This week,
I had the pleasure of exploring the practice opportunities that both SmartMusic
and Chromatik have to offer in the music classroom. Each platform is different in its own
way. One leads towards encouraging a
practice style in which I feel students would find to be fun and entertaining. The other, however, provides the student with
a classroom-based practice tool as it offers a variety of concert repertoire
and methods they may see in their rehearsal.
The
Chromatik platform is a fairly easy-to-use program that is offered in both
application and web browser form. Though
the program is subscription based, there is a free trial version that limits
its daily use to three songs per day. While there is a small selection of scales,
exercises, and songs provided with the classically trained musician in mind,
this program’s selling point is the popular charts from many genres that can be
transposed for any instrument. Once the
player selects their song of choice, they choose the instrument and the music
is displayed on the screen in the transposed key. There are some features in this program that
I feel are great tools for practice. The
highlight of this software is the three interactive tools such as playing along
with the original YouTube video, and recording audio or video that can be
played back for self-reflection or to share for applauds. There are, however, some inconsistencies with
some of the practice tools between the iPad and web browser version. Overall, I am in favor of the iPad version as
it allows me to use pencil or highlighting tools. This is something that the web browser does
not support.
SmartMusic,
on the other hand, is software developed with the main focus of classroom
ensemble repertoire. There is a wide
variety of grade level music to download from beginning band method books,
skill exercises, concert repertoire, as well as the option to import files from
Finale. Just like Chromatik, this
software is subscription based and is also available for download on the
iPad. Students can practice using
SmartMusic using multiple options of practice tools such as metronome, tuner,
digital recorder, and on-screen keyboard. A highlight of the student version is
the playback controls where the student can play the selected piece of music at
their own pace using the tempo adjustment tool. I believe one of the key highlights to this software
is the assessment tool offered to both educators and students. For the student, he/she can play along with
the assigned music and receive immediate non-biased feedback marking both
correct and incorrect notes as the student plays. The grade book feature in the educator’s
version is another handy assessment tool as it captures each student’s result. The grade book is also able to be designed
using state standards and can be exported over into other grade books.
In the end, I see myself using
SmartMusic in my classroom. While I
would like to see students have their own subscription of the software, this
may be an impossible to do. However, having
the educator’s version would still allow the teacher and the student to use
some of the playback functions during rehearsal in both individual and group
settings. If my school were to get
subscriptions, the grade book would also be a great tool as it can be imported
into both Blackboard and our Synergy grade software. While there are some fun features in
Chromatik, I do not see using this in the classroom, however, this program
could still be encouraged for students to use at home for their own entertainment.
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