5 Best Digital Activities for Your Band Class

 

Whether it be because of snow days, weather closures, state testing, or any of the other things that can throw our schedules out of whack, sometimes band teachers need to teach their kids without instruments involved. Check out these 5 ideas for online activities to do with your middle school or high school band class!

1.    Chrome Music Lab

If you’ve been around here for long, you know I love Chrome Music Lab. Middle schoolers or high schoolers can get as much of a kick out of it as elementary students can! Chrome Music Lab is a set of free, browser based musical experiments created by Google. Have students recreate famous melodies or compose their own in Song Maker, have them turn their drawings into music with Kandinsky (like in my Kandinsky Drawing Challenge), or have them work on their major and minor chords with Arpeggios. There are so many possibilities with this tool – check out one of my blog posts specifically on the topic to see more!

2.    Rhythm Games

I love using the site 4four.io for rhythm games – there are lots of options out there, but this site has really simple interfaces that make it straightforward for students to use no matter what device they may be on. There are some cool song creation tools on there as well that I haven't personally had time to play with yet, but look interesting!

3.    Fingering Trainers

There are a few great fingering trainers out there for kids to quiz themselves on the fingerings on their instrument. The ones I use are:

FLUTE: http://www.flutetrainer.com/
CLARINET: http://www.clarinettrainer.com/
 I have never found a good one for saxophones – if you know of one, let me know!
BRASS: https://classic.musictheory.net/brass/ (this one is very comprehensive but does need a bit of poking around in the settings – I would definitely go over this one with your students in class first, or provide screenshots so they can make sure they set their settings correctly)
PERCUSSION/KEYBOARD: https://www.musictheory.net/exercises/keyboard

4.    Ear Training Games

Again, there are many sites out there for this – I go with the old classic https://www.musictheory.net/exercises most of the time!

5.    Research Projects

If you have a few days in a row of no instrument learning, it’s a great time to introduce a project to your students! I’ve loved doing History of an Instrument or Soundtrack of My Life in the past, or you can have your students do more in-depth research about a genre of music, an instrument, a composer, or a piece you’re playing!