Creating music worksheets in Google Docs

A few years ago I started using Noteflight, a cloud based music notation website, with my orchestra students. For an incredibly low cost, students have access to a full-featured notation software and their work is saved in the cloud. In addition, students are able to share and like each other’s work. And the best part: students can work on their compositions anywhere with an internet connect. Gone are the days of finding the one open computer lab with Finale installed! I have had amazing success with Noteflight and the best part is students discovering that they are composers. A few students choose to write things on their own – well beyond our composition project.

There are some limitations to Noteflight. Students are not able to collaborate in real time and it doesn’t save automatically (luckily, it will warn you before you try and close the tab!). On the administrative side, you cannot set up separate classes (for example, 6th Grade Orchestra, Period 6, etc) – all students are in one long list. It’s a little daunting to grade when you have over 200 students.

In addition to students composing, I’ve used Noteflight to display rhythmic excerpts from our music, create note reading worksheets, and short music theory exercises for students to complete as assignments. My process for creating excerpts and worksheets is to create the exercise in Noteflight and then use the “Snipping” tool to copy and paste into the Google doc as an image. I’m also able to quickly change the clef to easily create the exercises for all instrument in the orchestra. Here is an example of rhythms from the ending of the piece Steampunk by Richard Meyer I used on Friday as a warm-up with my 9th grade orchestra:

Which brings me to an article one of my school colleagues posted (and tagged me) on Facebook called Write Music in Google Docs. Using the Add-On “VexTab“, one is able to insert music notation directly into a Google Doc. After experimenting with this Add-on, I decided that it was a little difficult to use (it involves changing and adjusting code…yuck!). I couldn’t figure out a way to change the clef to alto (for violas) and changing the rhythmic values involves writing a ton of code. Here’s an example of a very simple excerpt with code in the green box below:

I could see using this for a very short music thought, honestly, I can’t see myself spending the time to learn and write code so I don’t get all of those red syntax errors (trust me, since I was using a TI-80 in middle school, I’ve loved experimenting with code!). I think I will stick to using my “copy and paste” method from Noteflight to create supplemental materials for orchestra class.