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Practice+ App - and my FIRST EVER GIVEAWAY


You know how, when you are practicing, you need to have your metronome on your stand and turn it constantly up and down as you work through a technical passage?  And you also want to play in tune, and make sure you are staying consistent with your pitch.  So while your metronome is clicking away on your stand, you also have to turn half-way around to look at the screen of the big tuner which has to be plugged into the wall because it eats batteries otherwise.  And if you also want to record yourself to listen to your progress, you have to have your laptop on with the big mic plugged into it, and that’s on still another surface, so you have to move your stand around so you can orient to all three, and then your giant stack of music-in-progress falls off the stand and onto the floor and out of order and the next ten minutes are spent not practicing at all but just trying to return to normalcy. Does this sound familiar?

I was sent a free promo copy (full disclosure) of an app called Practice+ - check it out here on the   - and its solution to the problem makes me very happy.  After all, I always have my iphone with me, and it is small and fits on the stand without blocking the music. 

From within this app, I can actively use the metronome while the tuner simultaneously checks my pitch, or I can have the tuner sound a pitch for me to lock onto while still using the metronome.  I can record myself, with or without that metronome, and can even email the recorded track directly from the app.




To be fair, I’m not sure why I would ever email anyone an unedited track of my practice session, but I love that I could.

There’s a way to store the metronome settings, so that I don’t have to reset each time I return to a piece I’d been working on.  There’s a way to loop, repeat, and gradually speed up metronome patterns, for hands-free practice.  There are five different color skins to put on so I can practice in orange or green if I prefer, or purple or blue… It all works fast, seamlessly, and so far bug and glitch free. 

I’ve been using this app daily since downloading it.  Although I have expensive and high quality practice tools here at home, it’s just EASY to have everything come out of one tiny device that already lives in my pocket.

I also have THREE free promo codes to give away, isn’t that fun?  Please do me the favor of sharing or tweeting one of my blog posts - your favorite one, or this one, or just the whole Prone Oboe url - and leave me a comment here on Blogger to let me know you did.  I’ll randomly pick three responses on Thursday, and send those folks away with Practice+! 

Comments

  1. dimkordAugust 31, 2014 at 8:05 PM

    Let me see if I can reconstruct a practice session and make my contribution.
    The metronome controls your tempo-you no longer have to know how to keep time.
    The tuner -if not now, but in the near future- automatically controls your pitch. And I hear they are making progress in designing a computerized, elegant looking bellows that will blow air into a tube resembling an oboe, a clarinet or…-. it doesn’t matter…
    I think that at this point the performer must be concerned about …paying the electric bill, and what to wear. If this be the morning we expect, let me never wake…
    Let me see if I can reconstruct a practice session and make my contribution.
    The metronome controls your tempo-you no longer have to know how to keep time.
    The tuner -if not now, but in the near future- automatically controls your pitch. And I hear they are making progress in designing a computerized, elegant looking bellows that will blow air into a tube resembling an oboe, a clarinet or…-. it doesn’t matter…
    I think that at this point the performer must be concerned about …paying the electric bill, and what to wear. If this be the morning we expect, let me never wake…

    ReplyDelete
  2. JennetAugust 31, 2014 at 8:43 PM

    You're making fun of me, Dimitri - but tools can be helpful. Judicious metronome usage separates us from the apes. Or something.
    :-)

    ReplyDelete
  3. OlyaSeptember 1, 2014 at 10:03 AM

    Done. And I find both metronome and recorder very helpful tools. We do live in the 21st century so why not use all these wonderful new developments?
    Love your ape bit, too ;)

    ReplyDelete
  4. RolferdSeptember 1, 2014 at 12:13 PM

    I've shared away. Great to get back-to-school app recommendations. No excuse for not having a metronome or tuner handy anymore!

    ReplyDelete

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