RISING SOFTWARE

Aug 1, 2001 12:00 PM, By Thomas Wells

           
 

Musition ($119; single user) is a companion to Australia-based Rising Software's computer-assisted ear-training software, Auralia. Like Auralia, Musition has a friendly user interface and is simply organized. The software covers 25 topics in four groups: Note Reading, Terms and Symbols, Key Centers, and Instruments. You gain access to the topics using four large buttons arranged horizontally beneath the Menu and Toolbar.

Topical Exchanges

Clicking on a group button displays the topics it contains, and clicking on a specific subject starts the drill. Each drill begins with a dialog that lets you choose the difficulty of the lesson. The dialog also describes the methods the drill will use and gives directions about how to use the exercise. Use the Toolbar to control volume and tempo, change the difficulty level, and provide a score for the drill.

The Note Reading topic group includes exercises titled Advanced Clefs, Chord Recognition, Meter Recognition, Note Reading, Rhythm Notation, and Rhythm Tapping. Under Terms and Symbols are lessons about Chord Symbols, musical Symbols, Concepts, and Terms (mainly Italian). The Key Centers topic group contains mostly ear-training exercises about Intervals, Chord-Scale Relations that are primarily jazz oriented, Key Signatures, Modulation, Jazz Scales, Scales, Scale Degrees, and Scale Home Keys. The Instruments topic group contains a set of varied lessons: Instrument Range, Instrument Recognition, Instrument Keys, Transposition, Guitar Symbols (tablature), Drum Styles, and Drum Sticking.

In Drum Styles, the student is asked to play one part of an example using the Spacebar while Musition plays the other parts. In Drum Sticking, the student performs rhythms with alternate fingers, using the computer keyboard's F and J keys. Unlike Auralia, Musition doesn't display the notes that the student plays. It would be helpful if there were more feedback.

Instrumental Success

Although most lessons in Musition are generally thorough and straightforward, the Instruments topic group has some problems. For example, lessons in the Instrument Range section can be confusing because they address neither variations such as practical and extreme ranges nor the player's level (high school, professional, and so on). In addition, ranges are given at concert pitch, and the ranges are not always shown in the clefs in which the instrument is usually written. Nomenclature in the Instruments group is also odd. For instance, instruments that are assumed to be in C, such as the viola, are identified as Viola in C.

Notational inaccuracies, though minor, can be confusing to the beginner. For example, the program uses the symbol 16 to indicate a two-octave transposition up, rather than the correct 15 or 15ma.

In the Transposition topic group, the student is shown a note on the staff at concert pitch — G#3 for the Contrabassoon, for example — and asked to identify the written pitch necessary to produce that note. Seven pitches are provided as possible answers, but the list of possible answers includes no octave designation. As a result, it isn't clear whether the note you're specifying is above, below, or at concert pitch. Unfortunately, the Help button on that topic provides no information about the instrument.

Instrument Recognition is one of the most enjoyable lessons; Musition plays riffs on recorded instruments for the student to identify. It would be preferable if the recordings covered the different registers of the example instruments, because the timbres of some instruments vary significantly through their ranges.

In the Classroom

Like its companion software Auralia, Musition lets the instructor customize lesson content. Although it's simple to change items such as terminology, chords, concepts, and Italian terms, it's impossible to get to the information about instrumentation, which is where the program needs improvement.

Making up tests with Musition is easy. The Tests entry under the Administration menu lets you name a test and decide the topics and levels covered. It also allows you to determine the number of questions in the test and the number of times a topic will replay. The program informs students when they first log in that tests are available and lets them choose which test they want to take.

A nice touch in Musition and Auralia is the Professor, a virtual teaching associate. The Professor evaluates the percentage of correct answers in students' work and proceeds to suggest that they move to more or less advanced work, depending on whether they attain or fail to meet the level that is established by a lab administrator.

Lab Pack

Musition's administrator's tools make it simple to keep records, examine test results, and create and delete users. Musition is easy to use in a lab situation, just as Auralia is. (For lab-pack and blanket-license pricing, refer to Rising Software's Web page.) Musition is a generally complete and enjoyable computer-assisted instruction package in music fundamentals and can be useful at many levels of instruction.

Overall EM Rating (1 through 5): 4
Rising Software; tel. (888) 667-7839 or 61-3-9894-4788; e-mail sales@risingsoftware.com; Web www.risingsoftware.com