Move Mi Music is the brainchild of the Kodaly Institute in Hungary in partnership with AutSoft Ltd and was released in 2019.
It is an interactive app which allows teachers to design a variety of practice activities and musical exercises for students to complete in a digital form. The app combines interactive music notation software with gorgeous graphics and some brilliant auto-marking features enabling Kodaly teachers everywhere to incorporate more technology into their classrooms and update worksheets into a new form.
Given the current global pandemic and the fact that many places around the world are teaching remotely, this app could not have come at a better time!
Set up
In order to use Move Mi Music, the teacher or account holder must purchase the app from either the App Store or Google Play Store and run it on an iOS or Android device. The initial purchase'll set you back a rather steep $49.99 USD, however there are no subsequent in-app purchases or ads and the entire school may be serviced from that one payment.
Once the teacher has an account, they can create classes and individual student profiles (from what I have seen so far, it seems you need to put in each student's data individually, which can be a time-consuming process up front, but once it's done, you're good to go for the year) and each child will have a unique QR code generated for them. This can live in their music folder at school, can be sent home for homework tasks or even as part of your remote learning bundle.
Students can access Move Mi Music through a web browser on a range of devices and simply scan the QR code (or input it manually) to log into their personalised account.
They can then receive homework or live tasks and complete them at their leisure! It should be noted that not every type of task can be set remotely - some require you to be responding to the teacher's screen. This is most ideal for live classrooms, however it could be adapted to a synchronous teaching situation where the teacher shares their screen through Zoom, Google Meets or similar video conferencing applications and students then respond on their own device at home.
Types of activties
There are 20 different types of activities to practice a variety of rhythmic, melodic, polyphonic and metre-based tasks.
The app allows a lot of teacher freedom in the design of these tasks and at first it can be a little daunting figuring out what each activity type is best used for. However, after spending a bit of time playing around with each type, creating a sample task and then selecting "pupil view" I was able to see what the end product would look like and gained a much better idea of how best to utilise each task type.
It's worth noting that (as far as I'm aware) there aren't any pre-existing activities, nor sharing of activities between teachers, unlike programs such as SeeSaw which have community activity libraries.
Some of my favourite activities so far include:
Pitch contour
These tasks are beautifully designed and can be used with even the youngest of primary-aged students tracing the melodic contour onto an iPad screen. The app can be programmed to reveal beautiful designs underneath too!
Picture Notation of Pitch
Here is "Snail, Snail" written out using snails! This is great for pre-literacy students as it can be adapted to have a full stave or a smaller number of lines.
Rhythmic/melodic jigsaws
Take a well-known songs, notate it (either rhythmically in stick notation or full melodic notation on a stave) and the program will chop it into jigsaw puzzle pieces for the students to stick back together!
Here's an example of "Circle To The Left"
Add bar lines
Students are given a completed notation, but without the bar lines! They then use the program to draw them in the correct spots.
Music Memorisation
This is a great example of a task that must be done synchronously. The class starts off with the full song, for example here is the complete rhythm for the song "Stodola Pumpa"
Then, by clicking on particular notes, the teacher can gradually remove elements of the song and test how well the students have memorised the song!
Rhythmic dictation
This is another example of a task that must be done live or synchronously. In the video below, you will see that the students get a 4 beat countdown, then there is space for the teacher to perform the rhythm (in this case taa taa ti-ti taa), then the students tap on each beat circle how many sounds they heard, essentially repeating the rhythm that was clapped.
This is a great task for students who are able to echo rhythms really well but are perhaps still developing their literacy skills.
When you set these tasks to a student, the app automatically marks their work for you upon completion and will then show up on the student profile (eg. Sally got 3/4 on the "How many sounds on a beat?" task). This is best used for tasks where there are concrete right/wrong answers, such as a rhythmic dictation. The program will calculate that out of 4 beats, the student correctly notated 3 of them, therefore their result is 75%.
How fantastic is that? The app even does your corrections!
I think this is a fantastic resource and couldn't have become available at a better time, given the move to virtual classrooms in so many places around the world.
Move Mi Music is available through the App Store or Android Store and requires the teacher/account holder to have a device compatible with these operating systems. However, students can then use the program through web browsers on a variety of devices.
Check it out today!