Students have varying methods of practice at home.

The biggest offenders that I’ve noticed with my students over the years include: playing too fast, focusing the majority of practice time on parts that they can already play well, or skipping difficult sections entirely. SmartMusic’s loop feature can eliminate these issues, and teach your students to practice efficiently. The loop feature should be used by your students when practicing with SmartMusic already, but you can also specify that they use this feature in the assignment details.

In addition to just telling students to use the practice loop feature in the assignment details, there are 2 other ways to suggest practice loops to your students via assignments:

Educators can set up a series of assignments:

To keep it simple, lets imagine a piece has a difficult clarinet run in mm 31-32 at 100 bpm. Send 5 assignments (one a day for a week) that requires your clarinets to play the section at increasing tempos: 60, 70, 80, 90, and 100 (at tempo). Students will find the loop feature the most efficient way to increase their proficiency before submitting their best take. You will be amazed at how much this section will improve in a week, and you will know your students are doing it in the most efficient way. It might only take 5 minutes a day!

With a Response Assignment:

You can send a response assignment asking your students to play a loop of a specified section of music at a specified tempo, and submit the recording when they are finished. This is done by simply exporting the MP3 of a saved take and attaching it with your response assignment submission.

How do you use Practice Loops? Have they positively affected your students practice at home? If so, leave a comment below.