When the pandemic hit last year, music educators across the country scrambled to find effective ways to teach virtually.
It was around this time that an app geared toward elementary and middle school students had over 30,000 downloads in one night. Called the Monster Musician Reader and launched in 2018, it’s designed to help students improve their skills at sight reading — or ability to play music they’ve never seen before.
“[The pandemic] forced people who weren’t normally looking to add any tech to their program to suddenly look,” said Noelle Fabian Dragon, the founder of the company behind the app.
The app works like a game. Students read music from short exercises as it moves across the screen on their phone, tablet or computer, while a backing track plays electronic sounds. The app keeps track of whether the students played the right notes and rhythms, and gives them a score — which they can then try to beat. “I wanted to make practicing happen, but so that it wouldn’t feel like practicing,” Fabian Dragon said.
Fabian Dragon plays several wind instruments professionally in Los Angeles, and is a member of the Disneyland Band. She first had the idea for the app when brushing up on her sight reading skills in preparation for a recording session of a movie score. Film musicians often don’t have the chance to look at their parts before recording, so they need to be superb sight readers.
But when Fabian Dragon tried to find an app that could help her get ready, she had no luck. “I grew up playing Guitar Hero and those kinds of games,” she said, “and I was like, why isn’t there technology where I can have something on my phone that would scroll and give me feedback?” So, she teamed up with a developer to create exactly that.
Fabian Dragon has deep ties to North Texas. She was born and raised in Plano, and her parents are music professors — Donald Fabian teaches at Southern Methodist University and Deborah Ungaro Fabian at the University of North Texas. Fabian Dragon also completed music degrees at those schools. “Music has always been something that we’ve done in my family,” she said.
In a pilot program, several schools are incorporating the app into their curricula. Abel Cabrera, a band teacher at John Adams Middle School in Grand Prairie, has told students to use the app to supplement practicing at home. “They’re always very excited to share their [scores] with me,” he said. “They sometimes beat themselves up if they get a B, so they just try again.”
Cabrera has found the app user-friendly, and has noticed that his pupils have gotten better at reading music. “We see it as a game, which it is. But you don’t really know that you’re learning,” he said. “Of course, it transfers to regular reading. Many studies show the better you’re able to read music, the better you’re able to read the English language.”
Private music teachers and parents looking for a fun, yet rewarding, program for their children have also used the app, according to Fabian Dragon.
The app is accessible only on the Apple Store, but Fabian Dragon is hoping to make it available to Android and Windows users in the fall. She also plans on adding more exercises to it.
