Online music theory tools
for teachers and students,
everywhere.

eMusicTheory Software
Use the drills without an internet connection, and give your answers using any standard MIDI instrument.

(read more)

News

| 14 May, 2009 |
A few small follow-up changes for today:
· Teachers: try the new "print" link on the student lists... it'll give you formatted pages of student login info that you can cut into strips and hand out.
· Downloadable software updates went out late in the day Tuesday.
· Fixed a problem where student test scores could be double-submitted if they hit their browser's back button.
· Fixed a problem where teachers who had suspended their subscriptions were given the wrong error message when signing in.

| 11 May, 2009 |
The counterpoint drill is here!
Build the counterpoint to the melody given according to the first species rules, with instant feedback if you try to add a note that breaks a rule.
Options:
· Standard or strict rules (see the drill instructions for specific rules)
· Enter counterpoint above/below the given melody
· Choose the key signatures allowed
Try it out and let us know what you think! Teachers may select this drill for assignments now; the downloadable software has also been updated (check your email if you own a copy).
Other changes in this update:
· Select exactly which notes to test in violin, viola, cello and double bass drills. Feel free to suggest shortcuts you'd like to see that aren't there yet!
· Teachers: now you can delete test scores (so a student can re-take an assignment in test mode).
· Reworked audio playback to fix stuttering issues on OS X and for efficiency.
· Updated the guitar fretboard image to help out classical guitar students, and tweaked size to fix a display problem on OS X.
· Added a note to the guitar & double bass drills: these are transposing instruments.
· Added some warning messages for teachers saving assignments with odd settings (example: allowed time is only a few seconds).
· There's now a helpful order form to simplify school purchase orders.

| 29 March, 2009 |
This update contains just a few small tweaks:
· Note Names: fixed a problem with testing notes only on the treble (or only on the bass) clef.
· Paced Note Names: now the timer doesn't start until the first note is ready to identify.
· Mailing list: updated so that now teachers with active subscriptions will automatically be included.
More updates coming soon -- the Counterpoint drill is working, and just being tested and polished now!

| 9 March, 2009 |
Followup to the larger changes yesterday:
· Changed the way the drills load images & audio: you can't cancel loading audio anymore, but the whole process is faster and more reliable.
· Minor fix to note sets — fall back to the default selection if no notes are selected.

| 8 March, 2009 |
We've added a few major features for teachers! First: assignment sets, with a few important options:
· Give assignments "by due date", or "in order": you can still have homework assignments with due dates shown to the student, but you can also give sets of assignments that just need to be completed in order, with no due dates.
· This also provides a way to archive old assignments: make a new assignment set called "archive", and move them there.
· Option to hide from students: if you're still putting together an assignment set (or you don't want your students to know the details of a test before test day...), you can keep the assignment set hidden.

Which brings up the next feature: test mode. Enable "test mode" for an assignment, and each student's first score is submitted automatically (instead of allowing multiple attempts and multiple scores sent).

Third: note sets in drill options. That is, you can choose exactly which notes to test, not just general options like "Any tonic" or "No accidentals on tonic". Right now, we've only updated the Note Names and Scales drills — try them out, we'll sort out any problems, and make similar updates to other drills.

Finally, we've updated the process of building a new assignment, to make it easier to know which drill to choose (now you get descriptions of the drills, plus a button to experiment in a new window).

| 5 March, 2009 |
Early this morning, we moved the site to a new, larger server in the same datacenter, to allow for easier continuing expansion. Thanks to very careful planning, the switch went without a hitch, and we were only only offline for less than 20 minutes!

| 2 September, 2008 |
Teachers: we made a few important changes to the process of building your student lists — now you can paste in your entire list of students names direct from a spreadsheet or webpage, and generate "jsmith"-style usernames and random passwords automatically at the push of a button. Try it out!

It'll try to figure out whatever you paste in, but if you have a list of student names that isn't loading correctly for any reason, send it to us and we'll tweak the logic.

(previous updates)