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This website explores ways in which music technology can improve access to music for everyone and enrich music lessons for pupils and teachers, alike. It builds on the personal research of Audrey Podmore, UK music teacher and educational technology consultant.

In "Music Technology and Curriculum Access, A Study" and on this website, I seek to share those ways of using technology which, in my experience, support familiar classroom practice and keep the focus firmly on the music. Right from the start, my attitude was "Unless technology will enable us to do something we can't do already or to do it more effectively, we haven't got time for it."

I am sometimes asked whether I have documented any personal research since the publication of the study (2001). The answer is that I have been much too busy trying to build on what I have already learned. I have been committed to the integration of technology in music education practice for a very long time, becoming increasingly frustrated that, with increasingly powerful equipment becoming available, so little is done to exploit the potential of even the most humble classroom computer as a music education resource.

In 2005, I achieved a long-standing ambition to harness the power of York University's remarkable MIDIgrid software in ready-made resources that can be used immediately by specialist and non-specialist teachers alike, integrating with acoustic classroom resources. GridPlay: Creative Explorations, published by The Full Pitcher Music Resources, builds on much of the research described on this site and provides exploratory materials to support improvisation and composition from pre-school to adult.

The most successful activities, in my experience, are those that facilitate an integrated approach to the Performing, Composing, Appraising and Listening strands of the curriculum, so this is reflected in GridPlay resource packs.

My exploration of music technology began in the early '80s, when I was teaching young people with physical disabilities. I was committed to creative-approach music teaching and my pupils were fired up with ideas, the realisation and development of which were frustrated by the constraints of disability. Fortunately, at about that time, research into the use of computers for music composition, hitherto restricted to university departments and main-frame computers, began to be taken up by educational pioneers and applied to micro-computers.

Driven by the urgent needs of my pupils, I threw myself into researching every piece of hardware and software that came to my attention. Much of the latter was disappointingly narrow in focus - it had its uses but it was never going to meet the needs of my ambitious young musicians. I avidly sought out the few resources that supported real musicianship and extended the musical experience of pupils.

On this website, in the Study and in GridPlay resources, I present only what I and my pupils have found useful and rewarding. As far as we're concerned, Music Rules-OK!

The Full Pitcher Music Resources is a publishing company specialising in resources for creative and inclusive music-making. (Curriculum Online Registered Provider & Retailer)