Fun Music Programs for Your iPad: Flashnote Derby and Note Squish

This morning, I did a workshop for our local music teachers' group about using iPads in our music studios. We looked at lots of neat apps, and I'm going to show you two of them here.

Flashnote Derby, $.99

Flashnote Derby

One of my favorite note-reading games is Flashnote Derby. It is a horse race format that is fully customizable to any reading level. If a student is just learning his/her first notes, you can limit the scope of the questions to just those few. If you have an advanced student who needs more of a challenge, you can adjust the settings to include note reading above and below each staff with several ledger lines.

In the screenshot above, you can see that some notes are yellow and some are black. The yellow notes are the ones that you have selected for drill in the student's game. I use this app with as little as two notes for my earliest readers, and it really seems to help them remember what they are learning in their method books.

Note Squish, $.99

Note Squish for iPhone/iPad

Note Squish is another note-reading game that many students love. It is actually an iPhone app, but you can easily use it on an iPad and enlarge the image size to fit. It is basically a musical version of the old arcade game, Whac-a-Mole. The object is to name the displayed note as fast as you can by tapping on the critter that has the correct note atop his head. You can get bonus points by also tapping the worms and rabbits that pop up through the mole holes.

Like Flashnote Derby, Note Squish is fully customizable to suit your student's reading level. You can limit the scope to as few as two notes on one staff or expand it to include all of the notes on both staves, reaching out to ledger lines above and below as well.

Note Squish settings

Each of these games costs 99 cents in the App store. You should get them!

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