Review of the Music Ace Series

By Joel Brazy

The wonderful thing in life is that every single person, whether knowingly or subconsciously is educating his or herself. Human education begins in the womb, and only ceases when we pass on. It comes from all sources, and we pass it on from one generation to the next. That's a pretty powerful concept.

A subset of general education is Music Education. Once again, every man woman and child knowing it or not, is exposed to new and old music styles, thereby expanding their musical knowledge. The greatest part of Music is that we have the ability to expose others i.e. pass it on, share it, and educate others as to why a particular selection of music is special to us.

The hard part about all this is the fundamentals. When a person decides they wish to learn more about Music, how can they go about it ? Well, consider that Music is a language all to itself, with complex communication structures, narratives and conversational infrastructure. These are called Notation and Orchestration or Arrangements of music. With all written and spoken (or in this case sounded) languages, we have to learn the basics before we advance. I mean, you have to learn to walk before you dance, right ?

For music, the basics are called Theory. Music Theory is much different than a "theoretical happening" in Law, Physics, or other subjects. Music Theory is the building block for understanding all musical compositions, and gives the student the ability to read, write, and compose music. The big problem here is how to convey the message in a complete way, but not be dry and boring. In the past, we had basically just books. The teachers would hand us Hanon for finger exercises, and in my case, a book called Applied Music Theory - while informative, it was definitely not a best seller. Then we had the teachers, that are still essential to the process, but they were also limited by the structured learning process of the time.

Enter the computer, and the rules change. Now a teacher can utilize the tools available on computers, as well as books, and create a more diverse and engaging learning environment. For kids, we know that early stimulation with music is extremely important, and creative learning of music and languages creates neural pathways used all throughout life in every area from Math to Science to writing. We also know that kids today are bombarded with technology and need more intense and direct stimulation because it seems (to me anyway) that their attention span is much shorter, and the need for instant gratification is also much greater than it used to be. That's where we come in. We are Harmonic Vision, a company dedicated to teaching Music Theory in a fun, challenging and engaging way using computer software.
Our titles are Music Ace and Music Ace 2. These are 2 complete years of Music Theory (as gauged by the National Standards Committee), yet are so much fun, parents and teachers have to ask their students to stop using it ! (there are no subliminal messages telling your kids to buy $30,000 grand pianos). How is this possible ? Kids wanting to learn Music Theory, a difficult and sometimes dry subject ?

Well, first we looked at the situation...

* Parents want their kids to learn music
* All parents want their kids to be exposed to responsible creative education
* Kids have a very short attention span
* Kids love video games
* Most teachers would rather teach repertoire (mostly because of time and budget constraints in the current schooling environment) and not the basics, but realize that without the basics, their students will never grasp or enjoy the songs, and will never be able to advance their musical desires.

So, armed with that we set out to educate ourselves, learning how kids learn. We spent years in the backs of classrooms watching kids learn music, what makes them happy and keeps their attention. We assembled a board of advisors and hired music educators to help us design our products so they are pedagogically (that basically means that it teaches the standards correctly, but hey, there has to be a word that sounds like Latin to describe it you know) correct, and we designed cartoon characters to help in the teaching. Enter Maestro Max, our personal music tutor. He's a cute, loveable character that's a cross between an Austrian conductor and your grandfather. Kids and adults adore him, and he really helps students grasp the concepts, and praises achievements. He is accompanied by our Singing Notes, and smiling instruments, to create a completely animated, game like teaching environment that everyone can relate to.

Both Music Ace and Music Ace 2 contain over 200 lessons and games to teach people how to read and write music. We guarantee that if you complete both products, you will be able to read and write music. Here's how they work:

Each lesson module (called sessions - there are 24 of them in each product) starts with a song from a famous composer. Maestro Max enters and begins to teach the concept to the student, and the student is required to interact with Max to get through that particular concept. If the student is having some problems grasping it, or chooses the wrong answers to questions, the whole pace of the program will slow down, and will add additional exercises until the student gets that concept correct. Max praises all correct answers, and guides incorrect answers by asking them to "try again" or "you should have held this note longer" until the student finishes the session.

Then come the rewards, the game sessions. There are 24 companion game sessions, each one accompanying a lesson session. These are games of skill to 'test' the students understanding of the lesson topic. The student has 5 chances to win the game and move on, otherwise, just like a video game, they must start over on that game section until they win so they can move on. High scores and completion of these games are greeting with applause from the singing notes and the audience. Keep in mind that these are not all easy games. The idea is to prepare a student so he or she can play music, understand improvisation, be fully ear-trained, and be a successful player/composer. It might take more than one try (recently I spent 3 tries getting through an advanced sight reading game) to complete a game, but the achievement is well worth it. All completion records and scores are tracked by the student's name and can be printed out. This helps in school settings so teachers can chart a student's progress.

Lastly is the Music Doodle Pad - the composition tool. It's like another program inside of Music Ace and Music Ace 2. We include dozens of editable compositions, and students can create completely new pieces of music using the singing notes and a mouse. Truly fun and let's the student showcase their newly learned talents.

Here are the specifics to our products. We divided Music Theory into 2 parts i.e. Music Ace teaches pitch related and beginning topics; identifying and naming notes, sharp and flats, key signatures, etc. Music Ace 2 reviews these topics and move on to rhythmic concepts and more advanced topics; time signatures, note values, harmony, chords, etc. Both include complete ear training and sight reading skills, as well as student performance tracking. Lesson can be studied using a mouse or a MIDI keyboard, and any general MIDI soundcard (* if you bought your computer in the last 7 years, it has a GM soundcard internally, such as a SoundBlaster). Our software works on both Mac and PC, so it's not necessary to specify which computer you have when you buy it. For the classroom, Lab, and Wired classroom environment, we have 'Educator versions' that include a complete teacher outline, printable homework, and student performance tracking up to 3750 students (networked) with as many computers as desired. We provide free technical support (although most people never need it). We rate our software from ages 8 to 108 (I recently got an email from an 81 year old woman who was going back to playing after 50 years), but we have dozens of instances of students as young as 5 years old using it - they only need to have basic reading skills and the ability to control a mouse. (I haven't had any instances of anyone older than 108 using it - know anyone ?!)

The other stuff - so you know, we have won more awards than all other music software programs combined, over 60, we are recommended by teacher groups, home schooling groups, and both religious and secular organizations. We are currently working on more software (don't tell anyone -Music Ace 3) and are just beginning to translate our products into other languages such as Spanish (available early 2001).

Our products are not meant to replace the teacher, but give the teacher more flexibility in his or her schedule, and for the home or home school, help the parent teach music without having to hire a theory teacher. It's about having fun learning music, and giving kids and adults a chance to read, write and understand music. Please try us out. A fun demo of our software is available at http://www.harmonicvision.com, and then call your Lentine's professional to help you with your purchase.