Musition 2: The Ultimate Music Tutor

By Tim Wilson

The class leader of its field, Musition 2 for Windows provides comprehensive music theory lessons for the developing musician. In a school or college environment, its excellent testing and reporting features make administration a breeze, whilst the friendly interface and instant feedback enables students of all ages and levels to achieve their maximum learning potential.

The recent release of Version 2 has seen Musition develop into a broader and much more interactive program. The revised curriculum covers many basic musicianship skills and caters for students wanting to learn more about jazz theory and improvisation.

Scales, intervals, rhythm tapping, chord symbols, chord/scale relationships, jazz scales, modulation, scale home keys, drum sticking, drum styles, instrument recognition, piano skills, guitar tabulature, instrument range, note reading, advanced clefs, key signatures, scale degrees, symbols, terms, musical concepts, chord recognition, meter recognition, rhythm notation, instrument keys, and transposition.

Each topic contains a series of progressive levels. Students answer both multiple choice questions and questions requiring student input. Musition 2 is designed for developing musicians of all levels - Level 1 of a topic such as ‘Note Reading’ requires students to identify only the notes on the lines of the stave in the treble clef, whilst level 10 requires students to identify notes on the bass and treble clefs, including sharps, flats, naturals, double flats and double sharps, up to three ledger lines above and below the stave. (Tenor and alto clefs are dealt with in the ‘Advanced Clefs’ topic.) Other topics such as ‘Transposition’ and ‘Instrument Range’ begin quite simply with questions in regard to Bb transposition and standard concert band instrument ranges. The final levels deal with less common instruments such as the English horn and the bass trumpet. With custom options in three of the topics (Chords, Concepts and Terms), you can adapt any of the provided chords, concepts and terms, or add new ones.

Musition 2’s colourful interface has entertaining sounds and pictures making learning essential music theory fundamentals fun and easy. You can also track and/or guide your students’ or your own progress using ‘The Interactive Professor’ - this feature will provide you with statistics on your progress in any level of any topic and the ‘Professor’ will also pop up during drill work to let you know how you are going.

In a network environment, Musition 2’s sophisticated administration features allow teachers to spend more time teaching theory concepts or working with students’ specific problem areas. When operating Musition 2 in such an environment, the security option can be enabled whereby anyone entering the program will have to logon with their name and a password. Each user will be assigned an access level of either student, teacher or administrator - only users with teacher or administrator access will be able to use the administration functions. It is these administration features which make Musition 2 such a powerful tool in a school or college.

Teachers are able to control the minimum level that each of their classes must attempt when using any topic in the program. When a student logs on, Musition 2 will recognise their class and then only allow them to attempt questions at or above the levels as set by the teacher. This means that teachers have complete control over the progress of their classes without restricting more advanced students from attempting higher levels.

Musition 2 also has the facility for teachers to set up tests for their various classes. All they need to do is name the test, select which topics and levels they wish to be in the test, select the number of questions and then assign the test to a particular class. The next time that a student from that class logs on, Musition 2 will tell them that they have a test to complete. There are no limits to the number of classes or tests.

All the results from both tests and practise are stored on a central database and can be viewed or printed at any time (only by users with teacher or administration access) which saves teachers from hours of correction time.

Whatever your stage of musical development, or role as a student, parent or teacher, Musition 2 will provide you with a fun and easy approach to learning or teaching the fundamentals of music theory.