5 iPad Apps that help students learn how to read music

As I sat and read my boys' report cards this week, I noticed how many opportunities they are provided on a weekly basis to learn something I never did...music.  There schedules involve weekly courses in keyboarding, music, violin (for one of them).  I am extremely happy they are exposed to this at an early age.  I was never musically talented nor was I exposed to it early in my education.  I would say reading music is all Greek to me, but I am Greek so that wouldn't make sense ;-). However, I never learned to read music but wish I had.  This brings me to the main point of this blog post. Technology today can offer some great opportunities in music education.  I recently read about 5 iPad apps that help students learn to read music.    The apps provide exercises, challenging quizzes, tutorials and several other materials for music learners.

1. Name that note: This is a note spelling quiz to help learn note names on a staff (there are 3 different levels)
2. ClefTutor Free:  Includes a number of helpful tutorials teaching music fundamentals from musical alphabet to the staff and more.  It also features challenging quizzes.  
3. Music Note Sight Reading Trainer: This app is designed to mimic the look and style of real sheet music.  An important feature of this app is to read from left to right while having multiple notes on the staff at the same time as it would be with real music.
4. Tenuto: A collection of 15 customizable exercises designed to enhance musicality (from recognizing chords on a keyboard to indentifying intervals by ear.  It also includes five musical calculators for accidentals, intervals, chords, analysis symbols, and twelve-tone matrices
5. Music Tutor Free: Improves sight-reading skills by practicing between treble clef, bass cleff or both for a duration of 1, 5, or 10 min. 

Theses apps can be put on our iPad carts to be used in whole class settings, load it on your teacher iPad for station work, or pass them along to parents of your students for additional practice at home.