Music Teacher's Helper Blog » Brittany Frompovich

Square vs Paypal…Square gets a solid win

Brittany Frompovich — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 16:15:29 +0000

R&B vocalist Kira Small and her husband, bassist Bryan Beller, was in our area this summer to perform at a house concert that I was hosting. After the concert, Kira was selling CDs at the merch table. She was taking credit card purchases with this tiny white box that plugs into to her iPhone.

She told me about Square, and I decided I would test it out and see how it worked for my teaching studio. At this point all my credit card transactions were happening through PayPal, so it seemed wise to develop some alternatives.

Square has been fantastic so far, a huge step up from Paypal in many respects. The transaction fees are lower (we will look at data shortly), I have the ability to take payments anywhere quickly, I can provide receipts on the spot, and all the money is automatically deposited overnight in my bank account.

So here’s a great example of Square in action. I played a concert Sunday. Afterwards, I went to dinner with one of my adult guitar students. During dinner, she realized she hadn’t made a payment towards her tuition this month. She asked to use Square to make a payment. She handed me her credit card, I plugged the card reader into my phone and swiped her card. She signed for the transaction on the touch screen of my Droid, and then I emailed her a receipt. (You can also text a receipt.)

So she made a $94 payment on Sunday towards her tuition. I’m going to use that as a baseline to generate data. Normally, I would I pay $3.03 to Paypal in transaction fees on that. Through Square, only $2.59 was deducted. .44 cents difference. If we take that number as a sample across 65 students per month, that’s $28.60 in my favor. Over a year, that’s $343.20 more.

With Paypal, I have to wait 3 to 4 days for the money to transfer to my bank account or use my Paypal credit/debit card. Now, all of the money processed by Square is deposited automatically overnight into my bank account. Instant. Cheaper. Faster.

I’m going to keep accepting Paypal payments, but I am definitely now a fan of Square. I plan on encouraging my students and their families to switch to paying via Square in 2012.

Get ready for NAMM…

Brittany Frompovich — Sun, 27 Nov 2011 03:00:23 +0000

Right now, teachers are gearing up for end of semester recitals, benefit concerts, holiday school concerts, and holiday gigs. And then there’s the additional blur of holiday shopping trips and social commitments. But it’s definitely time to make plans for the January 2012 NAMM show if you haven’t already done so. NAMM is taking place from January 19th to January 22nd, 2012 in Anaheim, California. Music Education Days is Jan. 21st to 22nd. About 1,400 exhibitors are participating and over 90,000 people will attend.

In one of my earlier blogs, “NAMM and the Music Educator“, I discussed what the NAMM show is and why music educators might want to consider attending. There are opportunities for networking, free workshops and events, and companies are displaying music related products. There are plenty of opportunities to do hands on demoing of products. And frequently you see products that aren’t sold in stores in your area.

I run into many music educators who don’t know that they are welcome to attend NAMM and that it’s quite easy to get a badge. Usually I send them a few links to check out and the registration information, and they become interested in attending.

NAMM is not open to the public, but you can go online and register for the event in advance. If you register before January 5th, there is a $25 registration fee. After January 5th, it increases to $50.

Check out my earlier article to find out more reasons why music educators may benefit from attending NAMM.

Reconsidering the Role of “Intelligence” in the 10,000 Hours Needed for Mastery

Brittany Frompovich — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 16:25:23 +0000

The pursuit of mastery has been a popular topic in recent years, with plenty of research and information being presented in books like Outliers. The basic assertion of the mastery research is that to become a master, one needs to do 10,000 hours of practice. Studies have been done on chess masters, musicians, and even youths who grow into soccer pros. Part of the research on the process of mastery has been the assertion that high intelligence is of little or no help to the process after a point.

Now, there is research to counter that assertion. New research indicates that intelligence does indeed play a role. An article titled, “Sorry, Strivers: Talent Matters” appeared in the New York times about this research. To quote the article:

In our own recent research, we have discovered that “working memory capacity,” a core component of intellectual ability, predicts success in a wide variety of complex activities. In one study, we assessed the practice habits of pianists and then gauged their working memory capacity, which is measured by having a person try to remember information (like a list of random digits) while performing another task. We then had the pianists sight read pieces of music without preparation.

Not surprisingly, there was a strong positive correlation between practice habits and sight-reading performance. In fact, the total amount of practice the pianists had accumulated in their piano careers accounted for nearly half of the performance differences across participants. But working memory capacity made a statistically significant contribution as well (about 7 percent, a medium-size effect). In other words, if you took two pianists with the same amount of practice, but different levels of working memory capacity, it’s likely that the one higher in working memory capacity would have performed considerably better on the sight-reading task.

Read the entire article here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/20/opinion/sunday/sorry-strivers-talent-matters.html?_r=1

Endorsements and the Music Teacher

Brittany Frompovich — Sat, 28 May 2011 17:35:56 +0000

Many of us associate famous musicians with their instrument and the instrument’s builder. That powerful imagery has become a marketing tool that has beneficially served both the artist and the instrument builder.

But as a teacher, we have the power to influence a great number of people as well.

For years, I played Ibanez Soundgear basses, Ovation acoustic electric guitars, and Les Paul style guitars. After a year or two, my beginner students would start moving on from their starter instruments. There was an unusually high percentage of Ibanez Soundgear basses and Ovation acoustic electrics in the mix of new purchases.

Later on, I acquired a Gibson SG and switched to playing Spector and LightWave basses. Not surprisingly, the next batch of students tended to gravitate to SG style guitars (made by a wide variety of builders…Samick, Epiphone, and even Ibanez) and a few Spector basses entered the mix.

My personal tastes then shifted again. A Washburn N2 has now been competing with the SG for the “favored guitar” position for a few years now. A handful of my students now say they are saving for their own N2 guitars.

One store I work at started selling Digitech multieffects units. These were starter multieffects units priced around $120 or so. The store manager put one unit in my studio for me to use. I’m just guessing, but there must be 40 or 50 kids who have now purchased that same multieffects unit at the same store, just because I was able to demo concepts with it during lessons.

Teachers are people of interest to manufacturers. We influence people directly. And that makes us eligible for product endorsements with companies. We are role models, and the fact we have preferences in choosing an instrument consititues an endorsement, even if we do not have some kind of arrangement with the company that makes the product. Our students pay attention to our choices, and will gravitate towards playing what we play.

But why would a teacher want or need an endorsement? And why would you want to go through the trouble of getting endorsements? First off, people will see you as a more credible musician. A few years ago, I was trying my hand at chord melody bass, and I was uploading YouTube videos of my work. I had a decent amount of hits. I had also purchased a LightWave fretless bass that needed some repairs. I had to make some calls to the company to get the repairs started. Fortunately, my YouTube videos were online and they were a great way to view my work, even though the videos featured my Ibanez Soundgear bass. To the company, I became a person of interest…a working musician and educator who was exploring a newer genre of bass playing. One thing led to another, and through a series of phone calls, emails, and a meeting, I ended up getting an endorsement with LightWave.

When I got my endorsement with LightWave, I was still the same player I was before I had gotten the endorsement. However, I did notice many folks now perceived me in a different way, which was interesting to observe. My students were proudly “heralding” the endorsement…even telling the local salespeople at our Guitar Center. I now had players from all over the world emailing me with some frequency. They would ask me questions about the bass and my opinion on it as a working bassist. I was still the same player. I just now had an endorsement.

The reality is, most people do judge us by our associations. This is the measure that most will judge our talent by and determine it’s worth. It’s not fair, but unfortunately it is true. So knowing this, you can choose to make these associations work for you. Endorsements can give your name a greater level of respect and weight.

Endorsements can also save you money, especially on products that you frequently use (in my case this would include strings, picks, tuners, cables, and even cases). And remember that if a product is purchased frequently (like strings) the company will probably have more profit dollars to put into their endorsement programs. Endorsements will usually have a sliding scale of how much they will discount their product. Just remember that the less you pay, the more you should expect to be a “team player” for the company that supplies you with their product. In the case of LightWave, I posted several videos of myself playing the bass, and I answered a lot of emails from people on my own time. I even recorded clips of songs that I played on that bass and sent them out via email to folks.

Another artist I know commented that he loved his basses so much, he paid out of pocket to have his company’s banner shipped to the event he was playing at, just so it could be displayed. That’s a team player!

Which brings me to my next point; when pursuing an endorsement, make sure you go after endorsements for products you love. It is obvious the artist I mentioned above LOVES his instrument and the company that supports him if he is willing to pay to have his personal banner shipped to an event. If you love the product, your enthusiasm is going to show, which benefits everyone involved.

In my next blog: how to go about getting an endorsement.

In the News: “Beat Deafness” and Learning from your Mistakes

Brittany Frompovich — Sat, 12 Mar 2011 19:39:38 +0000

I found two news articles online this week that I thought should be shared with the MTH community.

The first one deals with the first confirmed, documented case of “beat deafness”, a condition in which a person can’t feel the beat or move in time to it.

Mathieu flails in a time zone of his own when bouncing up and down to a melody, unlike people who don’t dance particularly well but generally move in sync with a musical beat, according to a team led by psychologists Jessica Phillips-Silver and Isabelle Peretz, both of the University of Montreal. What’s more, Mathieu usually fails to recognize when someone else dances out of sync to a tune, the researchers report in a paper that will appear in Neuropsychologia.

What I find interesting is Mathieu is reported to actually have a good sense of pitch. It will be interesting to see what continued research reveals about those who are “beat deaf.” Read more about Mathieu here and see video of his attempts to keep musical time.

I was shown another study this week by a colleague that has results useful to those of us teaching young musicians. This study showed that the 8 year old brain don’t respond to negative feedback like the 12 year brain does. Essentially, eight-year-olds don’t have the ability to learn from their mistakes.

Eight-year-old children have a radically different learning strategy from twelve-year-olds and adults. Eight-year-olds learn primarily from positive feedback (‘Well done!’), whereas negative feedback (‘Got it wrong this time’) scarcely causes any alarm bells to ring. Twelve-year-olds are better able to process negative feedback, and use it to learn from their mistakes. Adults do the same, but more efficiently.
The switch in learning strategy has been demonstrated in behavioural research, which shows that eight-year-olds respond disproportionately inaccurately to negative feedback. But the switch can also be seen in the brain, as developmental psychologist Dr Eveline Crone and her colleagues from the Leiden Brain and Cognition Lab discovered using fMRI research. The difference can be observed particularly in the areas of the brain responsible for cognitive control. These areas are located in the cerebral cortex.

Helping students develop a Practicing Mindset – part 2

Brittany Frompovich — Mon, 21 Feb 2011 17:24:12 +0000

In part one of this blog series, I discussed how I helped young Turner understand what mindset he should attain in order to practice well. I wouldn’t have been able to explain the idea of focusing on process versus product quite so well without the help of a book called The Practicing Mind. I was personally exploring the topic of mindfulness last summer and a friend advised me to check out this book. The Practicing Mind is written by a musician, for musicians, originally with the intent to discuss how to practice. The author, Thomas Sterner, instead found himself broadening the book’s purpose to general mindfulness. He found mindfulness to be the connecting factor between anything in life that one practices, whether it is a golf swing or a Beethoven Concerto.

Below is an excerpt from the book, to help further explain the idea of “process versus product” oriented thinking:

“There is an endless nature to life. There is always more to be experienced. Deep down we know this and are glad for it. The problem is that everyday life steals this from us. It pulls us away from this perspective with a constant bombardment of advertisements all promising to fulfill us, but none of it ever works: “Get this, do that and life will be perfect.” We need to let go of this futile idea that happiness is out there somewhere, and embrace the infinite growth available to us as a treasure, not something that we are impatient to overcome.

People involved in the arts understand this endless nature through direct experience. It is part of all the arts. That is why I believe that a personal pursuit in some form of art is so important to a person’s sense of well-being. It teaches you this true nature of life right up front if you pay attention. When I was in my late teens, there were two incidents that created so much more patience within me as a result of a change in my perception.

The first happened shortly after I had started studying jazz improvisation with perhaps the best jazz pianist in the area. His name was Don. After one of my lessons, Don started playing around on the piano as I was packing up my music. I had never met anyone who played the piano as well as he did. He had earned his ability with years of a solid practice ethic, working at the piano sometimes seven and eight hours a day. While he was playing, Don told me that he felt that if he didn’t start working harder he was never going to get really good on the piano. I was shocked by his casual remark. I commented to him that if I could play the piano as well as he could, I would be content to sit all day long and do nothing but listen to myself play. He looked at me and smiled. “You know, Tom,” he said, “that is exactly what I said to my teacher years ago when I first heard him play.”Don had studied with a world-renowned classical and jazz pianist. I had heard recordings of his teacher, who was extremely accomplished. Still, it occurred to me that if someone could reach Don’s level of playing ability and still feel unfulfilled, I was going to have to re-think both my motivations for studying the instrument and my feeling the need to reach some level of “perfection” in order to become fulfilled.

The second event grew out of the first and began when I was nineteen years old. I had been studying with Don for just over a year. I was trying to play a certain passage in a piece of music and wasn’t having much luck at it. I was frustrated and feeling a bit sorry for myself for not measuring up to my own standards. I wasn’t progressing fast enough in my own mind. I made the decision that I would write down all that I needed to accomplish musically to meet my own criteria of good musicianship. The list included items such as being able to play fluently in certain difficult keys, playing in front of audiences, etc.

Several years later I was working in a small practice room at college late one night and I was having another difficult practice session. I remember thinking to myself that I was never going to get any better no matter how hard I tried. Depressed, I decided to quit for the evening. As I started packing up my music, a crumpled-up slip of paper fell out of one of my music books. It was the five-year music plan I had made when I was nineteen years old. I was twenty-two now and I had completely forgotten about it. I sat down and began reading the list to myself. What I read took me by surprise and made and made a lasting impression. I had accomplished everything on the list in less than three years, not five. In fact, I had done things musically that I couldn’t even imagine doing when I was nineteen, and yet I didn’t feel any different. I didn’t feel any happier with my music or any better as a musician. My horizon was moving away from me. My concept of a good musician was coming from a different frame of reference. In that moment I had a realization which took several minutes to fully evolve. I became aware that there was no point of musical excellence out there that would free me from the feeling of “I need to get better.” In that moment, I understood that there was no point I could reach where I would feel that I had finally done it, that I was good as I needed to be, and that there was no need to improve because I had arrived at my goal. It was an epiphany. At first I felt a moment of overwhelming depression and fear, but it was immediately followed by joy and relief of the same magnitude. I knew that what I was experiencing was a realization that all true artists must go through. It was the only way to build the stamina necessary to continue in an infinite study.

There was a sense of freedom in knowing that I would never run out of room to grow. There was a peace in knowing the race was over. Where I was “right now” was just where I should be for the amount of effort I had expended. I saw the wake behind the boat for the first time and realized I was moving ahead, pretty quickly as a matter of fact. But the more important truth revealed to me in that moment was this: the real joy was in my ability to learn and experience that growth moment by moment. The process of discovering the ability to create music that had always been within me was the goal, and I achieved that goal in every second I was practicing. There were no mistakes being made, just a process of discovering what worked and what didn’t. I was no longer struggling up a mountain towards some imaginary musical summit that was going to make my life complete. I realized the infinite nature of music and I was relieved instead of intimidated or frustrated.

That moment was the beginning of my shift in awareness of how I approached anything in life which required applied effort over long periods of time. That subtle shift in perception and that is all it was, brought about unlimited patience with myself. I became patient with my progress. I not only stopped looking at my progress, I stopped looking for my progress all together. Progress is a natural result of staying focused on the process of doing anything. When you stay on purpose, focused in the present moment, the goal comes to you with frictionless ease. However, when you constantly focus on the goal you are aiming for, you push it away instead of pulling it toward you. In every moment of your struggle, by looking at the goal and constantly referencing your position to it, you are affirming to yourself that you haven’t reached it. You only need to acknowledge the goal to yourself occasionally, using it as a rudder to keep moving in the right direction.

It’s like swimming across a lake toward a large tree on the other side. You should focus on just keeping your head down and pulling the water past you with stroke. You fill your lungs with fresh air and then expel it in a relaxed fashion, glancing at the position of the tree on the distant shore every so often to keep your sense of direction. You do this with total detachment, or at least as much as you can muster. You say to yourself, “Oh, I need to steer a little to the left, that’s better.” If, however, You try to keep your head above the water the whole time, watching the tree and trying to see how much closer you are to it after each stroke and kick, you waste enormous amounts of energy. You become frustrated, exhausted and impatient. You become emotional and judgmental about your progress and lose your stamina. All of this energy you are wasting could be going into reaching the far side of the lake, but instead you are dissipating it through incorrect effort, which produces negative emotions. You are fighting yourself and pushing against the task. It will take you longer to reach the tree on the far side of the lake if you reach it at all.

We have seriously missed the boat with this whole concept in our culture. We not only take the opposite path to an extreme, but we are so infatuated with reaching the goal of our efforts that we miss the point entirely.”

Podcasts and more on the The Practicing Mind at www.thepracticingmind.com.

The Real Book…on your iPhone?

Brittany Frompovich — Sun, 20 Feb 2011 17:55:29 +0000

Recently, a friend told me about an app that has made teaching and practicing jazz significantly easier for him. This cool little app is called iRealbook. And it’s available for iPhone, iTouch, iPad, Mac, and Droid phone. It is important to note that the Droid version does not have as many features as it’s iPhone counterpart…more on that in a bit. Or if Android users don’t want to wait, skip directly to points one and two to find out what features are missing.

iRealbook is a chord chart version of the Realbook. There are hundreds of chord charts of jazz, Latin, and Brazilian tunes. You can transpose the charts into other keys easily. The “Apple friendly” versions have a practice play along for each chart, functioning much like the popular Band In A Box program.

You can work on improvisation, walking bass lines, scale and arpeggio exercises to an accompaniment, all with your iPhone. It is a great, portable way to carry many practice tools with you.

I told one of my bass students about this app. He was prepping for a college audition, and his practice time on the required tunes increased dramatically. He was able to go over the audition tunes more frequently, simply due to the ease of accessibility. He called me today on the way home from his audition, telling me it went very well. I can’t prove it, but I do think the accessibility of the iRealbook app, along with his very real desire to make practice time for this audition, significantly contributed to how well he did at his audition.

It is important to say that Android users do not get the full functionality of their Apple counterparts. There are two major differences:

1) In the Droid version, you cannot create and import your own charts for practice. You are limited to the provided songs in the Real Book. If you own an Apple product, the online editor is here.

2) Unfortunately for Droid phone users, the iRealbook does not feature any audio. There is no accompaniments to practice to, only charts and a transposition function.

Here a full list of the features the Android version comes with, so you know what to expect.

When I purchased the app, I noted that the Droid version was less expensive than the iPhone version. (I presumed because it is not as fully featured). I paid $5.99 while my iPhone toting friend paid $9.99.

As a Droid owner, I have still found the iRealbook app helpful despite the missing audio and song import functions, as I can still work on playing through changes simply because I have easy access to the charts. I have to say though, it would be much, much better with audio.

Hopefully at some point they will release a full version of iRealbook for the Android system. However, I wouldn’t get your hopes up that it will be anytime soon. Currently the iRealbook site lists that development on the Android version has been stopped. If you own a Droid phone, and you think a fully featured version of this app might appeal to you, head to the iRealbook Forum and let the software developers know your thoughts.

In the meantime, I’ll have to keep carrying my tablet PC with me and use Band in a Box for lessons. But I look forward to the day when I can use just my phone to teach and practice Real Book tunes.

Helping students develop a Practicing Mindset – part 1

Brittany Frompovich — Wed, 19 Jan 2011 01:36:45 +0000

True story. Eight year old Turner is 15 minutes into his lesson. He has practiced this week. Turner’s mother has told me it was a little bit difficult to get him started practicing, but once he got started he stuck with it and did 45 minute sessions. I look at the times on his log sheet; 45 minutes a day, Monday through Friday. On Saturday and Sunday, Turner can’t take his guitar to his dad’s house. So he tries to add a little “extra time” during the week to make his practice time equal 30 minutes a day, 7 days a week. Impressive for an 8 year old, but I also realize his is doing exactly and only what is needed to get a Music Basket reward.

Right now, 15 minutes into his lesson, Turner is playing “Boogie Bass”…a piece with lots of extended ledger line reading. He is nailing most of the notes, but the moment he hits a wrong one, I hear the rapid flutter of percussive pick scrapes against strings. This is how Turner signals frustration. He begins all over again.

“What happened there Turner?” I ask.

“I made a mistake.” Obviously, he is not just making a mistake. There’s a lot more going on there. He’s clearly struggling to make this perfect, and every note is subject to a judgment call. And I’ve seen adults make this mistake as easily as Turner.

“Hey Turner. Stop a second.” He pauses and looks up, the tension in his face visibly releases. “Do you like to draw?” Trick question, I think to myself. Every kid Turner’s age likes to draw.

“Yeah, I’ve even won awards for some of my drawings.”

“Turner, what do you think about when you draw?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing at all?” I’m looking for clarity.

“No, my mind is all calm and peaceful, It’s not all wild in there like it usually is.” Considering some of Turner’s history, I’m not surprised he’s used the word “wild” at all to describe his inner mental weather patterns.

“When you make a mistake, what happens?”

“Well, I just fix it.”

“Do you get mad at yourself and scribble on the paper or something, or do you just fix it?”

“No, I just fix it.”

“You’re just lost in the process of drawing, right? You don’t judge when you have made a mistake, you just fix it, right?”

“Sure.”

“Hey Turner, what happens when you practice guitar. Is it like that?”

“No.” He’s quiet.

“It could be.” He looks at me, now more interested, as if I know the location of some hidden treasure. “And the best part is, you already know how it feels to be that way from drawing, so you know what it is supposed to feel like.”

He sits still holding his guitar, really wondering what I’m getting at now.

“When you draw, you are lost in the process of drawing. You don’t sit there and judge your mistakes, right? You just fix them, it’s part of the process. Like adjusting when a boat goes off coarse…you just adjust the rudder or the sails. Right?”

He nods. I continue. “You don’t judge the adjustment of the rudder as good or bad, do you?”

“Nope.”

“So why not practice guitar like that? You are very focused on getting the piece perfect and moving on to the next piece. Try to get into the process of learning it. Fix the things that need to be fixed as they come up, just like you do with drawing. Relax. Lose yourself in the process. Make practicing the guitar more like drawing. If you make a mistake, work on that part for awhile until it gets better.”

He looks at me for a moment and picks up his pick to try again.

“Again, you already know what drawing feels like….use that as a guide to make guitar playing feel like drawing.”

Turner starts again, slower this time. His overall tone has already shifted to a more relaxed sound. He has a much easier time with “Boogie Bass”. If he makes a mistake, we stop and go back to work on them. I can see him “practicing” getting into a “practicing” mindset. The focus has shifted from the product into the process.

I comment at the end of the lesson. “Do you think you can practice practicing this week…make practicing guitar feel more like drawing?”

“Yeah, this is good. I like it. I think it will be more fun.”

I’ve had this similar dialogue with perfectionist adult students, young musicians like Turner, and many others. The common thread; all suffered from frustration while practicing. All found practice to be much more enjoyable after having this conversation. The shift was made to ultimately focus on the process, not the product.

In part 2 – more on how I came to understand this concept.

Time to plan for January NAMM

Brittany Frompovich — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 18:27:27 +0000

In my earlier blog, “NAMM and the Music Educator“, I discussed what a NAMM show is and why music educators might want to consider attending.

So as teachers gear up for holiday recitals, benefit concerts, gigs, and other events, it’s also a great time to make plans for January 2011 NAMM. NAMM is taking place from January 13th to January 16th, 2011 in Anaheim, California.

NAMM is not open to the general public, so it is important to register for the event. Registration for music educators closes on December 15th. So I prefer to take care of registration and hotel reservations now, before I am caught up in the rush of holiday events. Plus, there seem to be a few airfare sales going on right now, so it is a great time to book a flight and a room if one is needed.

There is more information about Music Education Days at NAMM and a registration form here.

Taming The Sheet Music Tiger – Part 4 – DIY Footswitch

Brittany Frompovich — Sat, 23 Oct 2010 05:01:51 +0000

After several years of trusty service, my Dell laptop died this week. I decided Christmas would come early at my studio this year with the purchase of a Lenovo tablet PC. In doing so, I would finally have my PDF music library project go mobile.

You can check out the previous installments of this series to get the backstory. In short, I was growing tired of trying to effectively store and organize all of my sheet music and lesson materials. The collection of materials takes up many bookcases and boxes of space. Plus, I wanted to scan all of my books and lesson materials so I could carry just my laptop to other studios when I taught, instead of a bag or two of method books, plus my instruments.

Here are links to the previous installments if you want to see the back story on this project:

Part 1

Part 2 – The DIY External Hard Drive

Part 3 – Going Mobile

I’ve purchased the Footime page turner to use with my new tablet PC. But I’ve wondered what would happen if the footswitch didn’t do everything I really desired. And what could I do if I wanted to customize the operation of the footswitch? A friend sent me this video today…a DIY footswitch. The video shows how to make a page turner for Google reader, but you could easily customize the footswitch to control any keystoke you desire.

Click here to check out the DIY footswitch video on YouTube.

In my next installment of “Taming the Sheet Music Tiger”, the whole project comes together. Stay tuned!