August 20, 2021
By KEITH RYAN CARTWRIGHT
Rutherford County Schools
The instruction and curriculum department received approval from the Rutherford County School Board to purchase continued access to SmartMusic.
The online platform provided by MakeMusic is for all instrumental music teachers and, more importantly, students enrolled in middle and high school instrumental music courses for the 2021–2022 school year.
SmartMusic allows teachers to assign students a piece of music to learn, which they will be performing in band or orchestra, and the student can access the lesson online at home. The program teaches the students howto effectively practice.
“They can do different practice techniques,” said Dr. Lindsay Halford, a fine arts specialist with the district. “In the past, we might have said, ‘Here’s a clarinet and a piece of sheet music, go home and figure it out on (your) own’ and they don’t really know how to practice.”
SmartMusic makes learning new music easier by breaking down the process.
“The student is able to record themselves in the program,” Halford explained. “First of all, it gives them instant feedback. So, if they’ve missed a rhythm, if they’ve missed a note, the program says, ‘You’ve got an issue here. Here’s where you need to practice.’ So, the student gets instant feedback from the program.”
Halford later added, “This program teaches them … how to isolate what you need to work on.”
SmartMusic also serves as an assessment tool for teachers.
“They can record themselves and send it to their teacher and the teacher can give them (feedback) individually,” Halford said.
SmartMusic along with a trio of other teacher-centric resources were also approved by the School Board — QuaverMusic, Drama Teacher Academy and the curriculum suite from the Art Education University for visual teachers — were initially purchased out of necessity.
QuaverMusic is used by all elementary instructors throughout Rutherford County Schools, while both the Drama Teacher Academy and the curriculum suite for Art Education provide teachers with customized content-specific instructional resources.
Teachers along with administrators at schools and at the district level soon discovered they would be effective resources going forward.
“So, when the pandemic started, we knew we were going to have students who were distance learning, and it became a necessity to have something to help those students because they weren’t going to be in the big band class with everybody playing together,” Halford said. “They were going to be at home alone with their instruments and, so, they needed something to guide them through their practice objectives.”