Marching band season is upon us. That means there’s a lot of music to learn, and SmartMusic can help. Sending your students an assignment to learn a new piece means you spend less of your together time learning notes and rhythms, and more time taking the music further.

Great candidates for SmartMusic assignments include:

• Hard music – send students the trickiest bits of music you’ll perform at marching contests
• Stand music – quickly learn the pop tune you’ll play in the stands or for the dance team
• Fight song – make it easy for freshmen to have it ready at the first practice
• Warm ups – easily get everyone on the same page

If it’s clear that having this music in SmartMusic is a great benefit, all that’s left is learning how to get it there.

Upload Music

Do you own music notation software? If so, and you have files of the music your students need to learn, you’re set. Nearly every modern music notation software allows you to export MusicXML files, which can be uploaded directly into the new SmartMusic.

Learn how to upload existing music into SmartMusic.

Create Music with Finale

If the music your students need to learn doesn’t exist yet, and you own Finale, you’re also good to go. Create the music in Finale, and export MusicXML as described above. To help, we’ve created two Finale marching band templates, both of which can be downloaded as a .ZIP file here. Both are designed to help you create great looking marching music with the least effort.

One is a portrait-orientation template for traditional marching band scores and the second is a landscape-orientation template for pep band scores. Each has the same instrumentation and flipbook size parts. Learn more about these Finale templates.

Don’t own Finale, but wish you did? You can try Finale for free.

Create Music without Finale

If you don’t own Finale, and need to create music, the new SmartMusic now includes a music notation editor. While it’s technically still it beta testing we’ve made it available to all new SmartMusic users. Feel free to use itto create and arrange any music you wish. Any files you create can easily become  SmartMusic assignments.

You can try the new notation editor, upload your own marching band music, and use all of SmartMusic’s new features for free, too. Sign up for the SmartMusic Free Trial today.