I am so excited to share that composer Alex Shapiro has offered up help for online band directors. Here’s what she had to say on the Middle School Band Director facebook page:
Hello to my band director friends!
Everyone’s been scrambling to find ways to engage with their ensemble members online, and many of us have been actively sharing resources, ideas, and… more than a few gripes about how technology wasn’t quite ready yet for what we really need: realtime online ensemble playing! It’ll be here soon. But not yet.
One of the workarounds a lot of us have discussed is getting students to practice and record their own part of a piece, against a click running in their earbud to keep them in time. Each student can then upload their recording, and the many parts could then be assembled into a less-than-perfect, but possibly still-worth-doing complete pass through a piece.
Among the challenges here is keeping everyone in tune, so a backing track can be a useful guide. This is where your friendly, wacky, electroacoustic band music composer e-friend Alex might be able to help: if any of you would like to use one of my pieces for this purpose, it would be my pleasure to send you, at no charge, the link to the score, parts and audio accompaniment track. Just message me, or leave a note here, or email me through my website, and I’ll get you the perusal link to all my pieces, from grade 2-5. Select whatever you want, email me with your choice, and I’ll email you back with the private link with which you can distribute the materials to your students (giving you a great opportunity to also teach them the basics about copyright! Ha!). Here’s to helping each other get through the rest of this semester, whether in person, in pixels, or in soundbites!
If you are not on facebook, you could undoubtedly email her at:
Car Full of Harmony 
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