Take 7
Take 7 provides a comprehensive accompaniment app for violin, viola, cello, double bass, recorder, bassoon, clarinet, flute, oboe, saxophone, trumpet, horn, trombone, tuba, guitar and bass guitar.
It allows users to play along to full-screen sheet music, accompanied by a backing track with mutable solo lines and accompaniment – and, with headphones on, to record their performance. This recording is then assessed by the app, which displays markings on intonation or rhythmic mistakes, and then takes users through practice loops, repeating phrases, to encourage players to work on phrases they haven't quite mastered. The music can also be slowed down for practice, and the volume levels of backing track and optional metronome are adjustable. The app also tracks users’ actual practice, incentivising regular playing by displaying the user's unbroken ‘streak’ of daily practice.
Users purchase repertoire from an online shop, outside of the app – for example, the two Arban trumpet volumes are available for £6.84 each; and a set of four violin Grade 1 songs (Take 7's graded range is ‘based on a progression in eight levels similar to the British system used by Trinity College and ABRSM’, but doesn't replicate either) costs £2.40. Repertoire is being added all the time, as a busy News section demonstrates.
Backing tracks are such that it's not an ideal partner for working on tone, for example – but this could and should be supplemented by the usual listening to professional recordings, always a useful process. For getting notes under the fingers, though, this is a really useful tool for out-of-lesson practice. www.take7music.com
ABRSM
ABRSM's Sight-Reading Trainer
ABRSM offers a wide range of apps to help players through its exams.
These include the Sight-Reading Trainer (£4.99 iOS and Android), which is aimed at pianists at Grades 1-5. It aims to help ‘develop the skills to quickly spot the key features, patterns and characteristics in music’. It uses games of four types: ‘Rhythm match’, helping pupils to identify key rhythms in a piece; ‘Pitch patterns’, encouraging close examination of a musical line and recognising recurrences; ‘Quick fire five’, where a piece is displayed for 30 seconds and five questions are asked about its key features; and ‘What's the difference’, a spot-the-difference game which again aims to help with good musical comprehension.
The Aural Trainer (£7.99, iOS only), is available in Lite (with in-app purchases) and full versions, available separately for Grades 1-5 and 6-8. It is not designed to replace conventional approaches to aural practice, say ABRSM, but to supplement them. ‘It allows personal practice between lessons, without access to a piano, wherever and whenever the user wishes.’ It includes exercises focusing on pulse and metre, musical memory, sight-singing, musical description and analysis, using material is based on ABRSM's exams.
Speedshifter (free for desktop users, available in Lite and Full versions with in-app purchases for iOS and Android) is an all-round useful tool for practice at different tempos: load an accompaniment in a common audio filetype, and the app can slow it down for slow practice – particularly useful for outside lessons, rooms with no piano or teachers whose piano skills aren't what they might like best!
ABRSM's Scales Trainer (£9.99, iOS only), aims ‘to tackle the boredom and repetitiveness often associated with typical scales practice’. For piano and violin students at Grades 1-5, it includes a recording of every scale and arpeggio (which can be slowed down for practice purposes), and it allows users to record their attempts, encouraging critical reflection and highlighting those particular keys which might require extra work. It also includes the ‘Scales Trainer band’, which can play along to scales in a variety of styles.
ABRSM also produces several Practice Partner apps, for piano, violin, woodwind and singing. Across various instruments and grades, these provide for a range of practice techniques, including slowed audio tracks, expert performances, the ability to loop specific passages. Available on iOS and Android, free with in-app purchases of materials. gb.abrsm.org/apps
Tido
Tido takes a decidedly more intellectual approach to the opportunities that score reading technology brings to private music practice. Specifically for pianists it aims to ‘revitalise your practice’ – and not only does it listen to your performance for accurate page-turns and allow on-screen annotation for fingerings and dynamics, it also includes professional recordings with adjustable tempo.
There are also performances and masterclasses from top-class piano professionals, allowing to users to watch performances in three separate closeup views, find out how professionals approach certain repertoire and techniques, and gather a wealth of background information on pieces.
Music collections include Piano Masterworks, covering famous works for intermediate and advanced players (Grade 4 and above); Popular Piano with more mainstream repertoire; and Educational Piano, which includes exam board repertoire, music from composers including Pam Wedgwood and Paul Harris, and technique and musicality exercises. www.tido-music.com
Trinity Rock and Pop
Trinity Rock and Pop's app (free, with in-app purchases, for iOS and Android), takes a slightly simpler approach, but is no less effective for that. Songs can be purchases across the Rock and Pop grades, and the app allows each individual part – drums, bass, guitars one and two, and vocals – to be faded up or down, for the song itself to be played slower or faster, and at different pitches.
The available songs are directly linked to Trinity's Rock and Pop grades and cost £0.99 each, with eight-song grade bundles costing £3.99. A simple and effective approach to providing backing tracks for every Rock and Pop examinee. trinityrock.trinitycollege.com/app
