Does a music practice tracking app like this exist?
September 19, 2019 4:50 PM Subscribe
A friend is looking for an iOS app that allows them to enter or import a list of songs then keep visual track of how long it's been since they last played each song, making it immediately and increasingly obvious if it's been a long time. Ultimately, they want to be able to take a quick glance through the list and see which ones need the most practicing so they know to work on those first. Does anyone know of such an app, or have an alternative idea?
For example, something like the following would be ideal:
1. Each song title would be blue when they have just been played, green if it's been a day, shading through yellow, orange and red for "haven't played this in four days."
2. The user can reset a title to blue by tapping on it.
3. The app sets/bumps the colors to the next "day" only when it is opened (i.e. not change color every actual calendar day, because then if the user doesn't practice for five days all the titles would be red).
4. Maybe give the user an option to set a title to red (instead of blue) if they know it needs more practice than the others.
For example, something like the following would be ideal:
1. Each song title would be blue when they have just been played, green if it's been a day, shading through yellow, orange and red for "haven't played this in four days."
2. The user can reset a title to blue by tapping on it.
3. The app sets/bumps the colors to the next "day" only when it is opened (i.e. not change color every actual calendar day, because then if the user doesn't practice for five days all the titles would be red).
4. Maybe give the user an option to set a title to red (instead of blue) if they know it needs more practice than the others.
You could do something similar-ish with the reminders app. You add the songs to a list, and set a reminder each song for how often he wants to practice that song eg. everyday. The "Scheduled" list at the top orders thing according to due date, overdue items at the top, so that should give him a list in least recently practised order. Click complete or the dot when you've practised it. The colour coding isn't as sophisticated as he'd like, the date is in grey for today, and red for anything overdue, but it is sorted.
A super low tech version would be an excel spreadsheet with some conditional formatting on the date column for colours.
(Edited, because I forgot how repeated reminders work. He might need to do some tweaking to stop the overwhelm on days that he doesn't practise.)
posted by kjs4 at 10:08 PM on September 19, 2019
A super low tech version would be an excel spreadsheet with some conditional formatting on the date column for colours.
(Edited, because I forgot how repeated reminders work. He might need to do some tweaking to stop the overwhelm on days that he doesn't practise.)
posted by kjs4 at 10:08 PM on September 19, 2019
Response by poster: Follow-up from my friend:
I think all three approaches sound interesting. The flash cards one seems good because it has three levels of frequency, which is pretty much what I wanted. But it will give you songs in a random order, which is not necessarily good, because I don’t want to keep flipping levers to change keys. Although maybe I can just have a deck of cards for each key. The set-a-reminder one almost seemed like it would work, but I think the reminder app plays an alert tone when it's, which I definitely don’t want, and can’t seem to turn off. And the pdf one sounds good, but it means I need to have an actual document for each, which I don't currently. I will look into each of them and see which ends up working best.
posted by Greg_Ace at 12:19 PM on September 24, 2019
I think all three approaches sound interesting. The flash cards one seems good because it has three levels of frequency, which is pretty much what I wanted. But it will give you songs in a random order, which is not necessarily good, because I don’t want to keep flipping levers to change keys. Although maybe I can just have a deck of cards for each key. The set-a-reminder one almost seemed like it would work, but I think the reminder app plays an alert tone when it's, which I definitely don’t want, and can’t seem to turn off. And the pdf one sounds good, but it means I need to have an actual document for each, which I don't currently. I will look into each of them and see which ends up working best.
posted by Greg_Ace at 12:19 PM on September 24, 2019
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posted by caek at 8:56 PM on September 19, 2019