so much more efficient! But as I was rehearsing with my Philadelphia Orchestra friends for a Sound All Around concert for little kids, I found myself resorting to paper copies of the script to keep track of all the musical cues next to my iPad Pro displaying the sheet music. That’s when an “aha” moment struck me: what if I could ask the Newzik developers to come up with a way to show two different PDF files on a single iPad screen? One PDF could be the written script, the other PDF would be the sheet music. What a great feature that would be for musicians working off of a detailed theatrical cue sheet!

Then during the bus ride home from the rehearsal, I realized that i was a total idiot!! The latest iPad OS already provides a fantastic new feature for opening two different apps at the same time!! Problem solved - thank you, Apple!!

Hugh SungFebruary 7, 2020apps, digitalsheetmusic, orchestras, concert, newzikComment

My 20 Pound Journey, Part 1

I wanted to do a video on my weight loss. I actually had a pretty dramatic weight loss over the summer and I'll be honest, when it’s 28 degrees outside, I don't really feel like going out and running. Even though it's been a pretty successful weight loss journey up to this point, I'll be honest - I'm struggling. There are days like today where it's really cold outside. I don't feel like getting out of bed. I don't feel like running. I don't feel like exercising, and so I'm going to turn to making these videos because the videos are actually what gave the initial motivation to lose 20 pounds (actually at this point I think it's a little bit more than 20 pounds, but anyway…) I'm hoping that by documenting what I've accomplished so far that all my good friends on the internet will hold me accountable in terms of maintaining the progress that I've been able to accomplish at this point.

Hugh SungJanuary 25, 2020health, exerciseComment

R.I.P.

Well, it’s about time!

My last website design lasted for nearly 6 years. Back in 2014, responsive websites were the hot issue - with the rise of mobile screens and tablets predicted to overshadow desktop and laptop computer browsers, Google was putting a heavy emphasis on websites that could adapt their designs to accommodate smaller screens legibly. To that end, and with a desire to try to maintain a unique “artsy” design, I created a landing page based off of a brand new publicity photo shot by the brand new online school I had just joined, ArtistWorks. I sliced the image into blocks so that all of the text could be shuffled accordingly on smaller screens as clickable links. At the time, I thought it looked pretty cool, and it highlighted the main areas of my life as a pianist, author of a book on digital sheet music, passion for technology, my online popular piano school at ArtistWorks, and my podcast show, A Musical Life. Needless to say, it was a pretty big improvement from my previous website design, which had been around for probably close to 10 years:

Hugh SungJanuary 17, 2020website, publicity, marketing, business Comments