The Bottom Line
Pros
- Highly interactive self-paced lessons, lessons are very detailed
- Great animation/graphics, good sound quality
- Fun and informative
- Teacher-friendly
- Excellent supplemental material for traditional music lessons.
Cons
- My copy of the manual had minor publishing errors but I was informed that this has been corrected.
Description
- Developed by Harmonic Vision.
- Comes in a stand-alone version and in lab packs which can support from 5 to 5,000 workstations.
- Runs on both Windows and Macintosh platforms.
- Lessons are aligned with the National Standards for Music Education.
- The Music Ace series has received over 30 awards.
- Effectively used in schools and private studios.
- For beginning to intermediate music students.
- Teaches music theory, listening skills, note reading, notation, rhythm, harmony and more.
- Comes with printed guides and reproducible materials such as record sheets and certificates.
- For more details and pricing visit their website
Guide Review - Product Review - Music Ace Maestro (Music Educator's Professional Edition)
Music Ace Maestro combines all the wonderful features of Music Ace and Music Ace 2 with added bonuses such as the "Maestro Manager" which enables educators to customize their own lesson sequence as well as track student progress.Music Ace Maestro contains 48 lessons arranged in pedagogical order, from "Introduction to the Staff" on Lesson 1 to "Introduction to Harmony". Installing the software is a breeze and you can organize users by assigning a group name and then entering the student's name under a specific group. Once logged in, the user will be taken to the lessons and they have the option to repeat a lesson, continue to the next, play a game or use the "Doodle Pad". There is also a "Progress Report" which tracks all completed lessons and games played. On each lesson the student is guided by an encouraging virtual instructor named Maestro Max. Every lesson begins with Maestro Max introducing a music concept followed by several drills. Each lesson has an accompanying game which reinforces the concepts just learned and awards points for correct answers.
My personal favorite is the "Doodle Pad" where you can compose your own music using different instruments by dragging notes onto the staff. Teachers can use the "Doodle Pad" as a reward tool. It's also a great learning game for younger children, my 6 year old absolutely loves it!
Overall it's an excellent program equipped with helpful tools and features that makes teaching and learning essential music concepts fun.
