To get started, simply create a MakeMusic Cloud account (completely free, no credit card required), or login to your account if you already have one. Once you login, you will be able to access Sight Reading Studio by selecting the corresponding icon from the sidebar.

Get Started Today

If you are unfamiliar with Sight Reading Studio, this application makes it easy to generate unlimited music for sight reading practice. There is also built-in assessment that provides feedback as you play along to your piece.

Please note that this only applies to individual Sight Reading Studio subscriptions. This means that while you will have access to the core features of the application, you will not be able to assign music or create a Sight Reading Studio class.

If you are interested in learning more about these features, we encourage you to request a platform trial:

Request a Platform Trial

Frequently Asked Questions

How long will Sight Reading Studio be free?

All individual Sight Reading Studio access will be free until June 30th. To access Sight Reading Studio, you simply need to create a free MakeMusic Cloud account (or login to your existing account) and navigate to Sight Reading Studio from the sidebar.

Will I be charged afterwards?

No. We do not collect credit card information and you will never be charged unless you choose to purchase a subscription at the conclusion of the promotion.

Am I getting the full Sight Reading Studio application, or a demo version with limited features?

You will have access to the full version of Sight Reading Studio for individuals. The only features you will not have access to are those typically included with the MakeMusic Cloud subscription, such as the ability to create classes in the application and assign Sight Reading Studio exercises to students. If you are interested in these features, please request a platform trial or begin a MakeMusic Cloud subscription.

The post Sight Reading Studio Is Free for a Limited Time appeared first on MakeMusic.

MakeMusic Cloud’s Weekly Highlights Emails feature opens a new line of communication about a child’s musical progress to their supporting parent or guardian. 

Supporting adults who enroll to receive their child’s Weekly Highlights Email will receive a few helpful messages about encouraging their child musically, tips on how to assist their child with MakeMusic Cloud, and will be reminded of how important their presence is in their child’s musical journey. Additionally, each week they will receive a personalized Highlights Email to give them insights into the music their child is playing, how much they are practicing, what assignments are upcoming, and more! 

These Weekly Highlights emails are intended to be conversation starters for parents and guardians to use in supporting their child’s music education. We hope to empower parents and guardians to play a bigger role in their child’s musical journey which will, in turn, support busy music educators.

It’s easy to invite parents and guardians to receive helpful weekly highlights emails! 

To get started, teachers can invite parents and guardians to receive weekly highlights for their child. On the new Manage Parent Emails page, teachers will be prompted to add a parent or guardian email address for each student enrolled in their MakeMusic Cloud class. In this first version, email addresses will need to be input manually (more streamlined options will come soon!)

Teachers can begin the invitation process from their Class Details page (the same place you would visit to add students to your class):

Once a parent/guardian has been invited, teachers can see their invitation status and even resend the invitation if needed. Parents/guardians must accept the invitation to be enrolled in their child’s personalized Weekly Highlights Email. 

TIP: To get a better parent/guardian “subscribe” rate, we recommend personally notifying the parents/guardians in your class before you send the invites. Giving the parents/guardians this notice that you’ll be sending them an invite to subscribe to their child’s weekly progress reports will make it more likely that they see and open the invite email.

After entering the parent/guardian email addresses into MakeMusic Cloud, teachers can gain a little time back and let us automate weekly progress updates for you!

We’re excited to connect music educators, students, and now supporting adults with this new feature! 

Learn more details about how this feature works in this knowledge base article.

Try out all of the benefits of using MakeMusic Cloud free with a 30-day Platform Trial. Perfect for teachers who want to experience the power of MakeMusic Cloud alongside their students, Platform Trials include both trial student and teacher accounts.

Request a Platform Trial

The post Weekly Highlights Emails: Strengthen the Connection Between Home and the Music Classroom appeared first on MakeMusic.

Your passion for music fuels us. The following feature updates from 2023 were requested by users like you. Thank you for the input to help MakeMusic Cloud continue growing and improving into a product that helps fuel your passions.

2023 User Requested Updates 

🎵 Assigner Improvements – the assignment process received a MAJOR upgrade 💪

🎵 Assignment Notification Emails now alert students to newly assigned/reassigned content 

🎵 Ungraded Assignments – rubrics are now optional 

🎵 Music Catalog Search Improvements: 🔎 preview before you open music, and choose from multiple sorting options when viewing search results

🎵 Content Manager improvements: now you can edit and delete content that is used as an assignment

🎵 Video Recording in Assignments – 🎥 the option to include video recording in assignments allows teachers and students to gain more performance insights than ever before 

🎵 Low Frequency and Percussive Assessment Improvements

🎵 Now there is a direct Join URL instead of “copy class code” on the Class Details page

🎵 Instrument names are now displayed next to student names on the roster when assigning

🎵 The grading calendar now defaults to the current grading period

🎵 Assignment names now freeze to the top in the Gradebook  

🎵 Octave agnostic assessment is an available option again 

🎵 BONUS 13th user requested update just released this week: Save a Take! This feature allows users to save for later or submit a take.

Other MakeMusic Cloud Updates

Our team’s also stayed busy working on a variety of additional projects and initiatives this year. Below you’ll find a few of the highlights. 

🎵 Sight Reading Studio, our newest tool that generates unlimited music for sight reading, was released! 

🎵 Power Up! Returns for season 2 with a focus on individual instrument tone and includes special guest, Tyler S. Grant 

🎵 New Foundations series (Brian Balmages and Fred Flowerday) releases put the fun in fundamentals: Mega Foundations, Spooky Foundations, Festive Foundations

🎵 Rostering updates: rostering is available with Canvas, Schoology, Google Classroom, and CSV upload. Additionally, users now have the ability to roster from multiple LMS classrooms. 

🎵 Fons, the automated scheduling and payment platform for appointment-based business joined the MakeMusic Family!

🎵 Multi-Year Subscription Discounts

🎵 MakeMusic Connect and events around the country allowed us to interact with YOU! Join us at an upcoming event 📆

The list of publishing partners exclusive to MakeMusic Cloud continues to grow—we’re thrilled to include their titles as part of our comprehensive Music Catalog! 

Our Repertoire Development team has added over 1 million 🤯 measures to MakeMusic Cloud this year! This detail-oriented team values quality and accuracy so that the titles you rely upon are input correctly and sound amazing with the professional accompaniments you love! 

Let us know what you’d like to see in the expansive MakeMusic Cloud Music Catalog by filling out this quick Repertoire Request form. 

Wishing you a happy holiday season—we look forward to making music together in 2024!

The post MakeMusic Cloud’s 2023: Wrapped appeared first on MakeMusic.

You may notice that our My Takes menu options have changed slightly, but you can still delete, download (previously “save”), and submit. The new Save button will save the take that you select to the Gradebook without submitting so that you can come back to it later. 

Here’s what happens when you select the new Save button:

When you return to the piece to practice later, you’ll see a reminder at the top of your saved take score to reference:

Selecting the icon next to the Currently Saved score will take you to the Gradebook where you can listen to your previously saved take. When more takes are recorded, saving a new take will override the previously saved one.

It’s important to note that a saved take is not a submitted assignment and that teachers cannot see what students have saved, only what they have submitted.

This exciting new feature will encourage students to continue to practice in the days leading up to assignment due dates—they can continue to work on beating their highest score!

Read more about the technical details of this user-requested feature in this Save a Take knowledge base article.

The post Feature Update – Save a Take appeared first on MakeMusic.

The day has finally arrived—Sight Reading Studio, the newest application from MakeMusic, is available now! 

Sight Reading Studio makes it easy to quickly craft automatically-generated sight reading exercises based on a wide variety of options. Musicians can then perform the exercises and receive real-time assessment and feedback as they play.

But creating a sight reading exercise is more than just generating a random collection of notes. What makes Sight Reading Studio truly unique is how tuneful the music is. Whether you’re creating an exercise for a single instrument or an entire ensemble, you can be sure that the music will look and sound great. 

This new app is available as a standalone subscription, and is included with all Teacher, Student, or All Access subscriptions to MakeMusic Cloud (replacing Sight Reading Builder). 

Sight Reading Studio is an affordable tool for individuals and teachers alike. The breakdown of pricing is as follows:

• Individual Sight Reading Studio Subscription: $19.99 per year.
• Student Sight Reading Studio Subscription (Fewer than 20 students): $19.99 per year.
• Student Sight Reading Studio Subscription (20 or more students): $4.99 per year.

Get Started Today

Whether you’re an individual, a music student, or a music teacher, Sight Reading Studio makes sight reading materials easy to create and fun to practice. 

Sight reading for the classroom

For a developing music student, practicing sight reading is a lot like eating vegetables—an important but sometimes unpleasant experience. But it doesn’t have to be.

Sight Reading Studio will spark passion in your students by making practice a fun and interactive experience. Have your students open a sight reading exercise in the Practice app and they’ll get instant feedback on the accuracy of their pitch, tempo, and rhythm. They’ll even receive a score based on how well they played – making grading assignments a breeze.

Sight Reading Studio is also a fantastic tool to use to prep for an upcoming festival, or for the AP exams. The best part? Sight Reading Studio is available for as little as $4.99 when purchased in bulk (20 or more students).

Get Started Today

Sight reading for the individual

Sight reading is a critical skill for musical independence, but as an individual performer, sight reading can be particularly challenging to practice. Constantly finding new materials takes time (and often money), and when you do find exercises, you may not have anyone to tell you if you’re playing correctly.

That’s where Sight Reading Studio comes in. With Sight Reading Studio, you can tailor the music to your needs. You can customize each exercise to be specific for your instrument, and to use particular key and time signatures, rhythmic patterns, and more.

With the built-in practice feature, you can generate an exercise, connect a microphone, and receive real-time feedback on your performance as you play along. You’ll even be able to see which notes you hit perfectly in pitch and rhythm, and which ones you can improve on. 

And at just $19.99 for an entire year, Sight Reading Studio is a budget-friendly option to improve your sight reading skills and overall musicianship.

Get Started Today

The post Sight Reading Studio Available Now appeared first on MakeMusic.

Expansive Music Catalog 

The depth of the MakeMusic Cloud Music Catalog is incredibly comprehensive and covers genres from pop to festival-appropriate and everything in between. Our repertoire development process is second to none and our dedicated team works to ensure that details even as small as line breaks are consistent with the print products that you rely upon.

With more and more titles exclusive to MakeMusic Cloud becoming available all the time, you are sure to find something appropriate, concert ready, and inclusive of many diverse and talented composers. Add in the high-quality professional accompaniments, useful tools, and assessment capabilities in MakeMusic Cloud and you are guaranteed an enriched practice experience that you cannot access anywhere else!

Exclusive methods & series:

Also available in the platform:

Explore our new State Lists Tool to browse contest-ready titles that are available in MakeMusic Cloud and appear on state required lists. 

Browse State Lists

Powerful Teaching Tools 

Teachers, we know you are busy! These updates have been made with YOU in mind to help you streamline your workflow. 

• • • SSO and Rostering functionality—utilize Single Sign-On in conjunction with Google Classroom, Schoology, and Canvas. You can also quickly roster students in from those supported LMS’s or via a quick CSV upload! 
    • Video recording capabilities in assignments
    • Assignment creation improvements
      • Streamlined assignment creation process 
      • Ungraded assignments 
      • Email notifications for students when they receive a new assignment or are reassigned 
    • MusicProfessor video lessons—learn fundamental instrument skills from master teachers in pedagogically-sound videos 
    • Music Catalog Search improvements—enjoy a streamlined search experience, preview titles before opening, and even listen before loading the Practice app
    • Assessment improvements for low frequency and non-pitched percussion instruments 
    • Gradebook improvements 
      • Grading periods are no longer required when creating standalone assignments but can still be added to help organize your Gradebook 
      • When grading periods are used, the gradebook will default to viewing the current grading period. This filter can be cleared if you prefer to view assignments from all grading periods together

Experience a Free Trial

Subscription Options for All Budgets 

Funding is a universal challenge and we want to help music students everywhere gain access to the powerful music education tools that we believe in. Our Multi-Year Discount program can save education platforms up to 25%! 

Get a Quote

Coming Soon!

Coming soon: Sight Reading Studio, a standalone sight reading tool from MakeMusic that makes it easy to generate unlimited sight reading materials based on a variety of fully-customizable settings. With Sight Reading Studio, you can create, modify, share, and even practice sight reading exercises with instant feedback and assessment. 

Sight Reading Studio is the only sight reading application that can provide immediate assessment feedback—empowering even the youngest musicians to efficiently practice sight reading and improve more quickly. This new and powerful tool will be included with all paid MakeMusic Cloud subscriptions or as a budget friendly standalone option! 

Try the Demo

The post New Features for the New School Year appeared first on MakeMusic.

You are in for a much more streamlined experience next time you create an assignment:

• Page reduction—the number of pages, (quicker loading times and fewer clicks!) to go through when creating a new assignment has been reduced. 
• Improved logic—assignment settings are laid out clearly with succinct explanations.
  • Easily accessible Key Choice—for eligible exercises, choose the key area for the assignment right from the CREATE page. 
• Removed Grading Period requirement—you no longer are required to tether an assignment to a grading period set up with the Gradebook. School calendars are set up in many varied ways and we are glad to offer you this new choice! 
• Simplified Rubric Creation—get to the music faster by using MakeMusic Cloud’s assessment score, an ungraded assignment, or customize a rubric with parameters of your choice. 

Create

Assignments now default to Any tempo and All measures. Communicate details with students in the Instructions space.

Utilizing the MakeMusic Cloud assessment score is a quick way to automatically populate scores into the Gradebook. You can always adjust scores as needed! Ungraded assignments will not have a score in the gradebook, but teachers can still listen to the submitted recordings from students and leave comments. Custom rubrics are useful for teachers who want any combination of rubric elements (even including the MakeMusic Cloud assessment score!).

Make further customizations in the Settings area. Here is where you can make selections on how the student experience will be customized for this particular assignment. You may also notice that the MakeMusic Cloud assessment score levels have been adjusted to Levels 1-4 with 1 being the most lenient. We recommend always starting with Level 1 assessment and then adjusting higher as needed.

Assign

When you finish the first page (Create) and select Next you’ll see the notification that an “Assignment template created”. If you’d like to make any changes to what was already saved, access the template from Recent Assignment Templates on your homepage.

The Assign page is where you can select due dates and define which students should receive this assignment. You can assign immediately or schedule for a future date. Assignments that are assigned immediately will also trigger a “new assignment” email notification to students—learn more about the new helpful assignment email notifications.

We’re excited to roll out these improvements to the assignment creation process just in time for the new school year! Learn more about how to create assignments in MakeMusic Cloud.

Get a Quote

The post Improvements to the Assignment Creation Experience appeared first on MakeMusic.

With this new tool, directors can select contest literature that aligns with their state’s requirements and empowers their students to prepare outside of rehearsal with immediate feedback. Set yourself up for success by choosing your contest and festival literature from titles that are part of MakeMusic Cloud’s impressive library.

We invite you to explore our collection of contest-ready music available at all difficulty levels for concert band, string orchestra, full orchestra, jazz ensemble, choir, solos, and ensembles.

Browse State Lists

The post Browse and Select State Lists in MakeMusic Cloud appeared first on MakeMusic.

With Sight Reading Studio, you will be able to quickly craft automatically-generated sight reading exercises based on a wide variety of options and send them to your musicians, empowering their increased musical independence. The musicians will even get assessment feedback on the sight reading performance in real-time as they play.

Sight Reading Studio will be available as part of the MakeMusic Cloud subscription, as well as a standalone subscription launching on September 6th. Subscriptions to Sight Reading Studio will be available for as little as $4.99 per year, making it the perfect low-cost, high-value tool for any musician.

Preview this new offering through our free demo:

Try the Demo

The demo will give you an idea of what’s to come with this exciting new application. Generate unlimited sight reading exercises based on a restricted set of options including instrumentation, time signatures, and key signatures. While many features are not available in this demo, you will get a sense of the easy-to-use interface, powerful generation engine, and more that will be included with the full release.

This demo is just a small portion of what users can look forward to. So what can teachers, students, and individuals expect when our new sight reading tool launches later this year?

For teachers, this new sight reading tool will:

• • Enable the creation of unlimited randomly-generated sight reading exercises to share or assign to students for individual instruction.
  • Display full-score sight reading exercises for their ensembles to practice during rehearsal.
  • Generate sight reading exercises based on multiple fine-tuned variables, or built–in presets designed for players of a specific skill level.

For students and individuals, this tool will:

• Enable practice of unlimited randomly-generated sight reading exercises shared by a teacher or generated on their own.

• Provide real-time assessment feedback on their sight reading performance.

Try the demo today! No account creation or sign-up required!

Try the Demo

The post Announcing Sight Reading Studio appeared first on MakeMusic.

A tradition of supporting music education 

MakeMusic’s history of partnering with school music programs starts at the beginnings of our company and our Vivace accompaniment software usage in solo contests. The transformation to SmartMusic with assessment and feedback features made our tool even more valuable for young, school-aged, musicians. After serving music education for more than two decades, in 2015, we moved online to improve access (and pricing) for more students and teachers. When COVID shut down the world, we banded together to provide free SmartMusic access to millions of students, teachers, and programs during those tough months of not being able to make music together in the same room. 

Here we are, coming back together, finding what normal feels like again, and music education is now more important than ever. The transition to our new name, MakeMusic Cloud, a few months ago comes alongside some big dreams that our team has—dreams to continue to power music education. 

We’ve heard from you: adopting a technology tool takes some time

Our team has recently been in touch with many MakeMusic Cloud users to investigate when educators see the biggest impact of our tools in the performance of their students. While many of you saw incredible results during COVID times, we are learning that years two and three seem to be particularly impactful times. In the second and third years of MakeMusic Cloud adoption, students retain an institutional memory of what to expect in things like assignment structure, procedures, how to log in, and even how to find a favorite song! Educators grow in those years as well—it takes some time to get into the groove of using a new tool and create updated plans for how to tackle varied concepts with students. 

We are also hearing from established users a resounding “it’s worth it!” when asked about using MakeMusic Cloud with their music programs!

“Actionable and timely feedback coupled with deliberate practice are crucial elements for any musician. MakeMusic Cloud provides me with a clear snapshot each day/week of what my students sound like as individuals, what they are doing well, what they are struggling with and it helps me guide our next lessons, rehearsals and assignments.” – George Andrikokus, Director of Bands and Instrumental Jazz, Hinsdale, IL 

“It is a powerful tool for streamlining in-class instruction and developing practice skills in students.” – Rachel Maxwell, Band Director, Oswego, IL 

“With a variety of sight-reading texts already loaded in to the system, I can just choose what we will sight-read each day and project it for the whole class to work through together…I have noticed quite a few students start very tentatively in their sight-reading skills, and then as the year progresses, they get more confident!” – Patti Eden, Choral Director, Bullard, TX

“This program has helped encourage the students to practice more at home. If the students do not understand a note or rhythm, MakeMusic provides the answer. The students can slow tempos down and isolate sections that need more work. In a class setting, it helps when more than one section is struggling—I can put one section’s part on MakeMusic while I help the other section.” – Kelly Weddington, Orchestra Teacher, El Paso, TX

Financial challenges continue

In our conversations, we have also learned that you are feeling the burden of budget cuts, funding coming to an end, and just general changes to your programs.  

We have cultivated a few helpful resources to guide you through accessing some limited-time federal funding. Explore these posts for more information:

• FAQ’s on Federal Funding for Music Education
• A New Look at Federal Funds for Music Education

While we have always offered a deep education discount, these recent conversations have inspired us to think of an additional solution to provide affordable access to our powerful tools. 

A solution to support music education

To serve both our current loyal customers and encourage newer users to fully adopt MakeMusic Cloud into their programs, we have created a special offer for Fall 2023—Multi-Year Commitment Discounts. 

Here’s how it works: 

In addition to the current Bulk discount for organizations, you can select additional savings by committing to a 2 or 3 year subscription. 

• 2 year commitment – 15% discount per year 
• 3 year commitment – 25% discount per year 

We understand that there can be a lot of red tape when it comes to purchasing something for your school music program, so electing one of these commitment programs will lock in your discount, but still allow you to pay for just one year at a time. 

Inevitably, program numbers will fluctuate over the course of a two or three year commitment, so we will uphold your agreement even with a 10% increase or decrease in subscription seat numbers. Should you need a larger adjustment than that, simply reach out to us at sales@makemusic.com so that we can find the best solution for you. 

Learn more about this offer

We’re excited to serve you 

It’s our hope that this new discount will allow the incredible MakeMusic Cloud tools to serve even more students and music educators in a positive way! 

With a MakeMusic Cloud subscription, students and teachers gain access to: 

• The expansive Music Catalog which is full of educational, state-list approved, and fun pieces! 
• The Video lessons library which features MusicProfessor level 1 videos.
• Sight Reading Builder where you can create unlimited, customizable sight reading exercises.
• Assignments and Gradebook where teachers can create and assign customized assignments by choosing anything from the Music Catalog, a custom .xml file that has been uploaded, or even a Sight Reading Builder template. Our new video assignment feature offers even more powerful possibilities! New ungraded assignments can serve as functional practice guides for students.
• Single Sign-On and Rostering integrations with Schoology, Canvas, and Google Classroom make classroom administration easier than ever.

Power your music program with MakeMusic Cloud

Lock in your discount today!

The post Power Your Music Program with MakeMusic Cloud appeared first on MakeMusic.