How To Fill Out Your Practice Card

First Practice Card Turn In Success!

APA Band Students and Parents, It appears that the first run of using the online practice journal was a success! I received 42 responses to our little online practice journal, and think that that is wonderful for our first time! I am going to propose a little incentive for students to turn these in on time. I am thinking that if a student turns in 5 online practice journals in a row (on time) that there will be a prize. The band teachers will decide what type of prize would be the most appropriate and will let you know, but for right now it is a surprise! Please continue to encourage your students to practice and turn in their work! We want all of our students to be successful and receive the best grades they can. Thank you for all you do!! Ms. Sorensen

Welcome!

Parents and Students! I am so glad you have made it to check out our blog!! I hope that this is an easy site to navigate and use, and I hope that it makes recording practice time go smoothly! I am still working things out and hoping that I can get all bugs out as soon as possible. I will continue to send emails and reminders your way to make sure things get turned in on time. Over the course of all of this, I am still trying to make our site private so that we can have band discussions and other things going in this blog, so if every your access becomes limited, it will be temporary. Thanks for your patience!! Ms. Sorensen

Using a metronome

We have been encouraging our students to practice all year.  Something that can help make this practicing more effective is by practicing with a metronome.  A metronome is a device that keeps tempo.  It can be a great tool when practicing a difficult passage or song.
The best way to use a metronome is to find the harder part of whatever is being practiced and figure out what the fastest tempo this part can be played at, with 100% accuracy.  This is easiest to do by finding that part that needs work, turning the metronome way down, maybe to 50 or 60 beats per minute (BPM) then gradually increasing this until you make a mistake.  Once you make a mistake turn it back to the tempo where you played it correctly.  Then you practice the whole song at that tempo and gradually build speed as you get better.  Here are some links for free online metronomes.  There are also free apps for iPods/phones/pads/etc.

http://simple.bestmetronome.com/
http://www.metronomeonline.com/
http://www.nch.com.au/metronome/index.html  (this one downloads!)
http://www.8notes.com/metronome/

As far as apps go, I recommend the Steinway metronome app, it's free and has some great tools on it.

Now go out and practice!

First Post

Fellow Bandies!

Welcome!  We are going to try this thing out, using it for upcoming events, links for great music-y stuff, and all that jazz!  (See what I did there?) 

We hope that this will be a useful tool for you!  Thank you for all you do and all you are!