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Practice Record FAQs

 

Is the Online Practice Record easy to use? -  We realize that the students interested in this program are dedicated and want to become better musicians. We have made every effort to offer many features to encourage you to practice and track your progress while keeping the program simple to use.   We welcome your suggestions to improve the program.

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Do many people use the Online Practice Record? - Several thousand students use the Online Practice Record program, more than 10,000 practice records have been saved, and over 6,000 practice records have been e-mailed. We welcome your suggestions to improve the program.

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How does it work? - After you register, you will receive an e-mail with instructions about the program as well as a link to your Main Menu. You may also login to the Practice Record Program without using the link included in the confirmation e-mail. Here are the basic instructions:  First, you create a new practice record once each week by providing the starting date. You may either enter your practice times for the entire week when you first create the record or you may enter your practice times on a daily basis by editing an existing practice record.  

When you enter your daily practice time, you may also enter notes, comments, goals, questions, or problem areas for yourself and/or for your teacher. You may view and print your practice records, and you may even e-mail your records to your teacher. The program also allows your teacher to type comments and suggestions directly into your weekly Practice Record if you choose!  Statistics are available to show how your practice time compares to others who have submitted practice records.  We have recently added a new feature that allows you to save information about your music contests/auditions and performances.

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What else can it do? - We have many ideas for enhancements in the future and we add new features as time permits.  For example, we recently added a feature that allows students to save information about major performances/competitions along with results and notes. This is beneficial because as a student competes in many district, region, area or state competitions year after year, it is difficult to remember the results. We also recently expanded the statistics page to allow students to compare their practice time to others in the same city, state, and country (if the students choose to enter their location). If you would like for us to add other features, please let us know.

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Why did you make the program? - The online practice record program was created by a Web developer who is married to a band director/private music instructor. Although this Web program was originally created for the students of Emily Gurwitz's Flute Studio in San Antonio, Texas, we wanted everyone to have an opportunity to use it. We feel it is a great chance for us to be able to help music students, especially when it appears that music teachers and school budgets are being reduced, and the focus at many schools seems to be on passing standardized tests rather than supporting the arts.

It is beneficial and sometimes required for individuals to keep track of the music and time that they practice, but writing notes on paper is inefficient and not much fun.  When you use the Online Practice Record, not only can you record your practice time, progress, goals and more, but you can also easily e-mail your practice records to your teacher or print them for your records. It is also a lot of fun to compare your practice time to others using the program. We encourage music students and teachers to communicate with each other and to benefit from the convenience of the Internet.

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How much does the Online Practice Record cost to use? - There is no charge to use this program; however, we encourage you to help support this site by buying music instruments, cds, products, supplies, and more from the few advertisements that are displayed on this site. We selected these specific affiliate programs because they are particularly useful for musicians and music students. The price of the products or services that you are offered by clicking on these ads is exactly the same whether you go first to the company's Web site or if you first click on a link from this site.  By clicking on the ads and purchasing the music products that you need, you are helping defray the costs of this site and helping us to offer this free service.  We appreciate your support!

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Can I record practice time for two instruments? - Yes, there are two ways to use the Online Practice Record with two instruments. You may either enter the practice times for both instruments on a single practice record or you can keep separate practice records for each instrument. You would need to decide which works best for your needs. If you want to enter both instruments on the same practice record, you could notate which instrument you practiced in the materials/notes area.  If you want or are required to keep separate practice records for each instrument, you need to register twice, once for each instrument. You may use a single e-mail address, but the program requires that a different instrument be entered.

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Why do I need to register to use the program? - Your registration is important for several reasons:

  • The Practice Record program is not available to general Web site visitors and this allows us to save network and computer resources for our registered users.
  • The Online Practice Record program must have a minimal amount of personal information in order to be able to save practice records for an individual and to keep them separate from others. It also displays your name on the printable practice records as well as any optional e-mail sent to your teacher.
  • We can notify registered users of program changes or improvements.
  • We love to see what part of the world our users are from. We have had users register from Australia, Bermuda, Bhutan (Himalayas), Brazil, Canada, China, Czech Republic, Ecuador, England, Finland, Ghana (Africa), Greece, Hong Kong, Iceland, India, Israel, Lebanon, Malaysia, Pakistan, Poland, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Russian Federation, Singapore, South Africa, Sri Lanka, St. Vincent, Thailand, UAE, Vietnam, and Yugoslavia.
  • By entering your location (optional), you are able to view statistics that show how your practice time compares to other users in the same city, state, and country.

Please read our Privacy Policy for more information.

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I registered, but I did not receive any e-mail. What happened? - The two most common reasons why you may not receive the e-mail confirmation are 1.) you made a mistake entering your e-mail address and 2.) your Internet service provider or e-mail program classified our e-mail as spam and blocked it. If you do not receive an e-mail confirmation within a few hours of registering, you may send another copy of the confirmation to your e-mail address by following these steps: 1.) Login to the Practice Record Program. 2.) From the Main Menu, click "Change your E-mail Address" under the "User Administration" section. 3.) Click the "Edit" button to change your e-mail address. 4.) Click "Update" to create and e-mail yourself a new registration. Note: you are not required to make any changes to your e-mail address.

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I registered and received the confirmation e-mail, but the link in the e-mail did not work. What do I do? - The most common reason why the link does not work is because your e-mail program may have split the URL (Web site address) on two lines. If this happens, you should copy the separate lines of the URL and paste them together into your Web browser. Once you access the page, we suggest that you bookmark the page to eliminate future problems. You may also login to the Practice Record Program without the confirmation e-mail.

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I decided to quit playing a musical instrument. Can I delete my Practice Records and Registration? - Yes.  If you are sure that you no longer want to use the Online Practice Record and will not want to retain your old practice records, you may permanently delete all of your information. First, you need to delete each of your practice records. Once all of them are deleted, the system will allow you to delete your registration information. Note: you may not delete your registration information if you still have practice records saved in the system.

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I have changed private teachers. How do I change the teacher's link so that only my new teacher can view my practice records? - In your Main Menu, there is an option to change your e-mail address. Click the link to edit your e-mail address and then click the button to update your e-mail address (without making any changes). The program will still use your same e-mail address, but it will create a new unique link for you and your teacher to access your practice records. Your old teacher will no longer be able to view or add comments to your practice records.

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I am a private music teacher. Can I test the program before telling my students about it? - Of course! Register to use the program, create test practice records, and try out the many features in the program.  NOTE: We appreciate it if you delete your account after you are finished testing the Online Practice Record because 1.) your test practice records will be included in and distort the results of the statistics that all of the students see and 2.) having many test practice records in the database will eventually cause the system to operate slower.

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Can I advertise my music business on your site? - The Online Practice Record is a great opportunity for music instrument and sheet music companies to advertise to music students across the United States and the world. We are able to display ads to all students or to selected students based on the instrument played. We will accept limited advertisers on a first come basis. Please contact us if you are interested.

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Are you interested in my comments and suggestions to improve the program? - Absolutely! Recently, a user suggested that we add a summary view of the Practice Records in addition to a detailed listing.  We liked her idea and added the new feature!   We have received numerous suggestions and regularly try to add new features. Your support of the Online Practice Record project allows us to add new features and provide the service at no charge. Thank you for your comments and suggestions about the program.

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I am a teacher and I require parents to sign the students' paper practice records. Do you have any suggestions for using the Online Practice Records in my situation? - If you require parents to sign paper practice records to verify the students' practice times, you would not be able to take advantage of the convenient e-mail feature. However, your students can still keep track of their practice time/materials using the Online Practice Record. Rather than e-mailing their practice records, they would print the weekly practice records and have their parents sign them before turning them in. There are several benefits to using the Online Practice Record rather than paper: Students may be motivated to practice longer, the practice records you receive will be typed and easy to read, you may enter comments into the students' online practice records, the students can compare their practice times to others, etc.

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I have a large music studio. Can all of my students use the program? - Certainly!  Have all of your music students register and instruct them to enter your name and e-mail address for their "private teacher" in order to e-mail you their practice records. If you are interested, we can also set up a separate copy of the Online Practice Record for your music studio. For $25 a month* (less than the cost of a single private lesson in many areas), we can create a separate copy of the program with password protection so that only your students may use it. There are several advantages to using a separate copy of the Online Practice Record:

  • the statistics that your students see will only show your studio (e.g. most hours practiced per week, most hours practiced per day, average time per week, etc.), so that a student can compare how many hours he/she is practicing relative to the other students at your music studio.
  • the administrator/music teacher may view all of the student practice records and easily enter feedback/suggestions on the practice records.
  • the teacher's name and e-mail address can be saved automatically so your students do not need to enter it when they register.
  • the program can allow you to send e-mail to all of your students who have registered so that you can make an announcement or wish them luck at a competition.
  • the program may run faster since only your students will be in the database.
  • an add-on feature is available so that you can create a Microsoft Excel file from the Online Practice Record database. It can contain a copy of all of your students' Practice Records for grading purposes and/or backing up the data.
  • features may be added for an additional charge.

* A 10% discount is available for paying annually.

Note: The actual Online Practice Record program is not for sale.

We also can create a Web site for your studio/music program at an additional charge and/or customize the appearance of the Online Practice Record.  Please contact us if you are interested.

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Can you recommend some additional Web sites that are helpful for music educators and/or students? - There are many great resources available, and we will provide a few below as we discover them:

  • http://www.musictheory.net is an impressive collection of music lessons, training tools, and utilities.
  • Educators, to learn more about using technology in your teaching, become a member of TI:ME, the Technology Institute for Music Educators at http://www.ti-me.org.
  • Students, listen to other students perform classical solos and ensembles from the radio show From The Top at http://www.fromthetop.org.
  • Learn the Circle of Fifths at circle-of-fifths.net.

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