For our second look at the improvements in SmartMusic’s gradebook feature, we’ll create and schedule an assignment. If you’ve finished setting up your classes and have students chomping at the bit (that is, they’ve enrolled before you’ve had a chance to create their homework!), you’re probably eager to get started.

Step 1
Log in – doing so causes the “Assignment” option to appear in every piece of music.

Step 2
Open the piece you want to schedule. If you’ve already downloaded this piece, it’s in the My Library section on the left navigation bar. If not, browse through our repertoire in Find Music.

For my example, I’ll make an assignment from Music for the Royal Fireworks:

Step 3
Click Assignment in the upper right, which I've circled above. This produces the following:

Here you can select from several assignments (unique for each individual instrument) pre-created by experienced music educators, or create your own. You can also modify the assignment details, name your assignment, write specific instructions, and assign points. The window is compact and you can still see the notation and scroll around (unlike previous versions!).

Using the wonderful premade assignments is really slick and easy. Today, however, we’ll take things a step further and show you how to create a customized assignment. To do so, indicate “Custom” next to “Create an assignment.”

Step 5
Under Assignment details you can specify what you will require with your assignment. I’m requiring that Tempo, Click Track, the Cursor, and the Music on Screen are all set to on, and that My Part is set to off.

The settings shown above are displaying the changes I’ve made to this piece. For example, I lowered the tempo to 52 bpm, using the Tempo slider near the top. The tempo that displays under assignment details reflects this change, but is not editable itself.

Hint: If you click More Settings you’ll find other customization options to require or not require. The settings that appear here change based on what kind of music you’ve opened.

Step 6
Schedule it! On the right are the same options you had in the past. You can pre-create assignments and have them automatically distributed to students in the future, send them an email notification when it is scheduled, and send an email reminder, too. When you click Schedule, you can specify which class(es) will get the assignment. You can also choose whether or not each student gets the assignment, and if students who enroll later on this year will see them (provided the due date has not already passed).

Students will now see this assignment on their list when they log in to SmartMusic.

The process is really fast – it’s not nearly as long as my writing makes it seem. Create a few and I think you’ll agree.

Let us know by clicking on “Comments” below. I’d especially enjoy hearing what you’d like to see in future SmartMusic blog posts.

With SmartMusic 2011 we’ve revised the assignment process in lots of small ways that add up to big improvements. This week we’ll look at how to set up your account to use the Gradebook feature.

Step 1
You need to launch SmartMusic 2011 to begin. When you do, you’ll be greeted by the friendly Home screen, and prompted to log in:

Step 2
Next you’ll see a screen similar to the one below. Get rolling by clicking Add School. If your school isn’t immediately listed, you can expand your search geographically or type in a different ZIP code.

Step 3
Check off what classes you teach and type in your name as you want it to appear to students.

Step 4
Create a Security Key and type it a second time. This additional password helps to keep your grades more secure. It can be the same as your previous Impact Security Key if you like, but please make sure it’s not the same as your account password!

Step 5
Now to get your school year up and running! Click Add where you see your Classes in the upper-left:

Here you can select at which school the class is offered, the name of the class, the grading scale (which is editable, like in previous years), and you can define your school year all at once. It’s a lot of options … but it definitely doesn’t look overwhelming:

For each additional class you want to offer, repeat Step 5. You can edit them later if you need to make changes. Once you’ve created the classes you need, it’s time to open up music inside SmartMusic and start creating assignments – and we’ll do just that next time! Feel free to work ahead – there’s a great video to help you get up and running.

Let us know how it’s working for you by clicking on “Comments” below.

Lertkiat Chongjirajitra is the principal trumpet of the Bangkok Symphony, a trumpet/brass lecturer for the Silpakorn University Faculty of Music, the director of the Bangkok Silpakorn Wind Orchestra, and a Yamaha Artist.

He’s also a fervent SmartMusic advocate who recently demonstrated SmartMusic on Thailand’s national television. You can watch his demonstration, including English subtitles he kindly provided, here.

Curious how this appearance came about, I e-mailed Lertkiat, and was delighted by his enthusiasm to talk about SmartMusic.

Scott Yoho: Thank you so much for demonstrating SmartMusic on Thailand’s national television. How did that opportunity occur? Did someone from the network contact you because of your work with the Bangkok Symphony Orchestra and knew you to be interested in music technology?

Lertkiat Chongjirajitra: I came to their attention though my talks about classical music on the radio channel. We then became friends on Facebook and Twitter, where they saw my work through the social networks. Later, we talked about technology in music, and they expressed interest in having me appear on the show.

SY: When did you first discover SmartMusic? What was your initial reaction?

LC: I first heard about SmartMusic maybe ten years ago. I believe it was through the magazine the Instrumentalist. Then in 2005 I saw Professor James Thompson (from the Eastman School of Music) using SmartMusic in his teaching and it was awesome! By 2007 I had become a serious SmartMusic user.

SY: What do you like best about SmartMusic?

LC: I like the accompaniment feature! Also the metronome and tuner functions.

SY: Do you personally use SmartMusic when you practice? If so, can you tell me what specific repertoire or features you use?

LC: Yes! I make great use of the accompaniment feature. My students and I have entered some of my personal music in Finale and saved this as SmartMusic accompaniments. I also use the Bordogni Etudes, practicing them with the mouthpiece. It really helps me and my students to become better trumpet players.

SY: Is there anything you’d like to say to other SmartMusic users or to music students in our audience?

LC: I think every student who has a personal computer should have SmartMusic. It's so inexpensive compared to what you will get!

With great testimonials like that, from such highly regarded performers, who needs a marketing department? No, wait, scratch that!

I’m very grateful to Lertkiat for his time and wonderfully positive attitude, which is also in evidence on his Facebook page and website, and in his playing, which you can hear and see in videos listed here.

As I mentioned in my last post, one of the greatest benefits the SmartMusic gradebook offers is the ability to easily manage student recordings and assessments. Before this can happen, however, students need to enroll, so they can receive assignments and submit them. Students can enroll on any computer that has an active SmartMusic subscription on it. Today we’ll see how easy it is to enroll with SmartMusic 2011.

First the student needs to click on “Login” (if they already have an account) or “Create Account,” where they simply provide requested information.

Next, the My Home screen appears, where the student selects “enroll.”

Because SmartMusic recognized them when they logged in, only the appropriate school(s) appear:

Which classes appear for their school is determined by their teacher: We’ll cover this process in a subsequent post. To enroll, students simply select the appropriate class(es).

After enrolling, the student will see an updated My Home page:

Hey this is cool!

To see their assignments, or for more information about a class, students simply click on that class – in this case, “Cub Band.”

I already have assignments? I just enrolled!

To open any assignment, just click on the assignment title.

That’s it – the student enrollment process for 2011. The goal was to make the process more clear and simple.

How did we do? Let us know by clicking on “Comments” below.

I can’t believe that the back-to-school season is here – I haven’t even been fishing yet. It feels like June was just yesterday.

If you’re like me, this time of year means big piles of paper, lots of emails to answer, phones ringing, and all sorts of chaos. To help, we’ve tried to make one aspect of this transition seamless for you.

We know that it’s not uncommon for district network staff to clean up your computers without you knowing about it. In the past, if this happened before you had a chance to remove your subscriptions, these subscriptions weren’t activated when you came back to school, and you’d have to call us to straighten things out. One more thing to do!

We’ve made several improvements to the SmartMusic activation server, including some to address this very issue. Today, if your computers are reimaged by your school, you can simply launch SmartMusic; we’ll see that it’s the same computer and automatically re-activate it for you!

Hopefully this does the trick for you. If not, drop us a quick line here using the same email address that you used to activate SmartMusic and we will get you up and running ASAP.

I hope the upcoming year is fruitful and filled with good music!

In last week’s blog I announced the release of SmartMusic 2011, which you can download here. While I have additional exciting news to share, first I’d like to continue where we left off by showing you a little more about SmartMusic 2011.

Both teachers and students now have a personalized Home page called My Home, which appears immediately upon logging in to SmartMusic. This is where you see what is going on in your class.

Below is an example of a teacher’s Home page. It offers easy access to everything related to the class: “Current Assignments,” “Practice Reports,” “Classes,” “Class Announcements,” “Method Book,” “What we’re playing” and “More Assignments.” Also note that you have easy access to all of the repertoire categories in the Left Navigation panel:

For those of you who’d rather not have my photo on your Home page,
rest assured you can use one of your own too: school pictures are a great resource!

Let’s take a look at what a student sees on his/her Home page. While similar to the teacher’s view, it includes important information which will help students (and parents) to be more involved, including the grades the student has received for each assignment:

What should I practice first, Mary Ann or First Suite in Eb?

Now for the latest exciting news I mentioned above: SmartMusic developers have also completed the new gradebook component, allowing you to create and send assignments for 2010-2011 school year.

How does it work?

After a student submits a completed SmartMusic assignment, the corresponding screenshot and audio recording are sent directly to the teacher’s gradebook. Here the teacher can hear and see the student’s work. Access to this documentation is a huge benefit when working on individualized instruction, grades, student portfolios, parent conferences, and any number of other tasks.

Anyone who, like me, remembers recording all your students and trying to organize boxes full of audio cassette tapes can instantly see the elegance of an electronic solution to that challenge alone!

The information is clearly presented: A legend that explains what each icon represents. Once you no longer need these reminders you can hide the legend for more screen space.

I’d like to point out two specific improvements regarding the view of the gradebook on the page. First, more students can be viewed at one time. Second, you can now view your gradebook by section [indicated in red below]: Woodwinds, Brass, Strings, Vocal, and Percussion – which I find really helpful.

All those trumpets getting an A? This must be a fake class!

I hope you’ve enjoyed this brief overview of SmartMusic 2011 and the corresponding gradebook, and that you will visit us again soon. In the next few weeks we plan to cover some additional aspects including Activation, Enrolling Students, How to Create Assignments, Presenting SmartMusic to Parents, the new SmartMusic Help System, and much more.

Let us know what other subjects you’d like us to cover by leaving a comment below. 

Cue the trumpets – SmartMusic 2011 is now available for immediate download. I am very excited about this new version, because I think it includes improvements that will result in an even wider acceptance of SmartMusic among students and teachers.

Just as any band director or musician can always find things they can improve upon past performances, SmartMusic’s development team studied what could be improved in SmartMusic. Working in cooperation with many SmartMusic teachers and students, SmartMusic 2011 was an unbelievable cooperative effort. The results not only look great, and better leverage current technology, the interface is also much clearer, consistent, and easy for anyone to use.

Of course, I want you to explore SmartMusic 2011 on your own but let me just highlight a few new features.

Below is the new Control Bar. Besides the new look (which in my opinion is pretty cool), notice how easy it is to access the different features. You might ask “What does Start take mean?” or “Where’s the Record button?” Well, you no longer have to select “Record” to record. Pressing “Start take” not only starts the music but also records the performance.

The Practice Tools have also been redesigned. Instead of accessing each component separately they all appear together:

Furthermore, the tuner is detachable and a tuning note can be selected from the drop-down menu:

The early reaction I’ve heard from teachers about SmartMusic 2011 has been very positive. I keep hearing comments like:

• I like the looks of it. My students will too!
• It just seems even easier to use.
• What an incredible upgrade.

Here are a few specific quotes from SmartMusic Advocate Art Greenburg:

"Happy to see that there is now an option to turn off the question about using a drum pad for drum parts!"

"My greatest compliments to to the programming staff. I love, really love the fact that now you can isolate a few measures on a line in the lesson books to practice. Just as I suggested. This is going to really help improve my teaching time. Rather than have to restart the line, now we can work on the rough spots.”

For a complete video overview of SmartMusic 2011, click here.

In an upcoming blog I’ll show you some of the exciting changes in creating and sending assignments.

Hopefully you will be as excited about SmartMusic 2011 as we are. Please let us know what you think by clicking on “Comments” below, and have a great school year!

Savvy SmartMusic teacher Asa Burk and MakeMusic's Dave Hawley at TBA.

The Texas Bandmasters Association Convention (TBA) is the largest annual state bandmasters' association in the country, with over 6,500 attendees and more than 600 industry-related exhibitors. MakeMusic Product Specialist Dave Hawley traveled to San Antonio last week to demonstrate SmartMusic and talk to music educators at TBA, and was kind enough to share some of his adventures with us.

Scott Yoho: How is SmartMusic received at TBA?
Dave Hawley: Texas is known for its strong band programs. I spoke to many teachers who were looking for a way to accelerate student learning, and they seemed to come in thinking SmartMusic could be the answer. There were very few people who came up and asked, “What is SmartMusic, I’ve never heard of it.” You’ll see that in some other states, but you hardly see that in Texas any more. More often we heard things like, “I understand what SmartMusic is, but how do I get started and what’s the best way to get my students started?”

SY: So Texas is different in this regard?
DH: Texas is unique, in part, because this is where we launched SmartMusic (then Vivace) in 1994, so SmartMusic isn’t something foreign and unfamiliar anymore. Some feel SmartMusic could work like an assistant, and many more educators are further along in implementing SmartMusic into their programs.

SY: What kinds of questions are teachers asking at the booth?
DH: Several educators explained that they wanted to move ahead with SmartMusic, but they had some students who had economic concerns (or dial-up Internet access), and they didn’t know how to move forward in the face of these barriers. As a result, we described how many students might use SmartMusic at home while the rest can use it in a school practice room. Real-life applications of how this works were popular topics.

SY: Were folks asking about SmartMusic 2011?
DH: Most of the people we spoke to were current SmartMusic users, who had heard about SmartMusic 2011 or had seen it on our screens and wanted to know what that was, and when they could get it. 

SY: What did you tell them?
DH: We encouraged folks to check at www.smartmusic.com/comingsoon -- you might be surprised what you find there!

I’d like to thank Dave for his time, and encourage you all to check out some additional photos from TBA on Facebook.

Share your TBA stories (or anything else SmartMusic–related) by clicking on “Comments” below.

Jim Jolley is a regular contributor on our SmartMusic Forum. He’s had some great success with SmartMusic over the years and generously shares his experiences with others. I recently spoke with Jim about his program and his success with SmartMusic.

James Lund: What instrument do you play, and if you had a chance to, would you pick a different one?

Jim Jolley: I am a trumpet player and I also play some French horn. If I’d had SmartMusic when I first started, I probably would have been a French horn player first.

JL: What is your school’s music program like?

JJ: I teach band at Center Hill Middle School in Olive Branch, Mississippi. Our school has 612 students and one quarter of all students (6-8th grade) are in band. The kids are great and work hard. Most of our beginner band uses SmartMusic and enjoys it. Next year, we are implementing it program-wide.

JL: How has SmartMusic changed your program?

JJ: One of the biggest problems with band is that the grading is subjective and not objective. Parents want to know why their kid isn't first chair or what can they do for their child. Now with SmartMusic, kids can "see" what they did wrong, listen to how they sound, and make proper corrections without a band director right next to them. The tools provided help greatly with student improvement. After all, isn't student improvement what we want?

JL: Can you share a recent student success story?

JJ: While teaching summer lessons this year, I showed a student (6th chair out of 7 alto saxes) how to use SmartMusic. Took about 10 minutes and I guided him with what he did well and what he did wrong. I asked him what he thought about it, he said, "Now I see what I did wrong and I can get better quickly. I love this!"

He showed up 10 minutes early for his next lesson, went straight to the practice room computer, and immediately started working. As I finished my other lesson and started with him, he told me to send him more stuff to do. Easiest summer lessons I ever taught and he won't be 6th chair for long.

I’d like to thank Jim for sharing with us today – and for all his kind help on the SmartMusic Forum.

Have you checked the forum  out yet? Let us know what you think by clicking on “Comments” below!

Laura Vaughan is a Missouri-based music educator and SmartMusic clinician with years of experience using SmartMusic with both voice and band students. Laura recently sent us an email highlighting her experiences demonstrating the upcoming SmartMusic 2011:

“I just wanted to share that yesterday I did a SmartMusic demo for more than 50 band camp kids at my college [Jefferson College in Hillsboro, MO]. I played my flute with a beta version of SmartMusic 2011. Five kids already had SmartMusic subscriptions at home, and about five others use it in their schools – none of the other students had seen it. To say they were ecstatic is an understatement! They liked the new tuner and practice tools setup, and LOVED the capability of looping in their method books. The new feature of clicking anywhere on the music for a start point is HUGE.

They were enthused about the recently played pieces being visible on the Home Screen, the graphics of seeing their 'books,’ and the other new graphics. I had extra brochures with me and they all took one. The kids who had been 'power users' previously were just blown away! They kept asking WHEN the new version would become available! The other music professionals in attendance had not seen SmartMusic for a few years and their unanimous comment was overwhelmingly, 'Every student in band should get a subscription!’

SmartMusic just keeps getting better and better! Thanks to all at MakeMusic who are making this happen!”

Thanks to Laura for her support and for allowing us to share her comments. The latest details on the upcoming release of SmartMusic 2011 can be found here.

Questions or comments? Please let us know by clicking on “Comments” below.