The Best Apps for Teaching Music Online
Using apps for online music teaching adds variety to the lesson, helps the student stay engaged, reinforces theory concepts, and teaches important musical concepts. The following music teaching apps can be used as wonderful tools to help enhance your online lessons. Do not feel overwhelmed by this list, choose a few apps that you feel would either help you solve a problem or work well for specific students!
*Many of these apps are only available in the IOS app store, some are available for android as well.
PiaScore - With this app you can import digital music for easy organization, you can download free public domain music scores, and you can annotate music and send it over to your student. With this app you can import and purchase digital sheet music.
Super Score - Inside SuperScore the student can practice along with the music and if they connect the iPad to a keyboard the app will actually follow the students and help with timing, accuracy, and speed. This app also has an entire digital music library for purchasing online music for your students.
Tonara - Tonara is a way to connect the student and the teacher in an intuitive and engaging way! When the teacher makes lesson assignments the student can view those lesson assignments and any notes the teacher sent them from their own device. Teachers can track students practice as well as send them specific links, pdfs, or voice memos. Tonara solves a main concern for online teachers of being able to accurately track progress and send lesson assignments. This is, in the opinion of many online teachers, an absolutely must have app for online lessons!
Google Drive - With Google Drive you can organize all of your music as well as supplemental materials. You can easily use Google Drive to share items with students or their parents. You can also use Google Docs to create lesson assignments for students so you don’t have to email them their assignments every week. With the shared doc you and your student can view each others notes in real time.
Pro Metronome - This is my #1 recommended metronome app! It’s free and has many ways to adjust the settings making it a perfect practice companion for your students.
Tuned Train - Tuned Train is perfect for beginner students and it’s free! The student draws a path for a train moving the track up and down. The train then travels on the path creating interesting melodies.
Piano Maestro - Piano Maestro is a fun and engaging piano practice tool! I love how this app encourages students to improve their note reading and site reading skills. The app can actually listen as you play giving you instant feedback. It does cost to use the full version of Piano Maestro but they have plenty of free music for you to get started with.
Music Flash Class - I use this app at the end of every online lesson to quiz students on their note reading! I also assign students a number of minutes daily to use this app to practice their notes. There are many ways to customize which notes the student is being quizzed on as well as how much time they get to complete the quiz. It’s such a fantastic tool for tracking student progress!
Tenuto - Tenuto is a highly customizable music theory app. From ear training to chord reading, this app will really help you effectively teach musical concepts to online students! Tenuto also tests on accidentals, intervals, scales, chords, and analysis symbols.
Flashnote Derby - This app is another fun app for testing note reading skills. I especially love using this app with young beginner students because it turns their note reading into a game! As they are quizzed on their notes they are watching to see if their horse wins the race, it’s really fun for the student and acts as a great incentive to get students to learn their notes! You can also customize here which notes the student is being quizzed on.
Notion - This app is a composition app and a great starting place for students. You can use this app to teach students the basics of composition and encourage them to write their own pieces.
There you have it! 11 amazing music teaching apps that will help you engage your students, stay organized, send lesson assignments, and teach important concepts.
Are you familiar with any of these apps? I’d love to hear your experience with them in the comments. Also, if you have other apps that you’ve loved for either in-person or online lessons, share them so I can add them to the list!
For a free printout/download of these music teaching apps click here.
Happy teaching, Carly