The new Annotations feature can be accessed in Compose and is intended to be used by students through Assignments in Practice—opening up a new line of communication between teacher and student! Teachers can leave helpful notes, markings, highlights, and even brief recordings for students to access as they practice to further enhance and personalize the music learning experience.   

Mark or emphasize accidentals, key signatures, or anything else you want to make sure students see

Demonstrate appropriate ways to mark music, reinforce accidentals, remind about the key signature, and more. Mark things the same way you would during class time to maintain consistency. The highlighter tool and free drawing tool allow you to mark up the music as you see fit. 

Record a stylistic example for student reference

Make a brief recording to demonstrate style or pitch with your voice or an instrument. Hearing an audible example is so powerful for students as they develop their ears. Since recording time is limited (30 seconds), we recommend recording brief examples that are just 1-2 measures long at a time. 

Record a verbal direction or tip for student reference 

Use the recording tool to record a brief verbal message for students that might include instructions or appropriate reminders. This is your opportunity to add your personal teacher voice to assignments! Do you have a special chant to review key signatures? How about other class-specific reminders? These and more can all be briefly recorded to share with students. You can even record yourself counting a rhythm in your exact counting system. There are so many possibilities here to bring your voice home to your students while they practice. 

Leave quick reminders to students about concepts you have been focusing on in class

Bring another dimension of your classroom to students while they practice by adding written notes of reminders in the same way they would be presented in your classroom. Do you define staccato notes as “bouncy” or have an inside joke with your class about “hippo style vs. light feather style”? Written annotations are the perfect place to make a call to these very relatable reminders for your students! You can leave a text comment that viewers must click on to reveal or include the text directly on the page with notation. 

More Annotations Tips

• At this time, Annotations are only visible to students who have been assigned your piece from Compose; simply opening in Practice from Compose will not display any Annotations. 
• Easily resize or reposition any Annotations by clicking and dragging. 
• Customize the font, colors, and more on your Annotations with the tool palette.  
• The Annotations tool palette has its own “undo” and “redo” buttons, separate from the Compose menu items found in the Edit menu. 
• Entering in Annotations while viewing a specific part (rather than the full score) will ensure that the placement in the music is accurate and that students see the correct annotations for their part. 

Get more details about how to use the new Annotations feature in this knowledge base article. 

The post Take Your Music Instruction to the Next Level with Annotations on MakeMusic Cloud appeared first on MakeMusic.

We’ve had teachers like you on our minds as we have recently made helpful updates to Units and the Assignment process. Here are the details to help you make the most out of these essential tools and gain back a little extra time in your day. 

Why use Units?  

The two main uses for Units are to assign multiple items to students at once and to organize your assignments for easier access in the future. 

Explore your Units and Assignments by selecting the Assignments item in the Classroom menu. 

On this page you will find two tabs at the top: Units and All. In the Units tab you’ll find, you guessed it, your Units! The All tab is where all of your Assignments live—new feature: easily sort and filter through all your Assignments with the latest update.    

Pro Tip: Assignments can only be placed into one Unit at a time, BUT you can easily duplicate Assignments to place in different Units. Duplicating assignments and slightly adjusting their parameters is a quick and efficient way to build Units like scale pass offs or tempo increases!  

Units are groups of (up to 20) existing assignments. If you have something in mind that you’d like to add to a Unit, you’ll need to first create an Assignment before you can add it. 

You’ll find the menu items to be very user-friendly as you can easily add, remove, assign, reorder, and more within your Unit.  

When you are ready to Assign from your Unit, you can select the Assign unit button. By default, every Assignment from the selected Unit will be included, but you can use the Select all checkbox and make individual selections based on your needs. 

You can read in more detail about using Units in this knowledge base article. 

Assignment basics 

You can create an assignment from titles in our Music Catalog, your Compose files, or Sight Reading Studio template exercises. 

Once you create a few Assignments on your own you’ll start to feel more and more confident! Just like music, a little practice can go a long way. 

From the Music Catalog: when you find a title you’d like to assign you can look for the clipboard icon (found in several places both with and without the word “Assign”) and click on it to begin the assignment creation process. 

 

Pro Tip: Name your Assignment in a way your future self will be able to understand! You can save time in the future by thoughtfully and consistently naming Assignments and then organizing them in Units.

Any instructions that you add will appear to students whenever they open your Assignment, so you should be thoughtful here as well. 

Select Preview and customize to define measures and tempos for each instrument/voice. 

It’s easy to customize to your needs in the Rubric and Settings sections. By default, MakeMusic Cloud will automatically grade your assignments. If you would rather listen to each new submission before confirming a grade, select the Custom Rubric option. You can read more detailed instructions in this knowledge base article. 

You’re almost finished! When you click the Next button, your Assignment template will be saved (and could be added to a Unit even before you send it to students) and you will be prompted to select which classes/students should receive it. When selecting students, use the checkboxes to select and the arrows next to the Name and Instrument headers to re-order in a way that makes most sense to you. 

Assignments can be sent immediately or scheduled for a future date! 

Remember the All tab on the Assignments page? Every assignment template that you create (whether you assign it or not) can be found on this page. It’s easier than ever to find the previously created assignment you’re looking for with the new sort and filtering options found at the top of this All tab. 

Pro Tip: Keep your students’ families informed about upcoming Assignments by inviting them to enroll in Weekly Highlights Emails! In addition to Assignment information, parents and guardians can enjoy other helpful insights to their child’s musical progress. Bonus: once teachers upload parent/guardian email addresses, no further teacher action is required—MakeMusic Cloud will handle the email updates for you! 

Remember that students can leave comments when they submit an assignment, and you can comment back! Be sure to take advantage of this 1:1 communication opportunity to give thoughtful and individualized feedback. We recommend starting the conversation with your instructions in the Assignment—can you ask a question for them to answer in their comment box or begin a thought process for them to finish? This practice will result in even more student engagement, construction of thoughtful practice habits, and a great opportunity for valuable individual feedback from you! 

The post Units and Assignments Updates appeared first on MakeMusic.

To get started, simply create a MakeMusic Cloud account (completely free, no credit card required), or login to your account if you already have one. Once you login, you will be able to access Sight Reading Studio by selecting the corresponding icon from the sidebar.

Get Started Today

If you are unfamiliar with Sight Reading Studio, this application makes it easy to generate unlimited music for sight reading practice. There is also built-in assessment that provides feedback as you play along to your piece.

Please note that this only applies to individual Sight Reading Studio subscriptions. This means that while you will have access to the core features of the application, you will not be able to assign music or create a Sight Reading Studio class.

If you are interested in learning more about these features, we encourage you to request a platform trial:

Request a Platform Trial

Frequently Asked Questions

How long will Sight Reading Studio be free?

All individual Sight Reading Studio access will be free until June 30th. To access Sight Reading Studio, you simply need to create a free MakeMusic Cloud account (or login to your existing account) and navigate to Sight Reading Studio from the sidebar.

Will I be charged afterwards?

No. We do not collect credit card information and you will never be charged unless you choose to purchase a subscription at the conclusion of the promotion.

Am I getting the full Sight Reading Studio application, or a demo version with limited features?

You will have access to the full version of Sight Reading Studio for individuals. The only features you will not have access to are those typically included with the MakeMusic Cloud subscription, such as the ability to create classes in the application and assign Sight Reading Studio exercises to students. If you are interested in these features, please request a platform trial or begin a MakeMusic Cloud subscription.

The post Sight Reading Studio Is Free for a Limited Time appeared first on MakeMusic.

MakeMusic Cloud’s Weekly Highlights Emails feature opens a new line of communication about a child’s musical progress to their supporting parent or guardian. 

Supporting adults who enroll to receive their child’s Weekly Highlights Email will receive a few helpful messages about encouraging their child musically, tips on how to assist their child with MakeMusic Cloud, and will be reminded of how important their presence is in their child’s musical journey. Additionally, each week they will receive a personalized Highlights Email to give them insights into the music their child is playing, how much they are practicing, what assignments are upcoming, and more! 

These Weekly Highlights emails are intended to be conversation starters for parents and guardians to use in supporting their child’s music education. We hope to empower parents and guardians to play a bigger role in their child’s musical journey which will, in turn, support busy music educators.

It’s easy to invite parents and guardians to receive helpful weekly highlights emails! 

To get started, teachers can invite parents and guardians to receive weekly highlights for their child. On the new Manage Parent Emails page, teachers will be prompted to add a parent or guardian email address for each student enrolled in their MakeMusic Cloud class. Teachers can add addresses manually or via a CSV upload, and, up to 6 addresses can be added for each student! 

Teachers can begin the invitation process from their Class Details page (the same place you would visit to add students to your class):

Alternately, teachers can visit their Admin Classroom page (requires the user to be logged in) and select the new Invite parents icon next to the class of their choosing to further streamline the process.

Once a parent/guardian has been invited, teachers can see their invitation status and even resend the invitation if needed. Parents/guardians must accept the invitation to be enrolled in their child’s personalized Weekly Highlights Email. 

TIP: To get a better parent/guardian “subscribe” rate, we recommend personally notifying the parents/guardians in your class before you send the invites. Giving the parents/guardians this notice that you’ll be sending them an invite to subscribe to their child’s weekly progress reports will make it more likely that they see and open the invite email.

After entering the parent/guardian email addresses into MakeMusic Cloud, teachers can gain a little time back and let us automate weekly progress updates for you!

We’re excited to connect music educators, students, and now supporting adults with this new feature! 

Learn more details about how this feature works in this knowledge base article.

Try out all of the benefits of using MakeMusic Cloud free with a 30-day Platform Trial. Perfect for teachers who want to experience the power of MakeMusic Cloud alongside their students, Platform Trials include both trial student and teacher accounts.

Request a Platform Trial

The post Weekly Highlights Emails: Strengthen the Connection Between Home and the Music Classroom appeared first on MakeMusic.

Your passion for music fuels us. The following feature updates from 2023 were requested by users like you. Thank you for the input to help MakeMusic Cloud continue growing and improving into a product that helps fuel your passions.

2023 User Requested Updates 

🎵 Assigner Improvements – the assignment process received a MAJOR upgrade 💪

🎵 Assignment Notification Emails now alert students to newly assigned/reassigned content 

🎵 Ungraded Assignments – rubrics are now optional 

🎵 Music Catalog Search Improvements: 🔎 preview before you open music, and choose from multiple sorting options when viewing search results

🎵 Content Manager improvements: now you can edit and delete content that is used as an assignment

🎵 Video Recording in Assignments – 🎥 the option to include video recording in assignments allows teachers and students to gain more performance insights than ever before 

🎵 Low Frequency and Percussive Assessment Improvements

🎵 Now there is a direct Join URL instead of “copy class code” on the Class Details page

🎵 Instrument names are now displayed next to student names on the roster when assigning

🎵 The grading calendar now defaults to the current grading period

🎵 Assignment names now freeze to the top in the Gradebook  

🎵 Octave agnostic assessment is an available option again 

🎵 BONUS 13th user requested update just released this week: Save a Take! This feature allows users to save for later or submit a take.

Other MakeMusic Cloud Updates

Our team’s also stayed busy working on a variety of additional projects and initiatives this year. Below you’ll find a few of the highlights. 

🎵 Sight Reading Studio, our newest tool that generates unlimited music for sight reading, was released! 

🎵 Power Up! Returns for season 2 with a focus on individual instrument tone and includes special guest, Tyler S. Grant 

🎵 New Foundations series (Brian Balmages and Fred Flowerday) releases put the fun in fundamentals: Mega Foundations, Spooky Foundations, Festive Foundations

🎵 Rostering updates: rostering is available with Canvas, Schoology, Google Classroom, and CSV upload. Additionally, users now have the ability to roster from multiple LMS classrooms. 

🎵 Fons, the automated scheduling and payment platform for appointment-based business joined the MakeMusic Family!

🎵 Multi-Year Subscription Discounts

🎵 MakeMusic Connect and events around the country allowed us to interact with YOU! Join us at an upcoming event 📆

The list of publishing partners exclusive to MakeMusic Cloud continues to grow—we’re thrilled to include their titles as part of our comprehensive Music Catalog! 

Our Repertoire Development team has added over 1 million 🤯 measures to MakeMusic Cloud this year! This detail-oriented team values quality and accuracy so that the titles you rely upon are input correctly and sound amazing with the professional accompaniments you love! 

Let us know what you’d like to see in the expansive MakeMusic Cloud Music Catalog by filling out this quick Repertoire Request form. 

Wishing you a happy holiday season—we look forward to making music together in 2024!

The post MakeMusic Cloud’s 2023: Wrapped appeared first on MakeMusic.

You may notice that our My Takes menu options have changed slightly, but you can still delete, download (previously “save”), and submit. The new Save button will save the take that you select to the Gradebook without submitting so that you can come back to it later. 

Here’s what happens when you select the new Save button:

When you return to the piece to practice later, you’ll see a reminder at the top of your saved take score to reference:

Selecting the icon next to the Currently Saved score will take you to the Gradebook where you can listen to your previously saved take. When more takes are recorded, saving a new take will override the previously saved one.

It’s important to note that a saved take is not a submitted assignment and that teachers cannot see what students have saved, only what they have submitted.

This exciting new feature will encourage students to continue to practice in the days leading up to assignment due dates—they can continue to work on beating their highest score!

Read more about the technical details of this user-requested feature in this Save a Take knowledge base article.

The post Feature Update – Save a Take appeared first on MakeMusic.

The day has finally arrived—Sight Reading Studio, the newest application from MakeMusic, is available now! 

Sight Reading Studio makes it easy to quickly craft automatically-generated sight reading exercises based on a wide variety of options. Musicians can then perform the exercises and receive real-time assessment and feedback as they play.

But creating a sight reading exercise is more than just generating a random collection of notes. What makes Sight Reading Studio truly unique is how tuneful the music is. Whether you’re creating an exercise for a single instrument or an entire ensemble, you can be sure that the music will look and sound great. 

This new app is available as a standalone subscription, and is included with all Teacher, Student, or All Access subscriptions to MakeMusic Cloud (replacing Sight Reading Builder). 

Sight Reading Studio is an affordable tool for individuals and teachers alike. The breakdown of pricing is as follows:

• Individual Sight Reading Studio Subscription: $19.99 per year.
• Student Sight Reading Studio Subscription (Fewer than 20 students): $19.99 per year.
• Student Sight Reading Studio Subscription (20 or more students): $4.99 per year.

Get Started Today

Whether you’re an individual, a music student, or a music teacher, Sight Reading Studio makes sight reading materials easy to create and fun to practice. 

Sight reading for the classroom

For a developing music student, practicing sight reading is a lot like eating vegetables—an important but sometimes unpleasant experience. But it doesn’t have to be.

Sight Reading Studio will spark passion in your students by making practice a fun and interactive experience. Have your students open a sight reading exercise in the Practice app and they’ll get instant feedback on the accuracy of their pitch, tempo, and rhythm. They’ll even receive a score based on how well they played – making grading assignments a breeze.

Sight Reading Studio is also a fantastic tool to use to prep for an upcoming festival, or for the AP exams. The best part? Sight Reading Studio is available for as little as $4.99 when purchased in bulk (20 or more students).

Get Started Today

Sight reading for the individual

Sight reading is a critical skill for musical independence, but as an individual performer, sight reading can be particularly challenging to practice. Constantly finding new materials takes time (and often money), and when you do find exercises, you may not have anyone to tell you if you’re playing correctly.

That’s where Sight Reading Studio comes in. With Sight Reading Studio, you can tailor the music to your needs. You can customize each exercise to be specific for your instrument, and to use particular key and time signatures, rhythmic patterns, and more.

With the built-in practice feature, you can generate an exercise, connect a microphone, and receive real-time feedback on your performance as you play along. You’ll even be able to see which notes you hit perfectly in pitch and rhythm, and which ones you can improve on. 

And at just $19.99 for an entire year, Sight Reading Studio is a budget-friendly option to improve your sight reading skills and overall musicianship.

Get Started Today

The post Sight Reading Studio Available Now appeared first on MakeMusic.

Expansive Music Catalog 

The depth of the MakeMusic Cloud Music Catalog is incredibly comprehensive and covers genres from pop to festival-appropriate and everything in between. Our repertoire development process is second to none and our dedicated team works to ensure that details even as small as line breaks are consistent with the print products that you rely upon.

With more and more titles exclusive to MakeMusic Cloud becoming available all the time, you are sure to find something appropriate, concert ready, and inclusive of many diverse and talented composers. Add in the high-quality professional accompaniments, useful tools, and assessment capabilities in MakeMusic Cloud and you are guaranteed an enriched practice experience that you cannot access anywhere else!

Exclusive methods & series:

Also available in the platform:

Explore our new State Lists Tool to browse contest-ready titles that are available in MakeMusic Cloud and appear on state required lists. 

Browse State Lists

Powerful Teaching Tools 

Teachers, we know you are busy! These updates have been made with YOU in mind to help you streamline your workflow. 

• • • SSO and Rostering functionality—utilize Single Sign-On in conjunction with Google Classroom, Schoology, and Canvas. You can also quickly roster students in from those supported LMS’s or via a quick CSV upload! 
    • Video recording capabilities in assignments
    • Assignment creation improvements
      • Streamlined assignment creation process 
      • Ungraded assignments 
      • Email notifications for students when they receive a new assignment or are reassigned 
    • MusicProfessor video lessons—learn fundamental instrument skills from master teachers in pedagogically-sound videos 
    • Music Catalog Search improvements—enjoy a streamlined search experience, preview titles before opening, and even listen before loading the Practice app
    • Assessment improvements for low frequency and non-pitched percussion instruments 
    • Gradebook improvements 
      • Grading periods are no longer required when creating standalone assignments but can still be added to help organize your Gradebook 
      • When grading periods are used, the gradebook will default to viewing the current grading period. This filter can be cleared if you prefer to view assignments from all grading periods together

Experience a Free Trial

Subscription Options for All Budgets 

Funding is a universal challenge and we want to help music students everywhere gain access to the powerful music education tools that we believe in. Our Multi-Year Discount program can save education platforms up to 25%! 

Get a Quote

Coming Soon!

Coming soon: Sight Reading Studio, a standalone sight reading tool from MakeMusic that makes it easy to generate unlimited sight reading materials based on a variety of fully-customizable settings. With Sight Reading Studio, you can create, modify, share, and even practice sight reading exercises with instant feedback and assessment. 

Sight Reading Studio is the only sight reading application that can provide immediate assessment feedback—empowering even the youngest musicians to efficiently practice sight reading and improve more quickly. This new and powerful tool will be included with all paid MakeMusic Cloud subscriptions or as a budget friendly standalone option! 

Try the Demo

The post New Features for the New School Year appeared first on MakeMusic.

You are in for a much more streamlined experience next time you create an assignment:

• Page reduction—the number of pages, (quicker loading times and fewer clicks!) to go through when creating a new assignment has been reduced. 
• Improved logic—assignment settings are laid out clearly with succinct explanations.
  • Easily accessible Key Choice—for eligible exercises, choose the key area for the assignment right from the CREATE page. 
• Removed Grading Period requirement—you no longer are required to tether an assignment to a grading period set up with the Gradebook. School calendars are set up in many varied ways and we are glad to offer you this new choice! 
• Simplified Rubric Creation—get to the music faster by using MakeMusic Cloud’s assessment score, an ungraded assignment, or customize a rubric with parameters of your choice. 

Create

Assignments now default to Any tempo and All measures. Communicate details with students in the Instructions space.

Utilizing the MakeMusic Cloud assessment score is a quick way to automatically populate scores into the Gradebook. You can always adjust scores as needed! Ungraded assignments will not have a score in the gradebook, but teachers can still listen to the submitted recordings from students and leave comments. Custom rubrics are useful for teachers who want any combination of rubric elements (even including the MakeMusic Cloud assessment score!).

Make further customizations in the Settings area. Here is where you can make selections on how the student experience will be customized for this particular assignment. You may also notice that the MakeMusic Cloud assessment score levels have been adjusted to Levels 1-4 with 1 being the most lenient. We recommend always starting with Level 1 assessment and then adjusting higher as needed.

Assign

When you finish the first page (Create) and select Next you’ll see the notification that an “Assignment template created”. If you’d like to make any changes to what was already saved, access the template from Recent Assignment Templates on your homepage.

The Assign page is where you can select due dates and define which students should receive this assignment. You can assign immediately or schedule for a future date. Assignments that are assigned immediately will also trigger a “new assignment” email notification to students—learn more about the new helpful assignment email notifications.

We’re excited to roll out these improvements to the assignment creation process just in time for the new school year! Learn more about how to create assignments in MakeMusic Cloud.

Get a Quote

The post Improvements to the Assignment Creation Experience appeared first on MakeMusic.

With this new tool, directors can select contest literature that aligns with their state’s requirements and empowers their students to prepare outside of rehearsal with immediate feedback. Set yourself up for success by choosing your contest and festival literature from titles that are part of MakeMusic Cloud’s impressive library.

We invite you to explore our collection of contest-ready music available at all difficulty levels for concert band, string orchestra, full orchestra, jazz ensemble, choir, solos, and ensembles.

Browse State Lists

The post Browse and Select State Lists in MakeMusic Cloud appeared first on MakeMusic.