Now that everyone is getting back to school, many of you are looking at SmartMusic 2010 for the first time. I am sure you are surprised at the new look! There are also several new features and I’ll cover a few today.

For this blog I was inspired by my friend and colleague, Tom Johnson, who is writing the Finale blog. Last week Tom offered a great tip on entering notation. So I decided I would give some tips to help you become a SmartMusic 2010 Power User.

1. When SmartMusic opens, you see a “Welcome to SmartMusic 2010” screen. On the right, there is an option to “Watch the guided tour”. This video provides a nice overview of the new Home screen in less than three minutes. Use this – and all the QuickStart Videos available at smartmusic.com – to help teach your students how to use SmartMusic.

2. I highly recommend that you log-in immediately after opening SmartMusic. The integration between SmartMusic and the Gradebook (aka Impact) is now so seamless that you can easily go between each of them. By logging in initially, you are ready to create SmartMusic assignments in SmartMusic and post them to Gradebook, check the status of students, send out assignments, etc. SmartMusic and Gradebook work seamlessly, like one application.

3.When using SmartMusic in a classroom setting, there were many times when I wished I could have set up everything I was going to use in SmartMusic ahead of time. Well, now you can! The new “beefed up” Playlist function is very useful. Quite simply, anything that is in SmartMusic or has been opened in SmartMusic can be added to a Playlist. ANYTHING: Play-By-Ear exercises, scale exercises, lines from method books, Finale-created SmartMusic files, concert literature, imported audio files, etc. And this means time is saved during class.

Creating a Playlist and Adding Titles to the Playlist

Playlists can be created in a couple different ways:

1. From the bottom-left corner of the Home screen, click the “+” sign. Name your playlist and click Create.

With this next method, you can create a Playlist and also add titles to a Playlist.

2. By right-clicking on any listed file or title that you have downloaded to your computer, a contextual menu opens which allows you to add the chosen title to a Playlist or to create a new Playlist:

3. To open a Playlist, select it and right-click:

4. The Playlist can be accessed from the Menu or from the SmartMusic controls:

Deleting a Playlist

To delete a Playlist, select the Playlist and press the “-” button or right-click on the Playlist and select Remove Playlist:

I hope you’ll agree that SmartMusic 2010’s Playlist feature is awsome!

Well, with that it looks like I will have to continue with more tips next week. Please remember that this blog is interactive and you should feel free to make comments, ask questions, and suggest future topics. Also, please let your colleagues know about the SmartMusic and Finale blogs.

Thanks for reading!