2018 Best Apps And Games For Learning To Sight Read Music
It’s been over a year since we took a look at what apps and games can help beginning music students to master sight reading. No budding musician is going to be able to move forward without getting the sight-reading thing figured out. That’s why we thought it was a good time to revisit the issue and share with you the best apps and games to up your own music sight-reading skills in 2018. You can check out our initial list, along with some notes on what to look for in a sight-reading app, here.
Let’s start with the holdovers
There are two apps from our original list that merit getting re-listed two years later. Why? Because they’re awesome.
Music Tutor Free (Sight Reading Improver) is still free with an ad-free paid version (still $1.99). A 4.5-star rating on the most recent version shows a remarkably consistency with its 4.5-star rating based on all its 5000+ ratings. It includes timed exercises and games to really keep you on your toes. It lets you review your test results so you can see exactly what you got right (and wrong), and measure your progress over time. It’s available now on android too, not just iOS. The android version enables a multiplayer format that lets you compare your scores against others and have multiplayer sessions that will really push you!
Sight Reading Mastery provides sight reading exercises and games for a wide variety of instruments, as well as voice, and at a wide choice of grade levels. So no matter your instrument or your experience, this piece of software can help you improve your music sight reading. It also includes sight reading exercises based on actual compositions and audio playback of the correct notes so you can improve all your musical senses. It also provides live, personalized tutor sessions from music teacher if you purchase its “Musician” level package for $29 a month. Otherwise, you can still get the “Student” package (without the live tutoring) for $19 a month. Both versions include a seven-day free trial.
New options on the list
Here are some other great choices to round out our 2018 list:
Music Crab (iOS version here) takes gamification to improve sight-reading skills to whole a new level. With fun underwater graphics and notes in the guise of various sea creatures, it could make a nice break from the more studious apps while still providing some worthwhile exercises. As with most games, the better you do, the higher level you can access for more difficult exercises and challenges. If you need to get a young musician to practice sight reading, this is the app that can do it.
Note Teacher is geared towards guitar players and seems to only be available on android, so sorry Apple-users. With a solid 4.5-star rating base and installs between 100,000 – 500,000, it’s worth checking out. It has a more traditional sheet music-style graphic. It also has multi-lingual support, and gives you the option to practice using basic musical nomenclature or German musical nomenclature. The app is free, but has in-app purchase products that range for $0.99 to $8.49.
Solfeador - Music reading is another high volume downloaded app that supports a variety of notations (English, Latin, and German). You can unlock more competitive levels by earning stars – but beware, you’ll also get penalized for being too slow. This app isn’t kidding around. Cello players will appreciate that it offers bass clefs, not just treble clefs. This is a free app.
You can never master sight reading fast enough, but you’ll never get there without putting in the time. These apps and games making practicing and refining this skill so much fun – you won’t even notice the time!