Choral Music

Soundtrap is a browser-based music studio that allows students to create, record, and collaborate on music using loops, MIDI instruments, and audio recording. It is accessible for all levels, from beginners to advanced learners.

Teachers can draw on a wide range of standards-aligned lesson plans with clear objectives and procedures, making it easy to integrate into general music or ensemble settings. Projects can be exported for sharing and assessment.

Price: Soundtrap offers several subscription tiers starting around $9.99/month for individuals, with dedicated options for music makers and podcasters. Popular plans include Music Makers Premium ($9.99/mo), Music Makers Supreme ($14.99/mo), and Storytellers ($14.99/mo). A limited free version is available, and all paid plans offer a free trial

Link: Soundtrap

Lesson Planet provides music educators with a range of dependable, high-quality lesson plans. Those with memberships to this site have access to 2000+ lesson plans created by music educators for music educators. There is a free trial period available before one needs to pay for lessons.

Price: $3-7 per month

Link: Lesson Planet

ETM partners music teachers with schools and parents so that music is part of every students’ life. Their website details how their program works and what resources/services they provide. Their excellent distance learning resources provide parents with many opportunities to aid and participate in their child’s music education from home.

Price: Always Free (donations accepted)

Links: Education Through Music Online

ETM Distance Learning Resources

KHS America & IMES are posting new clinics each Thursday at 2PM ET until April 30. Topics addressed include everything from practice tips to philosophy. These are ideal for students at the secondary level and up. The website provides links to new livestreams as well as archived clinics from weeks past.

Price: Free during COVID-19

Link: KHS America & IMES Clinics

This group gives music educators a place to share original songs, songs for their classrooms, and songs pertaining to quarantine. Many videos are educational in nature and can act as both resources and inspiration for other teachers. All one needs is a Facebook account to join and view this content!

Price: Always Free

Link: The Singing Space on Facebook

Choir Baton is an instagram page that offers practical ways to teach choir. Worksheets, assessments and guided videos are also available on her website via the link on Instagram. Monthly mini-courses are offered as well as a podcast discussing choirs virtually.

Price: Free

Link: Choir Baton

This site is designed for music educators who need help using technology! In 12 online courses, teachers can learn how to use programs such as GarageBand, Mixcraft, Sibelius, Audacity and more. There are lesson plans to go along with each course, and the program will help you understand iPads, Chromebooks, Macs, and PCs. There are a few free resources in addition to those included in the subscription.

Cost: $49 per month or $490 per year

Link: Midnight Music

This resource helps teachers with distance learning options that do not involve as much writing, but still engage students in learning. Providing three different possibilities for podcast models, this unit take students step-by-step through the process of creating, writing, recording, editing, and publishing a podcast. The PDF download includes editable student worksheets for multiple levels of learners.

Cost: Free During Covid-19

Link: Choral Connections: Podcast Project

The ACDA Facebook Group provides choral educators with a place to post and view comments, videos, and lessons ideas. Posts are geared towards high school and collegiate teachers but some videos and posts include middle school lessons and songs.

Price: Free

Link: American Choral Director’s Association Facebook Group

This program makes music fun with scaffolded games that teach basic music concepts like theory, note reading, and ear training. Teachers can assign games and monitor progress directly from the app or website. There is also an option for parents to search for virtual private lesson teachers.

Price: Free

Link: Tunelark

This free site is perfect for creating interactive videos in any music class. Choosing from online video sources like YouTube, teachers can add closed captioning, questions, notes, voice overs, and more. Students can view the videos and submit their responses on the website.

Price: Always Free

Link: Edpuzzle

The music students of Gettysburg College created this website to offer an easy way to sort through resources. Arranged in 30 categories, students curated and linked each resource.

Price: Free Always

Link: Finding Music Resources

This source is perfect for creating music in general music or music technology classes. Features include recording, exporting/importing audio, editing audio, and MIDI input.

Price: Always Free

Link: Audacity

This is an ideal resource for music educators looking for additional resources for online learning. This blog post gives ideas for remote learning in 4 categories: virtual teaching, online resources, no-tech resources, and professional learning opportunities. The specific resources are all linked for teachers to discover, or they include explanations as to how to implement them.

Price: Always Free

Link: Organized Chaos

These podcasts are designed for classroom choir directors as well as composers. Chris Munce is a composer and private voice teacher with choral classroom experience and shares his  thoughts about the world of choir, keeping quality of music education at the forefront of his discussions. A recent episode addresses COVID-19 and serves as encouragement for everyone quickly adapting to distance learning. Links to access PDF site licenses of arrangements and compositions are also included.

Price: Always Free

Link: Choralosophy Podcast

The Musical Instrument Museum of Phoenix channel features tours and behind-the-scenes footage including musical instruments from all cultures, musical theater performance videos, and diverse talks from musical professionals of every background.Teachers can use these videos as listening assignments, on a platform like Edpuzzle, or as basis for discussion. An education playlist is also included in the channel with classroom activities as well as videos that show the science behind the instruments.

Price: Always Free

Link: MIMphx on YouTube

This is an ideal resource for those teachers seeking to teach online lessons. This YouTube presentation by Terry B. Ewell addresses the setup of equipment, software configurations, and other helpful hints for successful online lessons for one-on-one music instruction.

Price: Always Free

Music Education Resources is a Facebook group for music teachers of all areas and levels. It features lots of informational articles, links to additional teaching resources, and some entertainment to lighten the mood. This group should prove helpful to many music educators due to its wide range of content. A Facebook account is necessary for full access.

Price: Always Free

Link: Music Education Resources on Facebook

The Metropolitan Opera is streaming a different opera every day. Teachers can use this resource for guided listening, enrichment, voice/theater classes, and more. Streams begin at 7:30PM ET, and the video remains available until 6:30PM ET the following day. The streams are available through the website as well as a number of apps. This service would be good for any age of student that is able to understand the thematic elements of a show; the appropriateness of each show varies by plot line.

Price: Free during COVID-19

Link: Met Opera Streams

RIAM Teaching and Learning Network has a collection of instrumental and choral lesson videos compiled by professors at the Royal Irish Academy of Music. There are piano lessons for beginners and intermediate players as well as more advanced. There are flute lessons and some choral lessons as well. Younger students may need some guidance navigating the videos, but secondary players could easily follow along on their own.

Price: Always Free

Link: RIAM on YouTube

Talking Up Music Education is perfect for all music educators as well as for interested secondary students. Each podcast features a guest; Vanessa Carlton speaks about being a singer-songwriter, and Eric Whitacre speaks on being a composer. The host, Executive Director of The NAMM Foundation, Mary Luehrsen, speaks with music advocates, parents, teachers, students, and leaders in business and communities to share what they are doing to support the arts.

Price: Always Free

Link: Talking Up Music Education Podcast

This document is perfect for elementary general music, and possibly early middle school. Students will need to have access to different mediums of watching film, and may need to have a way to record themselves. The assignments provided are broad and allow room for the teacher to customize the lessons. This resource provides an outline to help a teacher build their own unit, broken down into three lessons (one project).

Price: Free always

Music in Relation to Other Art Mediums

Ideal for elementary students learning syncopation. The PowerPoint gives instruction, practice, and application of syncopated rhythms. The PowerPoint begins with different rhythms and a recording of each rhythm on the slide. Students are instructed to repeat the rhythm and check with the recording. Then students can apply what they’ve learned to the song “Russian Sailor’s Dance.” Perfect as an individual at-home activity.

Price: Free always

Syn-co-pa Distance Learning

Soundfly is an online service offering professional-quality music courses not often offered in traditional school. Topics range from the role of producers to songwriting and performance. Many of the production and electronic composition classes require additional programs/software. Soundfly has many available courses offered for free as well as additional paid courses, and is available for students as well as teachers looking for professional development.

Price: Some free courses, some paid

Link: Soundfly

This blog is perfect for music educators of all grades and areas. The content ranges from articles about supporting one’s students to podcasts with guest professionals about the classroom. Recently, helping the music educator teach from home has come to the forefront of discussion.

Price: Always Free

Link: The Music Educator Blog

A constantly updating Google Doc with a myriad of resources for K-12 general music/choir teachers looking for additional resources and lessons for use with online instruction. The Doc features nearly 100 resources for lesson plans, worksheets, and assignments; advice on effective online learning practices; videos and demos; blogs and websites; concerns and questions; and contact information for others in the music education world that can also serve as valuable resources to other educators.

Price: Free always

Link: The Big COVID Survival Choral Doc

The New York Philharmonic’s Young People’s Concerts are perfect for elementary music students, but there is value for secondary students as well. This site offers free NY Phil concerts with activities for students. Each concert listed has videos allowing students to interact with the music; a simple, iconic notation; composition tool; and a curriculum guide for teachers. The lesson plans supplied vary from concert to concert; some are written with grades 3-5 in mind while others are for 3-12.

Price: Always Free

Link: NY Phil Young People’s Concerts Play!

Perfect for middle or high school choirs, this resource is a list of out-of-class activities to use in lieu of class meetings. Each student can make a copy of the document and submit one activity a day to their instructor. In addition to the included list, there are also “create your own” activity spots. All activities involve free and easily accessible websites that accommodate various levels of experience.

Price: Free Always

Link: Choir Choice Board

This lesson packet is suitable for nearly any music student or music class. The resource is a list of three projects: a poster describing a composer (including a list of relevant works), a review of a movie musical, and a write-your-own mini-musical. This document is an attainable option for online instruction, because it gives students the power of choice in interacting with and analyzing music. Some modification might be necessary depending on the age group of students completing these projects.

Price: Free always

Chor(ona Vir)us Plan

This video is perfect for teachers struggling to teach through a virtual classroom. It contains weekly teacher-led discussions of ideas, strategies, and mindsets to help keep students engaged. The webinars include lesson plan ideas and guides on use other different apps to stay connected. They also discuss teacher-student interaction, teacher mental health, and remote workspace productivity. While seemingly elementary based, the webinars present ideas that can be adapted to secondary and post-secondary situations. Enrollment capacity is limited, but videos are recorded and uploaded after.

Price: Free always

Link: Staying Connected Webinar

This video is perfect for teachers struggling to teach through a virtual classroom. It contains weekly teacher-led discussions of ideas, strategies, and mindsets to help keep students engaged. The webinars include lesson plan ideas and guides on use other different apps to stay connected. They also discuss teacher-student interaction, teacher mental health, and remote workspace productivity. While seemingly elementary based, the webinars present ideas that can be adapted to secondary and post-secondary situations. Enrollment capacity is limited, but videos are recorded and uploaded after.

Price: Free always

Link: Staying Connected Webinar

This article is perfect for choir teachers who want to create virtual choirs but don’t have the video editing skills or software. This blog gives three user-friendly examples on how to create a virtual choir video. The author discusses the use of the Acapella App within a classroom setting and some issues that might occur when using it, as well as providing additional resources for teaching secondary choir.

Price: Free always (Some apps/software may come with subscriptions)

Link: Dear Music Teachers: Please Stop Asking How To Create A Virtual Choir Video

This Google Sheets provides descriptions of apps perfect for enriching your virtual music education and choral classroom. It includes well-known resources such as Zoom and Audacity, as well as hidden gems such as Join the Virtual Choir. The sheet also includes video links to educational “things to watch” and “assessment ideas” prompts pertaining to music education.

Price: Free always

Link: Distance Learning for Choir-intine

This is a detailed Google Doc describing the steps to participate in/create a virtual choir performance of “Sisi Ni Moja.” Links to rehearsal tracks for parts and conducting tracks are linked in the Doc. Video recording equipment will be needed. The process can be adapted to choir pieces other than “Sisi Ni Moja,” including music that your choir is currently working on!

Price: Always Free

Link: Virtual Choir HyperDoc for Nixa Intermediate Choir

This YouTube page is dedicated to teaching vocal pedagogy and technique. Featuring numerous playlists on topics such as breathing, vocal anatomy, vowels and consonants, and elements of stylistic performance, this page is perfect for choir teachers looking for supplemental video materials in a range of concepts. It is also valuable for singers looking to maintain their vocal practice during a period of online learning. All lessons are led by Justin Stoney, an credibly acclaimed voice teacher based in New York City.

Price: Free always (Optional $4.99/month subscription to access exclusive perks)

Link: New York Vocal Coaching Playlists

All music teachers can find something of value in the “Music Educators Creating Online Learning” Facebook group. It contains resources for instrumental, choral, jazz, private instruction, general music, and more! This group is a “teachers-help-teachers” setting where anyone can post about a resource or ask a question to get advice. All one needs to access this is a Facebook account!

Price: Always Free

Link: Music Educators Creating Online Learning on Facebook

The “I’m a Choir Director” Facebook group serves as a professional learning network for choral directors to share ideas, ask questions, give encouragement, and talk about the field. The group features discussions and conversations surrounding lesson plans and choral resources. This group is always free with a Facebook account.

Price: Always Free

Link: I’m a Choir Director on Facebook

The Choral Clarity Facebook Group is ideal for choral directors of all levels. The mission of the group is to expand on ideas, refresh thinking, and to seek clarity on the choices directors make. This group serves as a forum for discussion and contains opinions on choral-related videos, questions, ideas, and resources.

Price: Always Free

Link: Choral Clarity on Facebook

Middle School Chorus Directors Facebook Group is ideal for choir teachers who are looking for advice, new ideas, and resources to help strengthen their teaching. This Facebook group allows teachers to ask for help with classroom problems, post lesson plans and helpful resources, and serves as a source of inspiration. This group is always free with a Facebook account.

Price: Always Free

Link: MS Chorus Directors Facebook Group

Learn Movable Do | Solfege Flashcards! is a solfege quiz game on the free site music-theory-practice.com. The player picks the correct solfege syllable for the note on the staff, and the key is given on the card. Wrong answers and corrections are displayed if you scroll down the page. You can work through four levels, from Apprentice to Wizard. At the end, you can take a timed quiz. This would be entertaining practice for vocal students or theory students.

Price: Always Free

Link: Solfege Flashcards

This resource is ideal for secondary music teachers looking for a composition medium for online learning. The Acapella App is a great way to have students collaborate and create music together. Students can put together a song with multiple voices either by themselves or with their peers. Note: Students must be 16 years old to create an account and everything students create is public for everyone on the app.

Price: Free Always with Paid Upgrades Available

Link: Acapella App

Need helping planning remote activities for your middle school chorus? Created by Danielle Larrick, this Google Doc is a constantly updated resource for you to utilize as you plan and execute remote learning at the middle school chorus level. It contains ideas for both teachers and students as well as assessment and planning strategies. You can either download this as a PDF or click on the google doc to copy and edit for your needs.

Price: Free during COVID-19

Link: Choir-Virtual-Learning-Ideas

Click this link to access this google slideshow. Make sure you “make a copy” so you can edit. 

This resource works well for vocally-oriented classes as well as the secondary music technology classroom. Students compose & record a vocal melody, add accompaniment tracks to match, and submit them for grading. The resource provides a grading rubric. This is a self-contained lesson with room to adjust difficulties for age. Subscription to Noteflight Learn and SoundtrapEdu allow one to take full advantage of the resource. Teachers can easily adapt this for instrumentalists as well through the Google Drive link to copy and edit. Author: Danielle Larrick

Price: Free during COVID-19

Link: Tonal Pattern Composition Lesson

Sight Reading Factory is perfect for teachers of ensembles who are looking to assess individual student sight reading. Teachers can customize online sight reading exercises as a practice and assessment tool. The program is compatible with Chrome, iPhones, Android smartphones, iPads and Android tablets, laptops, and desktops.

Price: Free Trial then $35/year plus student account fees

Link: Sight Reading Factory

“Appcompanist” is perfect for teachers or students to gain access to thousands of free piano accompaniment tracks. The website provides users with the ability to adjust rubato, accents, and smoothly increase or decrease tempo as the piece plays without affecting piano quality. One can adjust Accompaniment to any key or turn it into a repeated exercise. Create and edit playlists to easily find your “go-to” repertoire and share it with others.

Price: Free with upgrades available

Link: Appcompanist

This resource is ideal for students who need to keep track of their practice. The document has columns that allow the students to write down what they practice and how long. The document also has a column that allows an open-ended response asking the specifics of what they practiced. The student can also write down any questions they have. The educator can elect to include in a link to have their students submit their practice sessions.

Price: Always Free

Link: Practice Log

Be sure to make a COPY before editing this Google Doc.

This informational article details how to design and structure an online music class. It has numerous ideas for assignments, assessments, and the overall layout of online learning. Teachers faced with moving to online instruction will find much of value here.

Price: Always Free

Link: Teaching Music Online

SmartMusic is a software that allows students to record and submit themselves making music, which can be used for assessments. Teachers can upload parts and full scores that students can use to submit a recording of themselves performing their part. This user-friendly program can be downloaded onto a computer or utilized as an online website, but requires that students have the appropriate materials for recording from a remote location.

Price: Free during COVID-19. Normal cost is $40-$80/teacher/year depending on package

Link: SmartMusic

Perfect for choir teachers looking for ways to stay connected with their ensembles during this time, this blog post provides suggestions on how to best utilize video platforms (Zoom, Google Hangouts) for running choir rehearsals. It addresses warm-ups, sectionals, guest speakers and most importantly, maintaining social connections with each other during this time. 

Price: Always Free

Link: Keeping You Choir Going During Lockdown

A constantly updating Google Doc with a myriad of resources for K-12 general music/choir teachers looking for additional resources and lessons for use with online instruction. The Doc features nearly 100 resources for lesson plans, worksheets, and assignments; advice on effective online learning practices; videos and demos; blogs and websites; concerns and questions; and contact information for others in the music education world that can also serve as valuable resources to other educators.

Price: Free always

Link: The Big COVID Survival Choral Doc

This resource helps choral teachers develop listening units for students in beginning, advanced, and/or collegiate methods or choirs. Based around the state festival system, students will think critically about their own music and the process of evaluation. The unit is adaptable for distance learning, homework, or in-class projects. The PDF download includes editable student worksheets for multiple levels of learners.

Price: Free during COVID-19

Link: ChoirEval_Final

This resource is best suited for secondary instrumental, but it is easily adaptable for a variety of ages & experience levels. Students complete a variety of music-related social media tasks on the bingo sheet including performing, listening to music, composing, and more. The resource requires students to have a few of the following free social media accounts (Instagram, Tiktok, YouTube, Spotify, email, Noteflight).This resource can be downloaded as a google drive file and edited to suit your needs. Author: Sarah Gulish

Price: Free Always

Link: Music-Ensembles-Social-Media-BINGO

Click on this link to access a Google doc that you can copy and edit!

In this easily adaptable activity for all music classes, students make choir memes. This activity works nicely as enrichment and/or extra credit. Students can easily collaborate in Google Classroom and make memes via Google Slides. This activity encourages student creativity and new ways of relating to material covered in choir rehearsal all in a lighthearted way.

Price: Free Always

Link: Choir Meme War

This online or in-class unit serves all levels of choirs, including options for collegiate choral methods students. The step-by-step instructions take teachers and students through the process of building a choral concert program using YouTube videos. The PDF includes links to downloadable and editable assessments, and the page formatting makes the resource easy to download and give directly to students.

Price: Free During COVID-19

Link: Choral Connections YouTube Project

Learn Movable Do | Solfege Flashcards! is a solfege quiz game on the free site music-theory-practice.com. The player picks the correct solfege syllable for the note on the staff, and the key is given on the card. Wrong answers and corrections are displayed if you scroll down the page. You can work through four levels, from Apprentice to Wizard, with a timed quiz at the end. This would be entertaining practice for vocal students or theory students.

Price: Always Free

Link: Solfege Flashcards

This resource is ideal for late middle/early high school choir students who have some experience with music theory/history. This is a simple worksheet that gives students a way to connect with their ensemble repertoire outside of rehearsal. Completion assumes the students have access to the score and recordings, but these can easily be provided by the director. The document provided is unpolished and inconsistent with formatting, but it could easily be adapted to suit specific needs. Author: Danielle Larrick

Price: Free Always

Link: Choral-Octavo-Scavenger-Hunt-FFLAT

You can access the google drive file here to copy/edit

This resource is suitable for students in performing classes such as chorus, band, or orchestra but can be expanded to a general music class.This project is in the form of a Google Slideshow. It begins with a description of the project for the director followed by a presentation for the students. In this project, students are writing program notes for a piece. This project also works very well as a cross-curricular exercise, as students are practicing writing skills while interacting with the music. This can be downloaded as a PDF or Google slideshow. Author: Danielle Larrick

Price: Free during COVID-19

Click here to access this resource on the F-flat website!

This worksheet is ideal for students who are studying solfege and beginning music theory/aural skills. Multiple key signatures are included. Since it is addressed to a classroom, having a version that students could complete via Google Docs/Forms as a quiz would be helpful. If Zoom is an option, the teacher could use breakout rooms to complete the group aspect presented. Likewise, directions for “in class” work need reformatting for online instruction.

Price: Free during COVID-19

Link: Name That Tune Solfege Worksheet

This YouTube channel is dedicated to teaching vocal pedagogy and technique. Featuring numerous playlists on topics such as breathing, vocal anatomy, vowels and consonants, and elements of stylistic performance, this page is perfect for choir teachers looking for supplemental video materials in a range of concepts. It is also valuable for singers looking to maintain their vocal practice during a period of online learning. All lessons are led by Justin Stoney, an acclaimed voice teacher based in New York City.

Price: Free always (Optional $4.99/month subscription to access exclusive perks)

Link: New York Vocal Coaching Playlists

This is a detailed Google Doc describing the steps to participate in/create a virtual choir performance of “Sisi Ni Moja.” Links to rehearsal tracks for parts and conducting tracks are linked in the Doc. Video recording equipment will be needed. The process can be adapted to choir pieces other than “Sisi Ni Moja,” including current repertoire for your choir!

Price: Always Free

Link: Virtual Choir HyperDoc for Nixa Intermediate Choir

This resource is ideal for secondary music teachers looking for a composition medium for online learning. The Acapella App is a great way to have students collaborate and create music together using collaboration. Students can put together a song with multiple voices either by themselves or with their peers. Note: Students must be 16 years old to create an account and everything students create is public for everyone on the app.

Price: Free Always with Paid Upgrades Available

Link: Acapella App

This Google Sheet provides descriptions of apps perfect for enriching your virtual music education and choral classroom. It includes well-known resources such as Zoom and Audacity, as well as hidden gems such as Join the Virtual Choir. The sheet also includes video links to educational “things to watch” and “assessment ideas” prompts pertaining to music education.

Price: Free always

Link: Distance Learning for Choir-intine

This article is perfect for choir teachers who want to create virtual choirs but don’t have the video editing skills or software. This blog gives three user-friendly examples on how to create a virtual choir video. The author discusses the use of the Acapella App within a classroom setting and some issues that might occur when using it, as well as providing additional resources for teaching secondary choir.

Price: Free always (Some apps/software may come with subscriptions)

Link: Dear Music Teachers: Please Stop Asking How To Create A Virtual Choir Video

This lesson packet is suitable for nearly any music student or music class. This resource is a list of three projects: a poster describing a composer (including a list of relevant works), a review of a movie musical, and a write-your-own mini-musical. Students are given the power of choice in how they interact with music in their chosen project. Some modification might be necessary depending on the age group of students completing these projects.

Price: Free always

Link: Chor(ona Vir)us Plan

Perfect for middle or high school choirs, this resource is a list of out-of-class activities to use in lieu of class meetings. Each student can make a copy of the document and submit one activity a day to their instructor. In addition to the included list, there are also “create your own” activity spots. All activities involve free and easily accessible websites that accommodate various levels of experience.

Price: Free Always

Link: Choir Choice Board

Soundtrap is a browser-based music studio that allows students to create, record, and collaborate on music using loops, MIDI instruments, and audio recording. It is accessible for all levels, from beginners to advanced learners.

Teachers can draw on a wide range of standards-aligned lesson plans with clear objectives and procedures, making it easy to integrate into general music or ensemble settings. Projects can be exported for sharing and assessment.

Price: Soundtrap offers several subscription tiers starting around $9.99/month for individuals, with dedicated options for music makers and podcasters. Popular plans include Music Makers Premium ($9.99/mo), Music Makers Supreme ($14.99/mo), and Storytellers ($14.99/mo). A limited free version is available, and all paid plans offer a free trial

Link: Soundtrap

Sight Reading Factory is perfect for teachers of ensembles who are looking to assess individual student sight reading. Teachers can customize online sight reading exercises as a practice and assessment tool. The program is compatible with Chrome, iOS and Android devices, laptops, and desktops.

Price: Free Trial then $35/year plus student account fees

Link: Sight Reading Factory

Perfect for gaining insight into various issues faced in the choral classroom, this blog offers various assessment, repertoire selection, and rubric ideas. Browsers can view a few free and low-cost choral compositions including sight-reading, rounds, and concert selections. A few videos and podcasts are available on choral music education as well.

Price: Free articles and blogs – resource costs vary

Link: Choral Clarity

“Appcompanist” gives teachers and/or students access to thousands of free piano accompaniment tracks. The website provides users with the ability to adjust rubato, accents, and smoothly increase or decrease tempo as the piece plays without affecting piano quality. Accompaniment can be adjusted to any key or turned into a repeated exercise. Create and edit playlists to easily find your “go-to” repertoire and share it with others.

Free with upgrades available

Link: Appcompanist

This website is a PowerPoint explaining how to use SmartMusic for students. This PowerPoint gives a visual on how to sign up for the program itself. The website is very helpful in showing a step-by-step process with arrows and clear directions.

Price: Free during COVID-19

Link: How to Sign Up for Smart Music (for students)

This is a Zoom tutorial that shows how to change the audio settings to preserve the sound. Having access to the Zoom software is required, but this tutorial is a free resource. Overall, it’s perfect for instrumentalists, vocalists, and any music teachers who use Zoom and wish to avoid audio modification that occurs automatically and may distort the music. The how-to video is easy to follow and user-friendly.

Price: Always Free

This video explains how to create chamber music through the free app, Acapella. Through this app, individuals can all perform their part of a song and can layer it with others to produce the piece as it would sound if they were playing together. Perfect for vocalists and instrumentalists who want to perform chamber music with others, but cannot due to distance. The video tutorial is always free; the Acapella app is free with upgrades available.

Price: Always Free

SmartMusic is a software that allows students to record and submit themselves making music, which can be used for assessments. Teachers can upload parts and full scores that students can use to submit a recording of themselves performing their part. This user-friendly program can be downloaded onto a computer or utilized as an online website, but requires that students have the appropriate materials for recording from a remote location.

Price: Free during COVID-19. Normal cost is $40-$80/teacher/year depending on package

Link: SmartMusic

A constantly updating Google Doc with a myriad of resources for K-12 general music/choir teachers looking for additional resources and lessons for use with online instruction. The Doc features nearly 100 resources for lesson plans, worksheets, and assignments; advice on effective online learning practices; videos and demos; blogs and websites; concerns and questions; and contact information for others in the music education world that can also serve as valuable resources to other educators.

Price: Free always

Link: The Big COVID Survival Choral Doc

In this unit lesson, advanced music students demonstrate their knowledge of the Baroque period by performing a song. Teachers can assess both the performers and audience members (classmates) on their behavior and character as if they were living in the Baroque Era. The plan provides strategies for both assessment and differentiation. Teachers can easily adapt this lesson for online instruction.

Price: Free always

Link: If It’s Not Baroque, Don’t Fix It

Students who may be practicing on their own for the first time can utilize this Google Doc, which gives tips and techniques on how to practice effectively. The tips include having supplies nearby, starting with a warm-up, have a goal, etc. This list can also serve to help those who are already advanced to improve their practice sessions. The Doc is open to edit and be added to.

Price: Free always

Link: Strategies for Effective Practice Time