Horn Studio Technology Updated

For the past thirteen years I have had two main technology items I have used teaching lessons in my office: a cassette recorder and a floppy disc version of Smart Music. The cassette recorder was a technology hold over from the era when I was a Doctoral student, it is what Mr. Hatfield used with students at Indiana back in the day. I made a lot of use of it as a student preparing for auditions. The floppy disc version of Smart Music was something I started using when I taught at the Crane School of Music and continued to use here at ASU. With a recent computer upgrade I have upgraded both areas.

Smart Music allows you to among other things play along with an accompaniment to quite a number of frequently performed solos, and it can track or follow along with you in certain locations by sensing your playing with a microphone. It is now an online application sold on an annual subscription basis and has some new features. The interface at first was different enough that I had to go slowly but now it is becoming more familiar. The new feature to me that is a great one is the ability to record and play back every use of the system. This allows students to hear themselves which can be ear opening. The main complaint I have is the accompaniment is a bit soft at times with my speakers up full; overall I would think it might work better with headphones. Also I should mention that the system seems set up pretty ideally in that with a laptop and some headphones anyone could make great use of the system in a practice room with an Internet connection.

To make full use of Smart Music you need to have a microphone. A couple years ago I purchased a Blue Snowball USB microphone to use for podcasting actually. I had not used it for music recording. There are specific clip-on microphones for Smart Music but the Blue Snowball has worked well in my office so long as it is somewhat close to the bell.

When I was toying with the idea for a podcast I used Audacity to record. This is a PC [and Mac, see comments] recording application that can be downloaded and used for free. (I have not used a Mac in ten years, but a comparable Mac application is GarageBand).  This I found works great on the office computer and is much better than using the old cassette recorder! Audacity allows me to record but also has other features that are useful that I am just starting to explore. It is very interesting for example to see the wave form of what is played on the horn, it points out lumps in musical lines and more. The main thing it allows in teaching though is a student to hear themselves and to step back and hear the tuning and phrasings and such. The mic does not need to be as close as with Smart Music to work well.

In short both upgrades are ones I should have made several years ago and they are things that any horn player reading this article on a computer could make use of.