Note Rush

Sight reading is one of the *big things* we expect piano lessons to teach us. It's also not easy, for many kids it's as difficult, or even trickier, than reading English. It requires a lot of abstract reasoning power, repetition and work to really "get it."

We know that a well-rounded musician pairs the ability to see and hear the notes with their awareness of the relationship between notes as they form intervals and chords to interpret and create music. So being able to SEE those notes is a very important part of that puzzle. 

And being a huge believer in the power of gamification, today I'm going to tell you all about NoteRush! A great game that will help students with sight-reading. The game aspect will motivate them to achieve the repetition and practice necessary to internalize the notes, while the expanding levels will continue to stretch and grow the inventory of notes they can confidently read. Piano Parent Podcast also recently featured the app's developer, Thomas Grayston, click here to listen to his interview about developing this music ed resource. 

NoteRush uses your phone or tablet's internal microphone to listen to what you play on the piano, as soon as you've played the note, it moves to another line or space and you play that one. This repeats until you've completed the level. One of the things I really like in the design is the way the notes move to the next after they've been played correctly. It allows students to see the interval, or the distance between the two notes by comparing the two locations, this is one of those crucial elements of sight reading fluently. And for the fun part, the app has themes! There's soccer, ladybugs, space, & seasonal themes, and always more in the works. This is great because the staff that the student is reading from can change design, color scheme etc, reinforcing confidence and consistency in the notes despite any visual variation.

The app is available for all devices on iTunes and GooglePlay.