Two performance resources, Chromatik and SmartMusic
Despite the fact that I am fairly tech-savvy, I was only previously familiar with one of the two services I was tasked with reviewing this week. SmartMusic is a service I have been interested in for a couple of years now, and with which my colleague in the band room has recently taken the plunge. Chromatik was an unknown quantity.
When I began my investigation into Chromatik, I was first faced with an iPhone app that was glitchy (it froze my phone twice before I was able to really use it) and a bit difficult to navigate. After visiting the website on my laptop, I finally was able to figure out what the service really was, which appears to be essentially an online 'realbook'. A subscription service, a free version is offered, but limited to 3 songs per day (or in my case, only 1... another glitch, I assume) with ads that pop up quite frequently and require a longer and longer period of time before you are allowed to close them (referred to as a 'nag screen' in the days of shareware). I was quite frustrated when met with the page below when attempting to get into a second song today to get screenshots for this blog post. Somehow the system thought I had already reached my 3 song quota and there was no way around without paying for a subscription ($3.99 for a week, 9.99 for a month, or $99 for a year.) ("Chromatik - Explore Free Sheet Music Collections and Play More Music", 2016)
Frustrations aside, there is a reasonably impressive amount of music available. I was at first excited that it seemed the service was going to be something like a personal karaoke with real sheet music, but the video/audio tracks embedded in the sheet music pages are links to YouTube videos of full performances. For a vocalist, always singing along with another performer is not the most useful practice method and not one that I would suggest my students try. Also, speaking as a vocal teacher, the selection of vocal music is extremely pop oriented. There was no classical literature that I could find, and the limited Broadway/Disney musical selection provides just a melody line with no accompaniment making the music ill effective for actual performance. All in all, I do not see Chromatik being a service I will refer to again.
SmartMusic on the other hand is a service that I have been itching to try for quite some time. With a fairly heavy presence at the Massachusetts Music Educator's Association All State Conferences every year, it is a hard service to ignore completely. My band colleague began working with an educator and practice room subscription this past year and it has revolutionized her workflow at grading time thanks to eliminating the need for many individual playing and scale tests. Students can now go into the practice room one at a time during regular rehearsal times and complete the assigned work which she can then grade at home. She has also integrated it into her warm-up routine and the students enjoy being able to see the real time feedback for right and wrong notes.
I was looking forward to having an excuse to give it a try in terms of vocal music, but unfortunately did not receive a response to my request for a free educator trial in time for this assigned post. I look forward to hearing from them soon and diving in to see how I could use the program for my chorus classes. I am curious how long the free educator trial lasts, and if I would be able to try it with my students before spending my precious little budget money on the service. Educator subscriptions are $140/year, practice room subscriptions (which allow you to install the software on a machine in a practice room and have students log in through that terminal) are $99/year, and individual student subscriptions are $40/year ("SmartMusic For Educators- Music Education Software", 2016). I appreciate that students are able to purchase subscriptions on their own, so motivated students are able to use the tools at their own pace in the privacy of their own homes (or wherever they might be with iPad and mobile apps) for an affordable investment.
I hope this is the year I finally get to try SmartMusic with my students after hearing so many wonderful things about it!
References:
Chromatik - Explore Free Sheet Music Collections and Play More Music. (2016). Chromatik.com. Retrieved 31 July 2016, from https://www.chromatik.com/
SmartMusic For Educators- Music Education Software. (2016). SmartMusic. Retrieved 31 July 2016, from http://www.smartmusic.com/products/educators/
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