Community reviews for SmartMusic

The app cannot process staccato at all as well as eighth notes. I let Smartmusic handle my third grade average percentage on easy tolerance and class average was 6%. I listened to the recordings and found little to no wrong notes or tempos. It cost me lots of money to set up their accounts. I wasted around 400 dollars on this.

This tool is very bad in my opinion, it is horrible at picking up sounds even with a RODE external mic, all my students got a 64% on a song we have been learning for 5 months.

This program is a good supplemental teaching tool for a music student's progress and additional practice. It is useful with the many different instruments and parts of a song that are accessible. It can help students practice and count their beats more thoroughly and helps see the progress outside of the classroom. The only issue is that of the sensitivity sensor. Sometimes student experience SmartMusic saying their playing is wrong when it is correct. Other times, the program does not pick up the sounds that are supposed to be picked up. However, it certainly does help monitor student progress and see their improvement.

I doubt that my students learned anything. It has been a horrible resource. One time I assigned my students homework on smart music and the next week they came in and they were all playing wrong notes. I gave it a second chance but the same outcome.

My overall opinion is that SmartMusic is NOT worth the price.

When students practice with SmartMusic on a band piece, they are hearing all the parts, in tune, with good tone, correct rhythm, good articulation, good technique, good balance and blend, and good musicianship as if they were rehearsing with a collegiate or professional group. When grading, I always tell my students that I give the final grade because SmartMusic can only grade correct notes and correct rhythms and even then, it isn't always a true representation of a student's performance. This year (2013-2014) SmartMusic had more server issues where they had to be offline and students couldn't access the library. Students used to be able to submit assignments from any computer that has a SmartMusic subscription but now they may only submit assignments on a computer designated as a "practice room" computer. If students want a subscription at home, they must purchase a subscription for every student in their household (there is a small discount for a second subscription). Overall, it is a great product that I will continue to use and I believe it is good for grades 5-12 and post-secondary even.

I have found this to program to be essential in my classroom because it gives me an opportunity to hear individual students' progress regularly without taking up class time. It is great for students too because they are able to get immediate feedback about what they played incorrectly and be able to fix problems on their own. Much like playing a video game, students seem to be motivated to continue practicing until they get a good score. In theory, I love everything about the intentions of this product, HOWEVER, I have found a lot of bugs and flaws in the designing of the product. I have had to contact customer services many times, and although they are very responsive, most of the time the problem stems from the development of the product. But the advantages of using this software still outweigh these inconveniences and I will continue to use the product and hope that as they keep working on improving the software, it will one day do everything the way it should.

SmartMusic is a great way to monitor student growth of various musical concepts on an individual basis. I like the fact that the content on SmartMusic relates directly to my curriculum and gives me a means by which I can track how each individual student is progressing on the standards without having to take time in class/rehearsal time to test students individually. It is a wonderful teaching tool if the technology and funding is available to utilize it. As a teacher, if you have an accurate method by which to track how well each student is learning and progressing, it can better lead your instruction. I can go back and listen to each of the recordings at my leisure, and the students have the ability to further practice at home as well. They receive immediate feedback on their singing as it shows on the screen whether they sung the correct notes and rhythms. Students also receive an immediate score that lets them know how well they did.

Good product idea for band students and teachers. The cost is high for the utility. My kids used it at first, but soon stopped using as instrument practice became more routine.