Thomas J. West Music

While many of us in the U.S. enjoyed the Colmbus Day holiday yesterday, the folks behind the scenes in Tokyo for Theta Music Trainer were rolling out a big update package. Five new games, new training courses, and inproved functionality for the teacher control panel.

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Of particular interest in this update are the courses, which are more of an "obstacle course" kind than the "course of study" kind. Theta Trainer now offers a basic ear training course, a music theory course, and a sound mixing course.  Each of these courses gives the participant a 30-day regimen of 5 games to play on the site each day. Total play time each day is 15 minutes. It's like Tony Horton's 10-Minute Trainer for musicians!

Each of the courses selects site games that help the player focus on a particular skill set. Of the three, the one that excites me the most is the course for music theory. For those of us who have sat through the college lecture class on music theory, this regimen is a welcome addition because it allows the student to not only learn the intellectual part of music theory but also apply it to actual sounds. It drives home the point of music theory in the first place - it is simply a method of labeling sounds. The regimen in all three of these courses allows players to not only make that intellectual-to-sound connection, but helps improve their reaction time.

I will probably use these new courses as a challenge for my students during their winter and summer breaks.

I am using Theta Music Trainer as part of my efforts this school year to create a blended learning music performance curriculum. My students so far this year have been assigned Paddle Tones and Flash Rhythms up to level 5. Many of them have not only accomplished that, but have taken it upon themselves to explore other games on the site that were not assigned. Imagine that - students showing an interest in learning without it being required!

As more data from their training comes in, I will be sure to share the results they are experiencing with my readers. I continue to highly recommend Theta Music Trainer to any music educator who wants to provide ear training and music theory drilling to their students.

This article (c) 2011 Thomas J. West. All content on ThomasJWestMusic dot com is licensed under a Creative Contributions Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 License. Please contact the author before publishing on or off-line.

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