We recently updated SmartMusic 2010. If, when you launch SmartMusic, “Update available” appears in your upper left corner you don’t have the update yet.

If your screen looks like the above, simply click the “Update now” button and follow the on-screen prompts to install the update.

Included with the update is the Standards of Excellence Jazz Method, and a “New Releases” option under the SmartMusic Catalog:

Clicking on “New Releases” will make it easy to follow the latest changes to our growing repertoire library.

For today’s tip, I’d like to share a simple search tip to further assist you in navigating our music library. Personally I use SmartMusic’s Quick Search feature constantly:

While it works great for me, I’ll occasionally hear from a Quick Search user who reports that they’re not getting the search results they’re expecting. One reason is that we have the content broken down into five Categories – be sure you check each Category tab for results:

Another reason why users sometimes see too few results is that they are specifying too much detail. If you limit your Quick Search to a keyword, you’ll cast a pretty wide net. While limiting a search by instrument, skill level or category will certainly filter your results, it may filter them so much as to omit something you’d like to see. I say less is more!