Lately, there seems to be a surge in mobile apps designed for musicians; or perhaps, music resource apps having been emerging in great numbers for quite some time and I’m just now aware of it because my job is to review the newest, greatest music products-and apps seem to be at the top of that list currently! 🙂 Having this job of reviewing products is pretty fun at times because I get to experience firsthand the new inventions designed to be the next leading resource for various areas of music performance and/or education. It’s just so fascinating and inspiring seeing different individuals or companies recognize a need and then set out to create a product to help fill that need in a unique way. And from what I can tell, that seems to be one of the driving forces behind Practice+.
Practice+ was recently released by DynamicApp Design (creators of Metronome+) and has been featured on bulletproofmusician.com and susanparadis.com.
In the Practice+ app you will find a handy musician toolkit that includes a metronome, a recording mode (for self-evaluation and sharing), a tuner, a practice mode (for drilling a specific set of measures), and a setlist mode. Upon opening the app you will not be taken to a homepage, but rather, the mode you last used before exiting previously. This aspect of the app made it a bit confusing for a first time user because most apps or music programs I use have a homepage that allows you to select where you want to go from there, or if they don’t, when you open it for the first time, the app/program will pop up with introductory pages that help walk you through how it works.
Practice+ also has some special features such as multitasking between modes, hearing a specific pitch within the tuner mode, sharing through email or social media, etc.
I don’t want to sound overly critical of this app because I think that with the capabilities it has any musician would find it very handy; however, I feel like I would not be giving a completely honest review if I left out a few other things about Practice+ that caused me not to be thoroughly impressed with it.
Unfortunately, I didn’t find it to be nearly as intuitive as I thought it would be. The interface isn’t super intimidating to navigate, but I found it hard to figure out exactly how each mode or function worked to its full extent. For example, it took quite some time to figure out how to turn on the metronome because nothing had start/stop on it or on/off. You actually push the circular button at the bottom with the rate in it. I also didn’t understand how the practice mode worked and couldn’t figure out how to edit the name of a recording or setlist. The last thing I believe worth mentioning, is that I think I would’ve found it very helpful to have little pop-up “description bubbles” in the settings, to learn what the different settings were for and what they did.
I guess these issues wouldn’t be such a big deal to me if I felt like I were illiterate with apps, but apps are one of the few things I normally can operate pretty well. I honestly feel like if the app was just updated with more labeling of what things are/what they do or have introductory pages or a YouTube demo link it would help tremendously with understanding and being able to use all the features of Practice+.
(Note: Just now, I discovered after going back to the DynamicApp website, if you turn your phone so it’s in landscape mode, a “?” will appear in the bottom and if you push it “description bubbles” will pop up! However, this feature still does not appear to be anywhere when your phone is in the portrait mode. And there’s also nothing like this in the “settings.”.)
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