Practica Musica 4.5
Learning Music Theory & Ear Training
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Whether you need to practice your sight reading skills, improve your ear training abilities, or just learn the fundamental principles of music theory, Practica Musica allows you to do it all. With the release of version 4.5 and its new features, Practica Musica is now, more than ever, the most complete music education package available for music theory and ear training.
This award-winning music training software includes more than 80 theory and ear training activities. Each activity allows you to focus on specific skills, such as rhythm tapping, interval recognition, chord spelling, and polyphonic dictation.
Best of all, Practica Musica 4 allows you to work at your own pace, providing interactive feedback and tracking your progress until you master each concept. Purchase a copy and begin enjoying Practica Musica's benefits right away!
Features Include...
Wide Variety of Customizable Activities
Practica Musica currently features more than 80 activities. As more activities are created, they're posted to the Ars Nova's website for free download. Difficulty levels range from beginning to advanced.
Polyphonic Capabilities
Many theory and ear training activities have been included in Practica Musica 4 that take advantage of the program's unique polyphonic capabilities. Practica Musica can now perform rhythm tapping or sight reading exercises in two parts and can tutor students through more advanced ear training exercises such as four-part dictation or chord progression identification. In the chord progression exercises, the voicing of each chord can be displayed in full.
New Sounds
Practica Musica for Macintosh can use Quicktime instruments for output, as well a variety of sampled instruments with 16-bit output resolution for clarity in inner voices. Practica Musica for Windows uses either the sampled sounds, the computer's sound card sythesizer or SoftSynth (if available).
MIDI Compatibility
Though MIDI is not required (except in sight-reading exercises involving both pitch and rhythm) it's often helpful. Practica Musica for Mac OS X uses OS X's built-in MIDI capabilities so no third party software is required. Mac users with OS 8.6 - 9.2.2 can use OMS or FreeMIDI, either via a serial port or USB . Windows users can plug directly to the joystick port found on most sound cards, or to a USB port with a USB interface.
Vocalis Voice Input Technology
New Vocalis voice input technology allows Practica Musica users to sing or play instruments into activities such as Pitch Reading, Interval Playing, etc. Voice input is done using any standard USB microphone.
Notation Tools
Practica Musica's notation tools allow you to write not only melodies, but also chorales and other polyphonic compositions. Music can be heard, saved and printed -- perfect for class assignments. The music file format is the same for both the Macintosh and Windows versions, so files created on one platform can be used on the other.
New Coordinated Textbook
Exploring Theory with Practica Musica is a friendly and engaging textbook that provides full coverage of music fundamentals topics, plus a section of tear-out written exercises and music for class use (view table of contents). Using Practica Musica in conjunction with Exploring Theory... enables students to put concepts into practice with immediate feeback -- the new Textbook Activities
illustrate and reinforce nearly every topic introduced in the book. Students also can refer to Practica Musica to hear all of the music examples printed in the text. Students respond enthusiastically to this multimedia approach because it makes the subject matter both more accessible and more vital, and the new Student Edition makes this advantage available to academic institutions at textbook prices.
New in version 4.5
This latest version, released in early 2003, introduced several new features. The most significant of these are:- Mac OS X compatibility
- Allows you to sing or play with instruments in activities such as pitch reading, interval playing, or others (voice input is done using any standard USB microphone)
- New large and small screen pianos that you can switch with a single click
- New
Tool Tips
are small boxes with explanatory text that pop up when you hold the mouse cursor over a tool - Now you can operate with no student file
- Mac dialog windows have been enlarged for easier reading
- More control over the range of generated melodie
- New arrows make several exercises easier to follow
- Define chords with a root that is not actually present
Syncopation Screen
Transcribing Screen
Tool Tip Screen