As music educators, one of the biggest challenges we face is making sure our students have access to necessary information, both inside and outside the classroom. In the classroom, this is not so tough because we are there to help our students and facilitate the learning process. However, this becomes harder when students are at home. With the proper devices and technology, software programs like Chromatik and SmartMusic can become very powerful teaching tools for students whether they are learning at school or studying at home.
Chromatik can be installed on mobile devices like smart phones and tablets but it can also be accessed on a computer or laptop through its website. Signing up is free but of course, there are more features and benefits if you upgrade your subscription. Once I created my profile, I noticed I only had 3 plays per day, which can be upgraded to unlimited plays. Navigating through the program is fairly simple and there is a huge catalog of music to choose from different eras ranging from The Beatles to Adele. I chose "Eleanor Rigby" for my first play and I was astounded by the number of options I could pick from! As a woodwind player, I chose alto saxophone and within seconds, I was looking at a page of sheet music transposed for alto saxophone. When I hit play, I could hear the song as I was reading along with the sheet music. The recording was played by a piano so an alto saxophone students can't really use the audio to develop timbre or articulation skills. But being able to hear the notes, rhythms, and pitches while practicing is a huge benefit to this program. Afterwards, I chose trumpet and again, the part was transposed perfectly. Being able to transpose music in just a few clicks is invaluable to music teachers.
The sense of community is very strong with Chromatik. There are dozens of user-posted recordings and videos of songs from films, musicals, and traditional repertoire. One minute I was watching a child in a pirate costume playing the theme from "Pirates of the Caribbean" on piano and the next minute, I was listening to a flute student playing "Danny Boy." I really appreciate this implementation of technology and with cameras already built into most tablets and computers, anyone can share their work and receive feedback from fellow musicians around the world.
As a concert band and jazz band director, the only downside I noticed to this program was the limited number of jazz artists. I had no problem finding music from classical greats like Bach, Mozart, or Brahms. But when I started searching for jazz musicians, the only person I found was Charlie Parker. When I clicked play on the song "Dexterity," there was no video or recording to play it back. Chromatik certainly has an enormous catalog of pop music or classical music, but I probably can't use this program much with my jazz band students. Aside from that, I think Chromatik is a phenomenal way to guide students when they are searching for recordings to listen or practice to. Other resources like YouTube can be useful as well but Chromatik helps students to focus their research and transpose music to fit their respective instruments.
When I started looking into SmartMusic, I noticed the "MakeMusic" icon at the top of the web page. Last year, I participated in a MakeMusic workshop and I learned about the possibilities of using this program with my students. SmartMusic is very similar to MakeMusic in that it is a software program designed to assess student progress and performance by recording the student playing along with the music displayed on the screen. This can only work if a student is practicing with a device that has a microphone. Most tablet devices already have built-in mics so the hardware of today can certainly accommodate this program.
Chapter 6 of Bauer's "Music Learning Today" centers in on the importance of assessment. During a lesson, teachers can use a number of different rubrics to track the progress of their students. Recording performances during class is another way that teachers can assess his/her students and provide feedback. In some cases, students can assess each other as they practice. When students practice at home, they may not always be able to tell if they are playing the correct notes or rhythms. Sometimes, they may spend too much time on a piece of repertoire and not enough time on building fundamentals. With SmartMusic, teachers can encourage what I like to call focused practicing.
SmartMusic allows teachers to create their own musical assignments through its easy-to-use notation software. I can write a simple 12-bar blues solo or I can write an 8-measure percussion rudiment. Once it is written, the next step is to share it with my students. They can listen to what I've written and when I share it as an assignment, students are required to submit a recording of themselves playing what I assigned. My students always leave my class knowing what I expect them to practice but SmartMusic helps to reinforce what I assigned to them for their daily practice. This alone makes this program fantastic, but it gets even better.
As a student plays along with the recording, SmartMusic can actually detect when a student plays a wrong note or misses a certain rhythm. Furthermore, it shows that student what he/she played incorrectly by displaying a wrong note (it is colored red) in the exact place where the student made the mistake! This can encourage students to take tuning up more seriously and it can also show students how important it is to stay on top of building fundamental skills by practicing scales, exercises, or etudes. Teachers can also set a limit in regards to how many recordings can be made, preventing students from constantly trying to re-record their performance in order to achieve a better grade. By doing this, students will put in more practice so that when the time comes for them to submit their assigned practice recordings, they will be ready to do their absolute best.
Unfortunately, I was unable to implement MakeMusic in my classroom this past year mainly because we do not have Apple tech at our school. Instead of iPads, we have Chromebooks. Other programs like Soundation, SoundCloud, and Audio Tool are available on Chromebooks but SmartMusic and MakeMusic are only available on iPads. If these programs become available on Google Play, I will immediately start planning lessons and units with SmartMusic.
Both Chromatik and SmartMusic are amazing tools for instruction and assessment. For students, they are intuitive, easy to use, and quite accessible to most students if they have the proper technology. I strongly recommend both programs for use in music classrooms across the country.
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