Chromatik
I had a lot
of fun exploring Chromatik this week. I even told several of my co-workers to
look at the website. Chromatik covers a wide variety of music genres, as well
as scales and chords. Often it is difficult to choose music that makes everyone
in the ensemble happy. The same can be true of choosing songs for private
lessons. Chromatik is a great outlet for students, teachers, or any musician
regardless of skill level, to search for songs and play along with the sheet music
and a recording of the song if needed. Sometimes I have students suggest a song
to play for orchestra class all the time. Many times, I cannot locate an
orchestra arrangement of the songs. With Chromatik, the students can go online
and play the song for themselves.
When I first tried to look at song, made my
selection and picked the instrument and nothing happened. Then I realized there
was another tab that had to be clicked to retrieve the song. I thought this was
a good feature because of being on a free account. The free account only allows
the user to access three songs in 24 hours. If you clicked on a song but they did
not have the part you wanted, you could back out without being charged a song.
Another feature I liked was the video being posted on the part selection page.
This allows the user to listen to the song and decide if it is right skill
level before you access the sheet music. Being a pianist, there is one feature
that I found invaluable, the page turns on its own. As a pianist, you are responsible
for turning your own pages when playing in an ensemble. It can be difficult to
find spots to turn the page without losing time. Below is a screen shot from
Chromatik (2016) of the page turn.
1. 
I found
Chromatik to be user friendly and easy to navigate. You can use Chromatik on a
tablet or mobile device as well as a computer or laptop. This is great because
it is much easier to put a tablet on a stand than trying to position yourself in
front of a computer. Many companies make stands specifically for tablets so
they should not fall over and break.
Chromatic
could be used in the classroom as a way to do warmups or scales before
rehearsal starts with the middle school orchestra. The scales section has
major, minor, pentatonic, blues, and many more types of scales for all the
instruments of the orchestra. Students can also use this at home to practice
their scales without having to worry about losing a sheet of music. I could
also assign a specific song for students to work on at home to make sure they
are practicing.
Overall, I
think Chromatik has a lot of potential within the classroom and at home. It can
be used to supplement materials at school and for private lessons. Students can
use it as a break from practicing their required materials. This can help a
student stay motivated. Some students do not want to practice because they want
to play popular music. Using Chromatik, they can practice songs of their
choosing in-between practicing what is assigned. This will allow their skills
to grow faster than if they were only running through the assigned work and
stopping, which is what many students due now.
SmartMusic
SmartMusic has
a lot more uses in the classroom and at home than Chromatik does. The only
downside is you have to pay to use SmartMusic. The price for students to use
SmartMusic is $40 per year. The school system I work in rents certain
instruments to students for $40 per year and sometimes parents have a hard time
affording the rental fee. To ask parents to pay a total of $80 per year for
their student to play may not be feasible in my district. This is not including
the cost of the microphone for the instrument either. This might not seem like
a lot of money for most people but when you are in a high poverty area, it is a
lot of money.
SmartMusic
has a huge repertoire of music for individual instruments as well as ensemble
music. Within that repertoire includes exercises that can be modified, scales
and arpeggios, and practice tools like a built-in tuner and metronome, see picture
below from SmartMusic (2016). These tools allow students to slow down a section
of music they are working on and gradually speed the section back up to the
indicated tempo.
2. 
The
assessment tools for educators in SmartMusic keeps track of how each student is
doing with their assignments at home. When each student completes an
assignment, the student then submits the assignment and it gets recorded into
the teacher’s gradebook. Using the information in the gradebook, the teacher
can adjust the next assignment for each student. For example, student A has
received a perfect score on the first three assignments, Student B has scored
an 80, 78, and 75 on the first three assignments. The teacher may increase the
difficulty of the next assignment for student A and the teacher may decrease
the difficulty of the next assignment for student B. This allows each student
to move at a level that is appropriate for them. The teacher can also create
custom rubrics for each assignment to focus on a particular skill.
SmartMusic
could be used within the classroom by having student take a playing test in a
practice room while the teacher conducts a rehearsal in the main classroom.
This way every student is involved in an activity while waiting their turn to
take their test. Another example is when you are working on a particular
ensemble selection and the students are having trouble with their entrances.
The teacher can play a recording of the selection then assign that section of
the song for homework using SmartMusic. At home, the student can play along
with the accompaniment track to work on where the entrance is. The student can
also use the metronome feature and slow down the song and work out their part
in a slower tempo then bring it back up.
Both
Chromatik and SmartMusic have great potential within the classroom and at home.
They both provide opportunity to practice with an accompaniment track. I think
SmartMusic has more to offer than Chromatik but for the price, I am not sure it
will be feasible for everyone to use. SmartMusic helps you out by showing
fingerings and what notes you are playing correct and what notes are wrong, see
picture below from SmartMusic (2016). Chromatik provides the sheet music and a
YouTube recording to play with. Because it is a YouTube recording, you cannot
remove the melody like that you are playing. Together, I think they can work
very well in keeping students motivated and excited to practice.
3. 
1. Chromatik (2016) Retrieved from:
2. SmartMusic (2016) Retrieved from:
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