SmartMusic in High School Band

[nafmeadmin]

How do you use SmartMusic with your high school band programs?

I’m not looking to hear about features of the program – I know what it can do. I want to hear some ideas, that have worked, about practical usage in the class room setting.

How do your students respond to using it at the high school level?

[nafmeadmin]

I only use it for performance assessments never for a whole song. We do a “playing test” on all our competitive music for concert and marching band and I choose a small segment (8-16m long) for each individual instrument that is representative of the a difficult passage. i.e. flutes play mm56-58 and trombones play mm14-28 or whatever, but all get the same grade.
I also have smartmusic available and have quite a few students who use it out of class in solo prep for contests/auditions/scholarships or even just to get extra practice on the full band repertoire.

[nafmeadmin]

I use it everyday in my MS bands and the HS directors use it with the HS bands. It is used to do assessments (either playing tests from etudes, literature, etc.) or for tuning. Each student has a username and password. Since Smartmusic refuses to admit that there is an issue with this, this is what I do. I create “Fake” usernames for each kid with a common password. Thus, each kid has their own username and password/account without having to purchase it. With new accountability measures, Most state Education Associations are recommending Smartmusic as a great tool for tracking growth.

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