In last week’s blog I discussed how SmartMusic can help with concerts, reviews, mastery tests, and other year-end challenges. If you’re like me, in addition to completing these tasks, you’re also thinking ahead about next year too! (Why do we do this to ourselves?)

Here’s a few ways SmartMusic can help you look ahead:

1. For those students who have SmartMusic at home, consider providing them with a list of activities that can help guide their practice over the summer.
2. Are your marching band arrangements in Finale? Remember that Finale files can be made into SmartMusic files that your students can practice with and have full SmartMusic functionality. (Did you know several DCI corps use SmartMusic in their preparation?)
3. With SmartMusic and the Gradebook, you can get a headstart on choosing literature for the upcoming school year by listening to selections and even looking at individual parts for the technical demands.

If you really plan ahead, you might even be thinking about how to present SmartMusic to parents. If so, I want to alert you to some new helpful documents that were just posted on the SmartMusic website. One is a sample script for presenting SmartMusic to parents and the other is a FAQ document to share with parents. They are in PDF format so they are easily downloaded and printed.

To see them go to http://smartmusic.com and select “for Educators”>Resource Center, then click on the “Presenting SmartMusic to Parents and Administrators” link. These two documents will appear at the top of your screen:

Do you have some additional ways that you use SmartMusic as the school year finishes? Let us know by clicking on the “Comments” button below!

Unbelievably, it's already time to start thinking about the end of the school year. But before you can inventory instruments, catalog the music, and do some clean up, you probably still have some goals to accomplish: concerts, reviews, mastery tests, and maybe even having some fun! Let’s see how SmartMusic can help you more easily put the fine on your school year. 

If you're preparing for concerts, I’m sure you appreciate the advantages students have when their concert pieces are supported in SmartMusic. But if you’re preparing literature that’s not yet in the SmartMusic library, please remember that SmartMusic’s Audio Import feature allows your students to practice with any .MP3 files that you may already have. Students can slow down the tempo, create practice loops, and record themselves. You can also create assignments using the audio files with the Gradebook. If you've never done this before, simply click on "MP3 Audio Files" at the left of the SmartMusic screen and you'll see something like this:

Also worthy of mention are three practice tools that are integrated into SmartMusic: the tuner, metronome, and digital recorder. If you've never used the digital recorder for recording rehearsals, I would highly recommend it. It’s an easy way to give your students instant feedback. When students identify the areas that they need to work on by hearing what they just played they are developing self-evaluation habits that will last a lifetime.

How can SmartMusic be used to review material learned throughout the school year? Using the various categories of Exercises (like Scales and Rhythms) allows you to pick and choose material to evaluate your students’ progress. A Twister (technical exercise) can be used as a mastery study. Choose lines from method books to review concepts and for sight-reading purposes. In two earlier blogs, I offered suggestions for some game-type activities that can be also used for review purposes: SmartMusic Rhythm Challenge and the SmartMusic Face-off.

Perhaps you would like to have a year-end recital where students perform a solo. Depending on the level you teach, you can use method book lines, some new fun solo titles, Sample Files, or selections from the solo library.

Next week, in part two of my year-end wrap-up, I’ll offer some tips how you can best prepare for next year.

It's time for a Birthday Celebration! On April 11, 2007, MakeMusic simultaneously released the SmartMusic Gradebook and the idea of band and orchestra titles that include audio recordings of professional ensembles. Using SmartMusic to prepare the music your ensembles play at their concerts seems like such an obvious fit it's hard to believe the idea was new just three years ago, but it's true. That first release included just over 200 concert pieces: Today there are 2,344 concert pieces. That's one big cake with a lot of candles!

As a teacher, I was impressed with how SmartMusic continually evolved with new functionality and content. I envisioned hundreds of people working on SmartMusic and Finale. When I first had the opportunity to visit the modest MakeMusic headquarters in Eden Prairie, Minnesota, and walked through the doors, I was amazed at how quiet it was, and surprised to learn that the entire company is made up of just over 100 employees. (I had imagined a much bigger office building with a tremendous amount of bustle.) Still, I could sense that an incredible amount of work was being accomplished.

I've since met many of the people behind SmartMusic and Finale and it's been great fun. While many share my background in music education, the company boasts a wide variety of musicians, many of whom continue to perform on a regular basis. Similarly the tasks they perform for MakeMusic vary greatly. For just a few examples you may wish to check out the video the repertoire development team made to explain their work to their coworkers.

Perhaps you have something you'd like to share with their coworkers as well. Here's my tip for the best way to share ideas with the SmartMusic development team:

1. Log-in to the Gradebook
2. Near the top right of the screen, click on "Feedback."

The resulting window allows you to type in your feedback about SmartMusic, the Gradebook, or other topics.

This, of course, is just one of many places where we receive customer comments. Our customer support staff shares what they hear from customers, as do folks like myself who meet people like you at tradeshows, in-services, and clinics. We also conduct surveys and field tests with teachers, students, and even non-musicians to gain insight into SmartMusic's ease of use. It's fascinating to see the incredible amount of "behind the scenes" work is involved in creating this software.

At this very moment, everyone is in high gear at MakeMusic working on the next version of SmartMusic. I've had the opportunity to get a few sneak peeks and you are in for a treat. I look forward to sharing the details with you in the coming weeks.

As I mentioned in my very first blog, I previously had a very enjoyable career as a music educator, which I took very seriously. It is incredible to me that I now work with the people and the company that created SmartMusic and who, like me, believe that SmartMusic is technology that can transform the way students practice and learn.

Remember the first time you recorded your voice and then heard it played back? Was it a big surprise for you? The ability to hear recordings of our own performances, while sometimes humbling, represents a powerful learning tool.

When I started using SmartMusic, I was very impressed with how convenient SmartMusic made it for students to create quality digital recordings of their performances at home. What's more, with the Gradebook, teachers can easily request student recordings and utilize them to provide additional feedback as well as document progress.

The SmartMusic website lists many popular uses for these recordings, including submitting them as part of the audition process to college, scholarships, honor groups, and more. I've personally heard from many teachers that their students are using .MP3 files created in SmartMusic to create their own CDs, often to be used as gifts for the holidays. I'm sure you can imagine many ways this might be used as a classroom activity.

This week, however, I thought I'd share a few of the more unique ways I've come up with using these recordings.

In 2006 I used SmartMusic to record one of my first-year students playing his first clarinet solo. Today this student is in the 9th grade, and I recently sent his 2006 recording to his mother. She was thrilled to receive it — and also thrilled at the obvious progress her son had made in the interim. She plans to save the recording, along with other digital media, for her son's personal portfolio. Someday, he might play that very recording for his children — or grandchildren! Welcome to the 21st century!

Here's another idea. Before our school concerts I always played recorded music on the auditorium sound system as the audience found their seats and waited for the performance to begin. This seems to add excitement and contribute to the atmosphere of a special event. Then one day I had a "eureka" moment: why not play student recordings before the concert?

Using SmartMusic, I selected some lines from our method book and some short solo literature. I then arranged personal "recording session" time with the students to help with the process (although this could be done as an independent project). We then needed to set the song order as we prepared to burn the CD; certainly this provides a great opportunity for a class project where the topic is how to program music. Of course the final results were as you'd expect — students were thrilled to hear their recordings played over the sound system — and the audience loved it!

If you use method book lines, the recordings will have count-off clicks. After saving, the recordings can be opened in a sound recording/editing software like Audacity (which is free and available for Mac and Windows) where clicks can be easily deleted and the file saved. Using this same software, you could record an introduction for each selection that included the title of the song and the name of the performer.

The amount of literature available for this purpose in SmartMusic is plentiful. If you plan on doing this activity soon, you might be interested to know there are two new solo folios now available in SmartMusic: Easy Christmas Instrumental Solos and Easy Popular Movie Instrumental Solos.

I hope these tips help you to create more excitement for you and your students — and inspire you to think up additional ways to use SmartMusic recordings and SmartMusic in general. Please let us know what you come up with!