Most of us have had some type of music class at one time or another. The majority have experienced something in our earlier childhood education when the music teacher would visit the classroom with a plethora of instruments, a tuner, and an armful of music to teach. We learned about those funny black spots with flags sticking out of them, all sitting on or between a set of lines called the scale.
It was a whole new language. If you didn’t quite get the lesson back then, and wish you had, then you need to download See Music now. See Music is an iOS app that helps you learn how to read music. By leveraging the use of your device’s microphone, See Music presents different pieces for you to play or sing. It listens, and then it lets you know where you need to improve. It starts you off small and ends in a big way. It’s up to you how far you want to go.
See Music supports up to 6 instruments at a time, so music teachers can use it to help them reinforce what they’ve taught their students and provides instantaneous feedback for faster learning.
To start, there’s a tutorial to help you move your way around the app and understand better how to use it. I highly recommend going there first. There’s also a Metronome and a Tuner, so you go through all the steps you normally would with a teacher. The entire app mimics what a music teacher would do, so you know you are getting the guidance you need.
One part of the app is called the Music Composer. Here you can experiment at different levels: Note Trainer, Rhythmic Trainer, and Complete-Melody Trainer. You can mix and match and work your way through the various exercises to learn in a way that works best for you. If you are new to music, the best place to start is Note Trainer, as this will focus on basic notes and not on chords and harmonies, which involve more complicated sequences of notes.
I found the look and feel of the app to be easy to use. I especially liked the black background, which made it easy to read the music without straining the eyes. I also liked that you could set how many measures you wished to work with. The more complicated lessons go up to 8 measures. If you wish to start small, you can work on one measure, repeatedly.
What would be nice to have is the ability to record your lessons so you could remember how you did and why you got the feedback that you did. It may even help with tracking your progress to see problem areas, and how they may even be related to music genres.
Other than that, this app makes it super easy and convenient to learn and or practice sight reading, whether you are learning for the first time or practicing to audition for a choir. Download See Music today and hear what you’ve been missing.
