My Music Ed App List for iOS Devices - 2013 edition

Many of my students have mobile devices. It's what drove me to buying a Android smartphone and most recently, an iPod Touch. Now that I've had a bit of time to play with some of these apps that either my esteemed colleagues Alessandra diCenzo and David Story told me about or that I've stumbled upon, I can put a decent list together of music education apps for iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch.

Recording and Backing Track Apps for iOS

Garage Band for iPhone ($4.99) turns your iPad, iPhone and/or iPod touch into a collection of "touch instruments" and a full-featured recording studio. Want piano? Guitar? Drums? You can do it. You can even plug an electric guitar into you iThing to play through amps. Someone will have to let me know how well it works as I don't have an iPhone.

iReal b Music Book & Play Along ($7.99) is currently on my Android smartphone. However, I believe it was available for iOS devices first. What can I say about it? You get a mobile band with iReal b. Download the chord charts for over 1,200 songs available in the forums. Or, enter in the chord progression for any song, choose your instruments, tempo and style and play away. Instead of using a metronome, why not try practicing with a virtual band?

Note Reading, Theory and Ear Training Drills

Master in a Minute (FREE) is a fun music app for kids. It helps students develop their note reading skills. I like how it teaches intervallic reading. It has certainly been helping some of my students who are struggling with note reading. There used to be a full version, but it is no longer available in the App Store.

Music Reading Essentials ($2.99) has four sets of flash cards to choose from: notes, rhythms, intervals and symbols. Students can focus on one area or combine decks. The timer sure adds a bit of pressure. My students have been playing a round of this while waiting for their lesson.

Music Theory Pro ($4.99) has note naming games, key signatures and interval ear training. So far, I've noticed that it's better suited to my older beginners, intermediate and advanced students. Very slick design. I'll have to try the pro levels. I like how this app includes jazz chords and scales, altered dominants and extended chords. MTP is also available for Apple computers in the App store.

My Note Games! (FREE) was featured on BBC Click! and was nominated for a "Learning without Frontiers Innovation Award" in 2012. It has six games: Hear it, Play It; Play that Note, Play-a-Day!, Play-a-Carol!, Toonr the Tuner and Hear it, Note It. My beginner students enjoy it, although they don't get very far with the free version. I just bought the $6.99 upgrade to unlock all 18 levels..

Note Works Free (FREE) is for iPad. I was quite sad to see that I couldn't get it on my iPod Touch. It looked like pure fun when Alessandra showed it to a bunch of us at the 2013 CFMTA Convention. This game is designed to teach note recognition and improve sight reading skills. Your mission is to help Hungry Munchy catch each note as quickly as possible before it skitters off-screen. The full version has more bells and whistles (Note Works Full) for $4.99.

Rhythm Lab ($2.99) allows users to copy, save, or share any rhythm pattern as an image. You can send tapping results in an e-mail, create and print worksheets. My students and I haven't tried this app out yet

I have long recommended Musictheory.net to students and am glad that the creators have made a mobile version. Tenuto ($3.99) offers  fifteen customizable exercises to help you with chord recogniation, intervals and ear training. There are also musical calculators and twelve-tone matrices. They also have a Theory Lesson app for $2.99.

Metronome and Tempo Related Apps 

Metronome Ϟ (FREE) is what I have installed on my iPod Touch. It's simple and gets the job done. The "tap tempo" feature is greatly appreciated. Also, the practice timer is a neat. You can actually set it to hammer out the beats while you drill a trouble spot for one, two, three, four or five minutes.

I've just installed Tempo - Metronome with Setlists ($1.99). It has made the Top 100 List in the Music category.  There are five modes: Basic, Preset, Setlist, Practice and Gig. Each mode presents a different combination of functionalities optimized for the task at hand. I look forward to exploring this app.

Tempo SloMo (FREE) allows you to practice at your own pace. This is great not just for music students, but language and dancing students as well. Take a whatever you are working on and slow it down or speed up the audio track without affecting the pitch. I think this will become a popular app with my students, especially with their pop songs.

There are countless apps for music education. I'll update the list as I discover new apps. Feel free to suggest some of your favourite iOS apps for learning and playing music.

Next, I'll take a look at some Android apps for music education.

Student Post: Music iApps Review

My students occasionally do extra projects to earn more Maestro Bucks to spend at Maestro's Market. One such method is to write a review, be it a concert review or in this case, an app review. This is from one of my senior level students - Dylan: Pocket Drums I thought this was a very fun app, letting you play along to songs in your library or on your own. It is a 6-piece drum set. You can record your own drum loops, and then play along with them to make a very full sound. In conclusion: 5/5 stars Rhythm Pad When I played the pads, no sound came out. 0/5 stars Shazam This is a very fun app to play with, just hold it up to your speaker while it's playing a song (like from the iTunes store) and, if everyone's quiet, after a few seconds, it will show you what song it is. It's perfect for when you hear a song you want but don't know the name of it.  It's also linked with the iTunes store, so when it finds the song name, there is a little iTunes store button so you can buy the song. In conclusion: 4/5 stars Author's Note: For five stars, make it work for live piano performances. (-:

Metronome Android Apps

I recently moved into the 21st century as far as cellphone technology. Yes, you're right. I finally got onto the smartphone wagon.

I've been experimenting with a couple of free metronome apps for Android to help when I'm practicing music away from my piano (or sometimes, when I just want to hear something different at home). The first is Mobile Metronome. It's a nice basic metronome. You can adjust the instrument used to bang out the beats. I wound up uninstalling it because I wanted to find something that could handle hybrid meter.

I'm currently playing around with Metronome Beats. I was able to set it to play 6/8 time. It works nicely. You can also customize what sounds you hear. You can also customize the following features: emphasize the first beat of the bar, adjust the normal beat, the pitch of the beat subdivisions and the length of the sound. You can even create custom sounds to use for keeping time.Both Android apps have a "Tap Tempo" feature.I'm still on the lookout for an app that can handle beat subdivision for hybrid meter well. Stay tuned!