Interactive Musician Software Review

Kelly Demoline

Kelly Demoline is a music educator and president of Kelly’s Music & Computers.  In addition to his K-12 teaching experience, Mr. Demoline has also taught Music Technology for Brandon University along with many music education organizations throughout North America.  Mr. Demoline can be reached by e-mail at kelly@kellysmusicandcomputers.com

Kelly’s Music & Computers provides a broad range of music technology solutions for music educators and can be found on the web at http://kellysmusicandcomputers.com or toll free 1-888-562-8822.

Alfred's Interactive Musician is an aural skills software program that includes pitch training, sight reading and rhythmic exercises.  With a wide range of exercises and levels, Interactive Musician will help musicians of all abilities improve their aural skills.  The student tracking options and customization of exercises offer the flexibility and power required by music teachers.

To create Interactive Musician, Alfred actually revised and updated three older programs, Play It By Ear, Note Play and Rhythm Ace and combined them into one program.  Although you can find most of the basic exercises offered by Interactive Musician in other programs, the real strength of Alfred's new package is demonstrated in the rhythm exercises that offer two handed rhythmic training plus the ability to customize your own rhythms for drill and practice.  Given the range of levels and exercises included, Interactive Musician is an incredible value.

Interactive Musician is divided into three main areas of practice: Pitch Training, Sight-Reading and Rhythm.  Each area of practice has a number of exercises, each with at least 50 different levels.  The on-line help shows the specifics of each level for each exercise in the program.  This can be especially helpful for teachers who want to determine where students should start in the program.  In addition to the preset levels, most exercises allow you to customize the activity to practice specific skills.

Students log into the program so that their progress and scores can be tracked.  Once logged in, students can select an exercise to start practicing.  The exercise screen contains a slide to control the level and tempo, along with an ever-present help icon that will offer both written and video help on using the program.  The video tutorials can be especially helpful for beginners, and makes using the program very easy.  Most exercises use a MIDI keyboard, but Interactive Musician also includes an on-screen keyboard, should you not have a keyboard available. 

Interactive Musician keeps a tally during each exercise of the number correct and incorrect.  For most exercises, if you provide the correct answer, the word "Correct" flashes in green, and the program goes on to the next question without requiring any further interaction.  This is an important feature, as it ensures students are focused on developing their aural skills and not on figuring out which button to press to get the next question.

Wrong answers are greeted with one of a variety of very short sound effects, followed by the words "Try Again" in red.  Repeated mistakes are treated in the same fashion, but eventually Interactive Musician displays the correct answer.  However, even after students are given the answer, they have to enter it before they can continue to the next question.  This approach helps to ensures that students pay attention to their mistakes.

Exercises

Single Note Exercise

In the single note exercise, Interactive Musician plays a pitch and you play it back to help develop absolute pitch.  Before starting the exercise, it plays and shows the range of possible notes to choose from for the level you are working on.  In level one, you choose from middle C or C an octave above.  Level 2 adds G, and each additional level adds another pitch, while often removing a previous one.  For example, Level 8 only involves C, D and G while Level 11 works on C, F and G.  In fact, it isn’t until Level 57 that you encounter an entire octave, and even then it is only diatonic.  After Level 60, chromatic tones are introduced, and by Level 100, the entire range of the keyboard is covered.

Although the Single Note Exercise levels have been well sequenced, it is unfortunate that it is mostly focused on C Major.  Chromatic tones are introduced, but the exercises still tend to focus around the C Major scale. 

Interval Exercise

The Interval Exercise is designed to develop relative pitch.  The program plays two pitches together, showing the first note on the staff.  You must play the second pitch on the keyboard.  As with the Single Note Exercise, there are 100 levels.  In addition to the 100 preset levels, however, you can use the "customize intervals" feature to pick specific intervals you want to practice.  The range of notes used can also be customized.  By default, the same root is used for each interval.  Selecting "Use Any Note for Root note" in the Miscellaneous Window found in the Advanced Options menu will cause a different root note to be used for each interval in the exercises.

Although the Interval Exercise offers the flexibility to customize the intervals and range and to vary the root note, you cannot choose to arpeggiate the intervals or use intervals larger than an octave.

Melody Exercise

The Melody Exercise plays a short melody that you are required to play back.  The melodies are all quarter notes, and rhythm is not taken into consideration on playback.  The starting pitch is shown on the keyboard, and you can choose to repeat the melody if required.  By default, you are allowed an unlimited number of repeats, but you can set the maximum allowed in the Miscellaneous Options window.  There are 140 levels available, and while most are diatonic, there are modal and chromatic melodies as well.  A number of levels even use tonalities other than C Major.  Customizations available include adjusting the length of the melody up to 10 pitches, and forcing the exercises to be scale based. 

If you make a mistake on playback, the software immediately starts playback again after showing a "Try Again" message in red.  Fortunately, this can be interrupted by making another attempt.  There is no way to ask the program to only show your errors afterwards, however.

Scale Exercise

The 50 levels in the Scale Exercise section require you to play back scales.  The scale section is quite comprehensive, and allows you to customize the scales used, including modes, whole time, diminished and overtone scales.  Customizing the range allows you to determine which keys are used.  Only ascending scales are used for this exercise.

Chord Exercise

The Chord Exercise requires you to play back chords.  If you don't have a MIDI keyboard, they can be played one note at a time using the on-screen keyboard.  With 85 levels, Interactive Musician covers triads, sevenths, ninths, elevenths and thirteenths in all inversions and all varieties, including major, minor, diminished, augmented, half diminished, and more.  The Customize Chords option is very useful as you can choose the specific chords and inversions you wish to practice.  Additionally, each of the 85 levels can be practiced using each of the types of chords - triads, 7ths, 9ths, 11ths and 13ths.  Unfortunately, I couldn't find any way to include both triads and sevenths in the same custom exercise.  Although you can choose chords and inversions from any of the sections, when you begin the exercise you have to decide to practice triads, 7ths, 9ths, 11ths or 13ths, so you can't practice a combination.

Sight Reading

After playing a short tune based on the notes that will be used in the exercise, Interactive Musician shows two measures of notes on the screen.  After you play both measures on the MIDI keyboard, it shows the next two measures.  The 60 included levels range from basic one hand exercises, to complicated two handed chromatic exercises with independent parts.  Exercises with chords and melodies are also included, but you cannot customize the sight reading exercises.

At first glance the sight reading exercises hold a lot of potential, with the levels well organized to help students progress.  Unfortunately, the exercises do not account for rhythm, and in fact, the instructions encourage you to play the pitches as quickly as possible.  Although there are rhythmic exercises in the software, I still prefer to instruct my students that they must play the sight reading melodies in time.  Unfortunately, the software won't adjust their score if they don't play rhythmically, so it is important to follow-up with students to ensure they are doing so.

Rhythm Reading

The Rhythm Reading exercise requires you to playback the rhythm on the screen.  By default, it displays and plays the rhythm first, but this feature can be turned off.  After a one measure count-in, you then perform the rhythm on your MIDI keyboard, or on the Shift key on the computer keyboard.  Interactive Musician grades you on your accuracy (the attack) and sustain, so it is important that you hold the shift or MIDI key the exact duration of the note.  As most other ear training programs don't bother assessing the duration, this is a great feature.  Additionally, the software displays a graph, under each note, showing the correct attack and release points compared to your performance.  If you are a little late, or hold the note too long, the program visually represents that for you, making it easy to understand where you need to improve.  Another very useful feature is the ability to listen to your recorded performance and compare it to the correct performance by clicking the "Review" button.  This is especially useful for helping students understand why they are scoring poorly.

In addition to the 60 levels included, you can also customize your own options by selecting which rhythmic values "must" be used and which ones "should" be used.  The time signature and exercise length can be controlled, and you can choose to use syncopation.  All rhythmic values and rests up to sixteenths are included, as are ties, dots, double dots and even quarter note triplets.  Interactive Musician then creates random exercises based on the rhythms you specified to be used.

The Rhythm Reading Two Hands exercise is identical to the regular Rhythm Reading, but offers two lines of rhythms to be played at once, using both hands.  If you are using a MIDI keyboard, the right hand reads the top line and plays any note above middle C, while the left hand reads the bottom line and strikes any key below middle C.  You can also use the right Shift key and left CTRL key on your computer keyboard instead.  The customize option is incredibly versatile in the two handed exercises, since you can independently configure the rhythms used for each hand.  The review and assessment features are identical to those in the one handed rhythm exercise.  Interactive Musician is the only software that I am aware of that includes the ability to practice two handed rhythms, making the program worth the purchase price for this feature alone!

Rhythm Dictation

As expected, Interactive Musician plays a rhythm, and you notate it on the screen.  A palette of notes on the screen allows you to enter the rhythm one note at a time, starting from the beginning.  Unfortunately, you can't work backwards, so I encourage students to write the rhythm down first, since they are more likely to remember the end than the beginning.  Once they have used the "Listen" button to listen enough times and write it down, they can then enter the complete rhythm into the computer.  Unlike the Rhythm Reading exercise, there isn't an option for students to hear their version of the rhythm before clicking the "Score It!" button to see if they are correct.

Custom Rhythm

The Custom Rhythm and Custom Two Hand exercises are two other activities that are worth the price of the program alone.  Both allow you to create your own rhythms and then test yourself on them. Unlike the customization available in Rhythm Reading, the Custom section allows you to enter specific rhythms that you want to practice, including two handed rhythms.  You can also hear the rhythms performed by the computer, and the same comparison features found in the Rhythm Reading exercises are available to assess your performance.

The only disappointment with these modules is there doesn't appear to be anyway to save the rhythm for future use.  Although you can create multiple rhythms for use in one session, once you exit the program, the rhythms must be re-entered the next time you start the program.

Interactive Musician will work on virtually any Mac or PC and with any soundcard and MIDI keyboard.  It includes the ability to change the instrument sounds, and even includes its own built in software synthesizer, should you find that the MIDI sounds provided by your on-board soundcard are not suitable or introduce too much delay.

In addition to the inexpensive student edition, an Educator version is available that allows teachers to create custom tests, print a class list and export or import student records.  A network version is also available for installing the software on multiple computers and tracking the student progress from one central computer.

Alfred's Interactive Musician offers a variety or exercises at various levels to help students of all abilities independently develop their aural skills.  With a wide range of exercises, including a unique two hand rhythm exercise, Interactive Musician is an excellent value, despite a few short comings.