What's so SMART about Smart Music, anyways?

I promised a blogpost about Smart Music this week and I am delivering! I'm sure you're wondering what this program is and why am I telling you about it? I'm telling you about it for two reasons. The first reason is because I know that many parents feel as if they are clueless about music and band and that they have no idea what happens in my classroom. I like to let you know so that you feel more informed and that you can feel comfortable asking your child questions about their lessons and how band is going. When you talk to you children about school and band, they know that you care and that you think it is important and that will help their motivation immensely! Second: If you can swing it, it would be a great investment to purchase a subscription of this program yourself and your child can use it at home with your own computer.

If you can imagine it, my first description of it is "Guitar Hero" for band instruments.  I use a projector and the music is projected onto my white board like this:

There are so many great tools for students who are practicing, especially the younger ones like I teach. My favorite part is the green cursor that pulses with the steady beat and goes along in the music where the students should be looking at and playing. I think one of the first challenges that students have is following the music. This helps train the students how to do this. Steady beat is also a challenge for students of all ages and levels. With this program, the student can change the tempo and make it slower and faster to fit their practice needs. As you can see from this graphic, they can make it so that they play along with just their part, an accompaniment track (like a rock band playing with them!),with just the steady beat, or any combination of all three choices! When they play, the program records them and keeps track what they played correctly (in green), and incorrectly (in red)!  They are given a score and if they are competitive, they can choose to try and beat their score, which some kids really like. They can also save their recording as an mp3 file! In fact, I've done this with a few of my groups and was able to email the file to those parents with email addresses.

Please know that I do not work for Smart Music or anything like that. I work for NSD2 and that is it. I don't work for any music store or anything else. I will never come at you about buying thing for my own personal gain. Please take some time to look around at the website www.smartmusic.com and find out more for yourself. I'd be happy to talk to you more about this!

Amanda Storer
815-678-6726
astorer@nsd2.com