Monday, September 01, 2008

Getting Smart with SmartMusic

SmartMusic is a music rehearsal tool. It is one of the best examples of the use of computers for education, illustrating some major advantages of computers for education which are:

• Provide graduated exercises according to level of ability.
• Evaluate the student and provide very specific feedback about the student's performance.
• Assist the student by providing some form of active coaching.
• Plot a direction for student growth and improvement.

SmartMusic "listens" to the student's performance via a microphone connected from the instrument to your computer. The piece's musical notation is displayed on the screen as you play. Then, at the end of the piece, SmartMusic displays note-by-note feedback about whether the note was at pitch and whether it was played on tempo. Furthermore, SmartMusic will accompany the student and, like a good human accompanist, will modify its own playing to adjust for the speed at which the student is playing.

SmartMusic contains exercises with feedback for almost any level of play for classical music, popular tunes, and even jazz. It supports over 30 musical instruments, including voice.

SmartMusic is activated as a subscription service but the software is downloaded to your computer, so constant Internet access is not required to play. The Internet is used to verify the subscription, though, and SmartMusic automatically downloads any sheet music you have requested.

Although an excellent program, SmartMusic does lack a tutorial feature. It assumes, I suppose, that the student is receiving theoretical and basic instruction from a human instructor. This is not the best assumption to make particularly since theory can sometimes be ignored in lieu of practice time. A future tutorial feature, would, I think, be welcome both by institutional students as well as lifelong learners such as myself.

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