PracticeFirst Adds Click-On Note Fingering Diagrams
Before 2024 winds down to a close, we are launching an incredible new feature in PracticeFirst - the performance assessment offered exclusively through MusicFirst - that allows students to click on any note in an assigned exercise to reveal the correct fingering for that note, as well as the ability to hear how that specific notes sound. This feature is something that has been on our customer request list for a few years, and the amazing development team at MatchMySound has done a wonderful job making it available. As anyone in the software industry knows, what might seem to be a relatively easy thing to add to a software’s overall functionality rarely is. Working hand in hand with the content team from MusicFirst under the direction of Marjorie LoPresti, we’ve been able to launch this feature just in time for the start of 2025. Here is how it works.
When you launch PracticeFirst inside of the MusicFirst Classroom, navigate to the piece of music that you want your students to practice, and then select the specific instrument part, you will see a new icon on the right hand side of the interface that looks like an eighth note (see red arrow above). When you click on that new icon, you will see a fingering diagram for whatever note the red cursor is placed on.
Above the fingering diagram, you will also see the name of the note as well as a play button that when clicked will play the pitch. Here’s a closer look with a fingering for the flute.
This new feature is something that our customers have asked us for many times, and is often pointed out as being one of the reasons that they decide to go with another performance assessment solution. It is an extremely useful tool for students of all abilities, but especially for beginners. One of my favorite things about this new feature is the ability to play the entire piece of music and watch each fingering diagram display while doing so. If I was a beginning tuba player again, I would have LOVED this.
Over the next few months we will be rolling this feature out across all of the 35,000+ pieces of music within PracticeFirst. At the moment, you’ll find this feature on a few thousand exercises, including many of our beginner method books. Our content team has to manually add the feature to every individual piece of content - a Herculean task but one that I know that will be very useful to the hundreds of thousands of students who use PracticeFirst every day.
If you would like to try out this feature for yourself to consider implementing it into your instrumental music program, just click HERE for a free 30-day trial. Hats off to the entire team at MatchMySound as well as the MusicFirst Content team for sneaking this feature release in right before the end of the year. Here’s to a wonderful 2025!