Tag: metronome

Practice Pro: An Elegant, All-in-One Practice Tool with a Custom Widget Interface

Practice Pro is a new practice tool from Modular Tools for Musicians.

The app’s design takes inspiration from iOS’s home screen widget system, making it feel instantly familiar and intuitive. Each widget serves a specific function, and while they are simple in design, they provide just enough features for most musicians.

In my setup (as shown in the screenshot below), I use the small metronome widget, tap tempo widget, timer, stopwatch, clock, and tuning drones. I also make use of a tally widget, which helps my students track repetitions—an essential tool for reinforcing consistent practice. Typically, I’d have to jump between four or more apps to access all these features, but with Practice Pro, everything is in one place.

Here’s how I might use this in a lesson. I might start the stopwatch and timer widgets, then tell a student:
“Practice measures 1-2 until you’ve played them successfully 10 times in a row or for two minutes straight—whichever comes last.”
Next, I tap in the desired tempo, activate the metronome, and they’re off. Having everything within one interface makes the process seamless. Plus, the widgets are fully customizable, with more options available than what I just described.

My students have responded enthusiastically to Practice Pro’s design, often asking how to install it themselves when they see it in action.

Right now, it’s available at a launch sale price of just $5—a great deal for such a useful and well designed tool. I highly recommend checking it out!

Set your iPhone to open a tuner or take a screenshot when you tap the Apple logo on back

I have been seeing this tip gain popularity with teachers online, so I feel obligated to share it here:

You can program your iPhone to do a nearly endless list of things by double or triple tapping the back of it. Go to Settings–>Accessibility–>Touch and then scroll down to the option called “Back Tap.”

Alternatively, you can swipe down in settings to reveal a search bar and then type in “back tap.”

You can program a tap of the Apple Logo on the back of your iPhone to do tons of system actions like going home, muting your phone, taking a screenshot, or launching Control Center. 

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        <div class="image-caption"><p class="">The Touch options in the accessibility settings.</p></div>
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        <div class="image-caption"><p class="">Setting a double and triple-tap.</p></div>
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        <div class="image-caption"><p class="">There are lots of options!</p></div>
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You can also choose a Shortcut to launch. And Shortcuts can do anything from launching an app to running JavaScript. So you can imagine the possibility…

Personally, I have a double-tap set to reveal Control Center and a triple tap set to initiate open a new note in my note-taking app, Drafts.

To open a specific app, you will first need to make a Shortcut that performs the “Open App” action and then select that Shortcut from the available options in the Back Tap settings. To do that, open the Shortcuts app (pre-installed on every iPhone or available from the App Store on older versions of iOS).

Once in Shortcuts, create a new one with the plus icon in the upper right. Name your shortcut if you want (by pressing the three-dots “More” button), and then press “Add Action.” There is an overwhelming number of options if you are unfamiliar with Shortcuts, so just use the search and look for the action called “Open App.” Select this action from the search results and then a block will appear with a blue “Choose” option where you can choose the app you want it to open. Choose your tuner of choice.

Once saved, this Shortcut will be available as an option in the Back Tap settings.

***Note: The Tonal Energy app actually allows you to set up Shortcuts that jump to specific places within the app like the Analysis or Metronome section. You can find this in the TE settings. It will save you a bunch of extra taps.

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        <div class="image-caption"><p class="">Creating a new Shortcut.</p></div>
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        <div class="image-caption"><p class="">Search for the Open App action.</p></div>
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        <div class="image-caption"><p class="">Tonal Energy allows you to make Shortcuts that launch to specific parts of their app in the settings.</p></div>
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Making Just Intonation Play Along Tracks for Your Performing Ensemble (Using Tonal Energy and GarageBand)

There are a few things that would be helpful to know about my music teaching philosophy before reading this post.

1. I believe that tone production, intonation, balance and blend are central to teaching performing musicians. I prioritize them much higher than fingering technique, rhythmic precision, and even reading comprehension.

2. The way I structure my band classes starts with, is focused on, and always revisits those core ideas.

3. I have accumulated a vast variety of tools and teaching strategies to meet my goals of having superior tone quality, intonation, balance and blend. One of the most essential tools I use is the Tonal Energy Tuning app.

Tonal Energy Tuner

What is Tonal Energy? A hyper charged, power-user app for musicians that has many advanced features, including…

– Tuning drones that can be triggered polyphonically

– Feedback as to how in tune a performer is, which includes a delightful happy face to depict good or questionable intonation

– Drones and feedback can be adjusted to different temperaments

– A metronome (with more features than nearly any alternative on the App Store) that can be used separately or at the same time as the tuning drones

– Analysis tools that depict amplitude and intonation on an easy to read visual graph 

– Recording and play back practice tools for musicians to listen back to their performance

– Automated metronome pre-sets that can be sequenced 

See the video below. I will first depict the tuner playing a Bb drone, then I will show how it can model a Bb major triad all at once. Then I will turn the tuner to just intonation mode, and you will hear that the third and fifth of the chord are appropriately adjusted so that they are in tune with the Bb root. Next, the video will demonstrate how the metronome can be used in combination with these drones.

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Imagine now that a student is playing a scale along with Tonal Energy. By leaving the tuner in just intonation, and centering around the key area of Bb major, every note of the scale that I touch will resonate accurately with the Bb, giving the student an accurate reference to blend into.

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