Chromatik and SmartMusic

Chromatik

Chromatik is an excellent accompaniment website that provides musicians the opportunity to "play along with sheet music, anytime, anywhere" (Chromatik, 2016) This user friendly resource provides digital sheet music for all genres of music such as pop, classical, and Disney. All of the music, including valuable resources such as scales, are transposed for over 20 instruments including vocal, piano, band, and string instruments. For a price of $10 a month, musicians can play along with sample tracks, record their performance as the pages change automatically, and then share their recordings on Chromatik's "Stage," or via Youtube and email. Chromatik is extremely easy to use and performers of all ages can be watched on the Chromatik website.

Currently, iOS users will benefit the from Chromatic with the features seen in the picture below, as the features are not yet available to Android users.







The metronome and tuner app, along with the ability to mark up the score on an iPad, makes this program a very useful resource for competent music students, performers, and educators. The ability to upload songs and to "favorite" preferred songs, allows users to really personalize their practice and performance sessions.  Musicians can now use their favorite songs to enjoy practicing, and practicing more!
 

SmartMusic

SmartMusic is an interactive accompaniment program that is highly educational and beneficial to the growth of music students and music educators. This is an easy-to-use program that encourages student growth and can be used on nearly every device except iPhones and Android devices. "Student practice is focused because they receive immediate feedback while listening to their performance and seeing the correct and incorrect rhythms and pitches onscreen" (Smartmusic, 2016) The feedback is very detailed and shows students what they played correctly or played incorrectly. Feedback also answers most student questions, such as fingerings and rhythms, without having to contact the teacher. For $40 a year, students can benefit from many SmartMusic features such as accompaniment on any one of 18,000 solos, 4,500 ensemble pieces, or 70 methods.

For $140 a year, educators can personalize lessons based on the weakness of each student. Educators can help their students learn at home without having to be present. Teachers also can use SmartMusic features such as gradebooks and rubrics to keep track of student success and growth. Music educators can request new song titles to be included into the repertoire list of nearly 30,000 titles. The SmartMusic website includes a blog with many useful resources that teachers can use as professional development.

 

Implications

Chromatik and SmartMusic are both great resources to encourage students to practice and perform, however, SmartMusic is much more educational. Though Chromatik allows students to record themselves performing or practicing, it does not give the detailed feedback that allows students to learn and grow. It is a fun way for students to record themselves making music that they love hearing on the radio and they can then share the recording and/or use it self assessment. Educators can use this program creatively by creating an account that all students can access. Students can then record themselves and submit it to the teacher so they can provide the students with feedback. This allows students to pick any song they would like to practice, perform, and create music, without having to pay $120 a year, whilst still getting educational feedback. The only downfall to this is that the educator would still have to spend a significant amount of time reviewing and commenting on student performance.

SmartMusic may be slightly more expensive for an educator to use, and would require all the students to have a $40 a year subscription as well, but the educational value of it makes it worth it. Though the music does not include pop music, this is still a fun way for students to make music. The accompaniment allows students to essentially play along with others, instead of practicing on their own. The immediate feedback and recording capabilities allow students to see and hear exactly what they are doing so that they can learn from their mistakes. Students can then rerecord until they are satisfied with the grade of their performance. When they are satisfied, they can submit their grade to their music teacher. This method takes an immense amount of stress off of the teacher, but the students likely benefit much more than creatively using Chromatik. 

Both methods are fantastic ways to intrinsically motivate students to learn. Students will enjoy these processes and want to do well. Most students will be more intrinsically motivated by SmartMusic because they get the visual representation of what they did correctly or incorrectly, as opposed to simply playing and recording, without seeing, or potentially hearing, what was performed wrong. 

Resources

Chromatik - Explore Free Sheet Music Collections and Play More Music. (2016). Retrieved July 30,

       2016, from http://www.chromatik.com/

 

SmartMusic – Music Learning Software. (2016). Retrieved July 30, 2016, from

        http://www.smartmusic.com/