Practice is critical to success in learning music and lack of practice is the leading reason why students stop taking lessons. As a parent, you may be spending thousands of dollars a year for your child to learn music and many hours of your time driving back and forth. It's important to put your child in the best position to be successful, for his/her sake and yours!
The founder of Better Practice™ is not a music teacher but a music parent like you. He understood that in order to help his child be successful, he needed to help make practice at home more engaging and effective. He started by designing something that would eliminate the typical excuses but also would bring the joy of music into daily practice...with that Better Practice™ was born.
To help your child succeed in learning music, reduce tension in the home, and also protect your investment, Better Practice™ is an invaluable tool for learning music.
Case studies have been done to analyze the results of students and their practice habits before and after the adoption of the Better Practice. We've seen dramatic improvements all across the board. Whether it's "Skipped Days" or “One and Done” practice sessions dropping, or a big increase in longer practice sessions, the improvements are significant. For those that don't practice, it can turn things around. Even good practicers will benefit. This is because practice is not only easier, it is more enjoyable. Plus, students see measurable results which fuel even more motivation.
The important thing is to understand that this is not just a tracking tool to replace a notebook. If your child is using it as such, then it's just an add-on task to their practice - little benefit. But once your child uses the app to change the practice experience, you will see dramatic improvements. What does 'change the practice experience' mean? It means utilizing the various tools (YouTube, backing track) to play and sing along while practicing, using recording to capture their play and listening for areas for improvement and sharing it with their teacher, using the metronome to systematically to navigate through difficult sections, following the analytics to see the students strength and identify weaknesses, chatting with the teacher throughout the week sharing progress and asking questions, etc.
As a parent, you will also see great benefit. Because the app guides the student through practice, there should be no more questions on what to practice and having to deal with reasons why they cannot practice. The teacher is just a tap away and everything is tracked. That means you will spend less time with the child during practice but also have more visibility to your child's practice. If you are working while your child practices, you can listen to the recordings of practice when you come (or even at work). It will show you what the child practiced and what was skipped. You can stay involved with the progress at a detailed level and provide support as needed.
Generally, no. It's likely that you already have what you need. Better Practice™ is a web app, meaning it is accessible from any device with a web browser. So you can use a smartphone, tablet, or a computer to access Better Practice™. You do not need to download an app from the App Store, but your child will need to be connected to the internet. For mobile devices, you can also add a button to your home screen to access the app so it feels and works like an app downloaded from the App Store. Most families have a family tablet that they keep in the house in addition to the parents' smartphone. This device can be used for Better Practice™, while you can view the progress on your personal phones at anytime.
Better Practice™ is not a game or a passive media consumption app. Instead it is a management tool that leverages technology to do things that are hard to achieve without technology. For example, being able to capture the child's questions as they come up in practice and send them directly to the teacher, guiding your child through practice based on his/her practice needs, because it has a perfect history of every single practice and the intelligence to know which assignments need more practice than others, so your child spends time wisely on what needs practicing and not going through everything in a brute force manner. It helps your child become aware of his/her strengths and weaknesses and provides tools and guidance on how to improve. We believe it's about putting the child in a position to be successful but putting the right tools and resources around that will help make a difference.
A good way to think about this is what is the cost for not using an advanced practice management tool like Better Practice™. If your child loses a week of practice because he doesn't understand what to practice, that alone will pay for a year of Better Practice™. In other words, the cost of an average lesson is more than the price of one year of Better Practice, and it's not uncommon for typical music students to lose 6, 12 or more weeks of practice a year. There are also missed lessons because of illness or vacations. With our shared recordings, the student can still continue to make progress, get feedback from the teacher. Next, consider the cost of slower progress. When students are engaged and learning, they can see their progress dramatically, meaning you will spend less on lessons to cover much more. Furthermore, the app eliminates the need to purchase other materials like notebook, metronome, music dictionary, etc. Better Practice™ pays for itself many times over.