A Useful Tool Music Theory Instruction 1. Basic Skills 2.2 More Advanced Skills 3. Dictation Skills 3.1 Melodic Dictation 3.2 Harmonic Dictation 3.3 Error Detection 4. Keyboard Skills 5. Music Theory Instruction Stewart Carter , Wake Forest University 1.
Computers can be valuable aids to learning in all three components of music theory instruction.
Several software programs designed specifically for music theory are available commercially. Faced with these problems, and with an IBM-based computer music laboratory and a campus computer environment in which every entering student receives an IBM Thinkpad, I set out to develop ways in which I could take advantage of the students' Thinkpads, tailoring supplementary work and certain homework assignments to the needs of my students. I decided to employ Finale to create my own drills and homework exercises. Finale , a product of Coda Music Technology , is one of the most widely used music notation programs. A very useful feature of Finale is its capacity for entering musical notation in as many as four different layers, with the capability of viewing any single layer, or all layers, at a time.