Saturday, July 16, 2016

Noteflight: A Valuable Tool for the Modern Music Classroom

I was first introduced to Noteflight by a private student two years ago who had used the program to create his own a cappella arrangement of a "mash-up" of several songs. At the time, I was very impressed that he had discovered the program on his own and taught himself how to use it. Now that I have more experience with it myself, I am not surprised at all. Noteflight is very intuitive to use. I found that I was fumbling a bit with note input only for the first few minutes, but adjusted very quickly to the system used. The functions of each of the "buttons" in the header and compositional tools drop down menu are all obvious and intuitive. Additionally, the search features and tutorials on the website are helpful (although sometimes outdated in the format of the website).

I could see Noteflight being a valuable tool in the classroom for many different types of assignments. Compositional assignments foster creativity among students, and Noteflight allows this to happen on any student's home computer without any specific software. I would also use Noteflight for practice dictation assignments in a music theory class. Although dictation and ear-training should ultimately be done by hand so that students cannot hear their answers, using Noteflight would be an excellent way to practice so that students could hear their mistakes and learn to adjust. I could see myself using Noteflight (or MuseScore) to create practice tracks for chorus parts that could then be put on a class website. I could also input accompaniment parts that I am not comfortable playing myself so that students could hear them during rehearsal. Overall, Noteflight could be a valuable tool in any modern music classroom.

Below, you will find my version of "A Bicycle Built for Two," by Harry Dacre.

 

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