Barton Polot
is Assistant Professor of Music Education and Music Technology at the University of Michigan

You may have had the "pleasure" of seeing me in person demonstrating these techniques. If so, you should know that this article corresponds to the features I demonstrate in the lesson entitled "Uncommon Time."

BARTON POLOT

n an earlier article I wrote about enhancing your listening lessons with synchronized slides created in Microsoft PowerPoint. I encourage you to try it. The process is easier than you think, and the results are as practical as they are rewarding. For those readers who have created one or more PowerPoint. listening lessons, this article introduces some advanced techniques to further enhance your presentations. The techniques are presented in increasing order of complexity.

Compiled Audio CD

othing disrupts the flow of a listening lesson more than an instructor fumbling to change discs. You need fumble no more if you compile all your audio examples onto one audio CD.

Today the process of creating an audio CD is inexpensive, reliable, and intuitive. If you are not already set up for creating CDs, you will need to purchase a CD-R (CD recordable) device. Adding a device to your home stereo makes it very convenient to master audio CDs, whereas adding a device to your computer provides more versatility. Either way, the product you purchase will come with the instructions you'll need for compiling tracks from multiple CDs onto a single disc. You can find the blank CD-R discs for less than a dollar.

The capacity of one CD is approximately 75 minutes — enough to get many teachers through a semester.

Edited Audio

If you're going through the trouble of creating your own audio CD, you have the opportunity to modify the original recording in ways that suit your educational purpose. You'll need some rudimentary audio software, which can cost range in price anywhere from $1,000+ to $0. Your PC sound card may have been bundled with all the tools you need. Otherwise, you can find freeware and inexpensive shareware software on the Web.

Here are some examples of what you can do with audio software to enhance your lesson.

• Fade-in / fade-out

  If you plan on teaching an excerpt of a work rather than the entire piece, you can create an audio fade at the beginning and/or the end of the recorded excerpt.

• Excerpt

  It might not be necessary for your students to hear all twelve choruses of a John Coltrane solo or the repeat of a sonata's exposition. With audio software you can seamlessly splice out passages you don't need.

• Tempo change

  It's easy to change the tempo of an audio recording. Changing the tempo without affecting the pitch, however, is more complex. Fortunately, today's computers are up to the task. Most commercial audio software has the DSP (digital signal processing) capability of adjusting pitch and tempo independently. PG Music publishes a Windows application, SlowBlast, that does only that: it slows the tempo of CDs.

Simulated “Custom Animation”

owerpoint provides a feature called Custom Animation. Custom Animation enables you to trigger one or more events on a slide at times designated by you. (Custom Animation directs PowerPoint. to play audio CDs, for example). One commonly-used animation allows a block of text to be introduced gradually — one word, or one line, or one paragraph at a time. In a listening lesson, this effect can be very helpful for building a list of events as a musical excerpt progresses (see illustration). Unfortunately, in PowerPoint. it is practically impossible to synchronize the appearance of text with your music. Instead, you can use the following procedure to simulate animated text.

1. Rather than creating a separate slide for each musical event, create one slide consisting of all the events in the excerpt. If the slide needs tweaking, do it now; alterations become very difficult once you pass this point.
2. Duplicate this slide. Then, on the duplicate copy, delete the last event.
3. Make a duplicate of this revised slide. Then, on the new duplicate copy, delete the last event.
4. Continue duplicating the revised slide and deleting the last event until only the first event remains.
5. If necessary, use PowerPoint's slide sorter (View > Slide Sorter) to sort the slides so that the single-event slide is first, with the presentation progressing to the slide containing all events.
6. Now you can use PowerPoint's Rehearse Timing procedure (Slide Show > Rehearse Timing) as described in my previous Web page. When your presentation plays back, the audience will not notice the slides changing. Rather, they will notice only the appearance of additional events, that is, events that were added from the previous slide.

In the Ellington Transblucency example, what would seem to be a block of text appearing one line at a time is actually six individual slides.

Pop-up Text

n most pieces of music there are stretches lasting several measures wherein no significant changes occur. A cadenza, for example, may last a minute or more without any discernible mileposts. A minute is a long time in a slide show, however, especially for young people. If your slides remain static for too long, you can lose your audience (i.e., students). One strategy I use is a technique borrowed from the cable network VH-1. Call it "pop-up text."

I gather factoids about the composer and/or performer of the piece, and program the text to pop up strategically during otherwise static passages.

For example, the guitar solo in the Beatles song, "All You Need is Love," consumes one verse lasting approximately 20 seconds. In my slide show, a slide appears on the downbeat of the verse identifying the most important aspect of the passage. which in this particular lesson is the shifting 4/4 and 3/4 meters. But shortly thereafter, a factoid pops up, enclosed in a comic balloon, informing the reader that the solo is performed by George Harrison. Moments later, another factoid pops up stating that Harrison was introduced to complex metric structures while studying the music of India. Twenty seconds have come and gone and it is time for a new slide announcing the chorus.

The comic balloon is one of several callout shapes that can be created using PowerPoint's AutoShapes tool. You can type the factoid text within the balloon, and you can reshape and reposition the balloon as you desire. Use the Custom Animation window (Slide Show > Custom Animation...) to determine the order and timing with which the callouts are to appear. As always, gauge the reading level of your audience, and allow ample time for the text to be read. Most important, consider pop-ups an enhancement to the focus of your lesson; they shouldn't clutter your presentation or distract your learners.

Musical Notation

For musically literate listeners, you can greatly enhance the listening experience by providing a printed score. There are several ways to bring musical notation into PowerPoint. Since PowerPoint. cannot directly import files created in notation software (e.g., Finale), all of the methods involve converting music notation into graphics.

• Export from Notation Software.

  In the slide depicted here, the score was created in notation software and exported as a graphic. In recent versions of Finale, for example, you would start by formatting the page (when setting your dimensions and margins, remember that your notation will be viewed on a slide not printed on paper). Then select the Graphics Tool, and choose Export Graphics from the Graphics menu. Finale asks you to choose from among several graphics file formats, including EPS, TIFF, and PICT. PowerPoint. can import files in all three formats, so you might experiment to see which looks best.

  Other notation software will employ similar-but-different procedures. Check your manual.

  Once your graphic is saved, PowerPoint. can import it (Import > Picture > From File). You may need to crop and/or resize the image so that it can fit properly on the slide.

• Create a Screen Shot

  Macs and PCs can take a snapshot of the content of your computer's screen and then save it as a graphic file. On the Macintosh, type Control-3. In Windows, type the Print Screen button. Working with your favorite notation software, you can configure the contents of the editing window as you wish, creating your own margins, resizing the score, etc. Since a snapshot creates a file representing whatever is on your monitor at that moment, make sure your mouse pointer isn't obscuring your music notation. And plan on cropping and/or further resizing the image.

• Scan a Manuscript

  You can use an optical scanner to capture the image of printed manuscript. Simply place your printed score in a flatbed scanner and scan the image as a graphic file. Since your image is designed to be presented on screen rather than printed, you can set your scanning software for relatively low resolution. Try scanning at 72 dots per inch. You might better results with images that are scanned as gray scale rather than color, and that are adjusted for high contrast.

Graphics

If the graphical image of music notation can enhance your presentation, imagine how valuable photos and illustrations can be. I can recommend three ways to bring graphic images into PowerPoint. The first two methods are easy, and the third one is easier still!

• PowerPoint's graphic tools enable you to draw directly onto a slide. Bring up the Drawing toolbar (View > Toolbar > Drawing). You can draw arrows and lines, 3D text, rotated texts and objects, and much more.
• Microsoft Office ships with a wide collection of clip art. In PowerPoint., you select images from the Microsoft Clip Gallery (Insert > Picture > Clip Art). I suspect you will be disappointed with the meager collection of clip art related to music. However, PowerPoint. enables you to supplement your gallery with additional images. Microsoft maintains an extensive collection of clip art libraries that you can download from the Web, including 1,000 music images.
• Any image on the World Wide Web can be incorporated into a PowerPoint. document. It is unbelievably easy. When you find an image you like on a Web document, copy it to the clipboard by right-clicking it (Windows) or control-clicking it (Mac). You can then paste it onto your PowerPoint. slide (Edit > Paste). Mac users have it even easier. Simply drag the image from your browser's window and drop it into your PowerPoint. window. Done.

Web images and scanned graphics are usually protected by U.S. Copyright laws. However, most interpretations of the"fair use" doctrine enfranchise educators to use copies of text, graphics and sound in their classroom teaching. (A full discussion of fair use is beyond the scope of this article. The reader is referred to excellent Web sites devoted to the subject.)

MIDI Files

It surprises most people to learn that they can play MIDI files within a PowerPoint. presentation. On the Macintosh, MIDI is handled at the System level by Quicktime; MIDI files are treated as movies. In Windows, MIDI is handled by Media Player. Windows users can optionally install Quicktime, a preference of many Powerpoint users.

• Start by creating a sequence using your favorite MIDI software. Some limitations: your sequence should be limited to 16 MIDI channels, channel 10 must be designated percussion (or otherwise remain unused), and your timbres must be restricted to the 128 GM sounds.
• PowerPoint. will not recognize your MIDI software's native file format; export your sequence instead as a Standard MIDI File (SMF). In some software you would export it via the File menu (File > Export); in other software," SMF" is an option in the Save dialog box.
• The next step differs depending on your use of Quicktime or Media Player.
• If Quicktime is installed on your Mac or PC, you insert your MIDI file into Powerpoint as you would a movie (Insert > Movies and Sounds > Movie from File). When prompted, save the selected MIDI file as a (pictureless) movie. Thereafter, your presentation will treat your MIDI sequence as a movie, with full implementation of playback controls, volume levels, etc. You can even designate whether you want Quicktime's controls to appear on screen during your presentation (great for spontaneously repeating passages while you teach).
• The alternative in Windows is to launch Media Player and open your MIDI file. Choose Copy from Media Player's Edit menu, then switch to Powerpoint and Paste.
• By default your computer is configured to play MIDI files through the sound card (Windows) or via Quicktime Musical Instruments (Mac). With extra effort you can configure your PC or Mac to direct its output to an external MIDI device such as a synthesizer or sound module — and gain improved fidelity.

Usually an audio CD sounds far superior to sound card synthesis. So why use MIDI instead?

MIDI allows you to manipulate the content of the music for educational means. Once your piece is sequenced, it is quite easy to play back the sequence at a different tempo — or in a different key. Unlike with audio, you can re-orchestrate or rebalance the music to emphasize certain instruments or passages. And it is easy to edit passages to omit repeats or skip verses. In short, MIDI enables you to make the music sound the way you want your students to hear it.

Precision Animation

PowerPoint's slide transitions are accurate to the second. What does one do, however, when one-second precision is insufficient.

This is a dilemma. In an ongoing quiest, I have not found a suitable answer.

The answer is not in PowerPoint. Older versions of the software provided Custom Animation at 0.1-second accuracy, but Microsoft has rounded this to the second in its current Mac and PC versions.

The answer is not in Animated GIFs. The animated GIF is an image format commonly used on Web sites. Animation frame rates can be set to 0.1 seconds — or faster. You could create a slide presentation consisting of animated GIF frames (most modern graphic software provides the tools). Alas, PowerPoint displays only the first frame of an imported animated GIF.

The answer I've resorted to is movies. To create slide presentations that change with great precision, I have used movie-editing software (in my case, Adobe Premiere); I then import the movie into PowerPoint. I can't endorse this method, however. It is intensely time-consuming, and utilizes complex, expensive software for what should be a straightforward task.