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About MUSIC LESSONS I (Macintosh)
( Macintosh Windows ) Awards Reviews Testimonials About Overview Screen Shots
Learn to read, play, and understand music!
About Drills Features Requirements
About MUSIC LESSONS
This award winning software helps you understand music and play any instrument better. It's easy to use, requires no previous musical background, and provides unlimited hours of enjoyable practice. Learn to read music, improve your sight reading, play new scales, and sharpen your listening skills. Its twelve drills move gently from elementary exercises to college level music theory. Whether you're eight or eighty, it's the perfect accompaniment for learning music, no matter what instrument you play.
Learn Essential Skills
MUSIC LESSONS' drills move gently from elementary exercises to college level music theory. These essential musical skills will improve your music making no matter what insrument you play.
Learn By Doing
You get interactive feedback on every question. The software even shows you the answer when you're stuck.
Learn By Listening
The ear training drills help you understand what you hear.
You're In Control
Nearly every aspect of the program's interface is under your control, including your choice of sounds and the colors used on the screen.
MUSIC LESSONS Drills
Most ear-training programs do a pretty good job training your ear, but they fall short when it comes to actually teaching you about the fundamentals of music. MUSIC LESSONS goes further than simple ear-training. It helps you learn the basic theory necessary to really understand music. MUSIC LESSONS provides unlimited hours of practice. Its twelve drills each have multiple skill levels and can be done in treble, bass, and alto clefs. Comprehensive help screens explain every musical term and concept necessary to master the drills and progress reports provide a detailed record of your scores.
- Note Reading
- Learn to read notes and improve your sight reading skills. Sight reading is one of the most important musical skills you can develop, because the better you are at sight reading, the more easily you can learn music. Skill levels use treble, bass, alto, and tenor clefs, with notes on just the spaces, to notes with double sharps and double flats up to five ledger lines above and below the staff. This is an essential drill for beginners, and very useful for advanced musicians learning new clefs. The Note Reading drill is an excellent way to improve your sight reading skills, especially when used with Fast Answer Checking.
- Circle of Fifths
- Learn how the Circle of Fifths is used to identify major and minor keys based on the number of increasing sharps and flats found in the key signature, the order that sharps and flats appear in key signatures, and the ability to play through the ascending or descending circle of fifths beginning with any note. Circle of fifths motion is used extensively in jazz, pop, and classical music chord progressions.
- Key Signatures
- Learn to identify major or minor keys based on the number of sharps or flats appearing in the key signature. Key signatures appear just after the clef symbol on each line of music. When you know the key signature and the notes of the corresponding major or minor scale, you know the notes the composer used as the raw materials for the melodies and harmonies in the piece. Skill levels let you select any combination of major or minor keys, using sharps or flats. You can control the number of sharps and flats that will be used
- Five Finger Positions
- Learn to recognizze and play the five finger positions of all major and minor keys. Five finger positions are used in the early years of piano lessons. Because five finger positions use the first five notes of the major and minor scale, they are a good introduction to scales.
- Major / Minor Scales
- Learn what notes are used in the major, natural minor, harmonic minor, and melodic minor scales. The notes of these scales are the raw materials used to construct melodies and chords.
- Modes
- Learn the modal scales. Modes were commonly used by Renaissance composers and are used today in jazz, pop and some 20th century concert music. The major and natural minor scales are derived from the Ionian and Aeolian modes.
- Jazz Scales
- Learn the notes of several jazz scales. The notes of these scales are used as raw materials for improvising. The more advanced musician can practice playing scales like Dorian flat 2, Lydian Sharp 5, Mixolydian sharp 4, Mixolydian Flat 6, Minor flat 5, and Locrian flat 4.
- Scale Degrees
- Learn a note's position within a major or minor scale or key. Each scale degree (position) has a name. The different scale degrees have melodic and harmonic tendencies. Knowing the scale degrees will be very useful when studying intervals, melodies, and chords.
- Intervals
- Learn to visually identify intervals. An interval is the distance in pitch, measured in half steps, between two notes. Quick visual recognition of intervals is very important in sight reading and transposing. You begin with diatonic intervals in a major key, and advance to fully chromatic intervals without key reference. Covers ascending and descending, doubly diminished to doubly augmented intervals, spanning a unison to a tenth.
- Note / Rest Durations
- Learn how many beats a note or rest receives in various time signatures. This is essential for understanding how rhythm and counting work. The lower number in the time signature can be a two, four, eight, or sixteen. Note and rest values can range from a sixteenth to a whole, including dotted values.
- Scales / Modes / Jazz Scales Ear Training
- Learn to identify scales by listening. Learning to recognize what you hear is an important musical skill. You'll have to listen closely to distinguish between the four types of major-minor scales, the eight modes, and the seven jazz scales played on any pitch level. You can work with each group independently or in combinations.
- Intervals Ear Training
- Learn to identify intervals by listening. Learning to recognize what you hear is an important musical skill. From diatonic intervals in a major key to fully chromatic intervals spanning a unison to a tenth, this drill will really improve your ear.
MUSIC LESSONS Features
- Multiple Skill Levels
- Each drill has multiple skill levels that make it just right for the beginner, yet challenging for the advanced musician.
- Custom Levels
- Practice just what you need. If you're weak on reading notes on ledger lines below the staff, or have trouble hearing the difference between major and minor sixths, create custom drills to work on those areas.
- Fast Answer Checking
- The Fast Answer Checking feature gives you new questions as fast as you can answer them. This is a rapid way to improve your skills.
- Three Instruments
- Piano, guitar, and alphabet block instruments are included in the program.
- Your Choice of Clefs
- Each of the eleven drills can be done in treble clef, bass clef, alto clef, or a mix of those clefs.
- On Screen Music Theory Help
- You won't need additional books explaining music theory. The built in help browser includes a comprehensive set of files that explain all the terms and concepts used in the program. We've even included the application we used to create the help files, so you can create your own files and add them to the program. Print the help files as a music theory reference book. Balloon help is also available for every dialog, menu, and window used in the program.
- Keep Your Score
- When you check your answers your score is instantly updated on the screen. The score display shows the number of questions, correct answers, and percentage of correct answers. You can play the question again, or have MUSIC LESSONS show you the correct answer at any time.
- Progress Reports
- In addition to showing your score on the screen, you can save your scores in progress report files that track your scores by date. You can see the scores you got Monday three weeks ago, as well as the total scores for the entire file. Naturally, you can print any day's score or the cumulative scores. If you have a color printer, you can even print in color. The number of progress files is limited only by disk space. Progress reports provide a detailed record of your scores on every level of every drill. They can display either the results of a single drill session or a cumulative listing of all the drills you've done over a period of time. Progress reports can be saved and printed. The number of progress report files you can create is limited only by hard drive space. Every student in the class can keep their own scores.
- Sound Choices
- Choose between sampled sounds, QuickTime Musical Instruments, and three MIDI systems: MiBAC, OMS, and Apple MIDI Manager. Built in features support MIDI guitar and wind controllers, and Pitch Input Devices. You can even use MIDI Input and QuickTime Output.
MUSIC LESSONS I OS X v. 4.0 Requirements
Mac OS X 10.2 or later. MIDI optional.
MUSIC LESSONS I Classic v. 3.0 Requirements
Mac 68K or Power Macintosh. System 7.5, MacOS8, MacOS 9. 2 MB available RAM and 4 MB free hard disk space. MIDI optional.
