musictech — Personal

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

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