Week 11 - Tempi App

This week I realized that march that our Concert Band was rehearsing was slowing down and I tried to fix this issue with the metronome. Once I turned the metronome on the students responded and sped the music up to the correct tempo, using the metronome. Once I turned the metronome off the problem came back, slowing down again, especially when they played softly.  This is a common problem in most ensembles, when the music gets softer they use slower air speed and the tempo suffers. As I was analyzing this issue I remembered an app that a colleague told me about last year called Tempi.  Tempi measures the tempo live through recording, while we play, and lets us analyze the performance after we play. This app works as a reverse metronome. This allows me to not only record the ensemble, but I can play the recording for the students and they can see exactly where the tempo is slowing down.  The metronome feature in this app shows them what the actual tempo is in real time with the recording device. I used this app with my students and the march they were performing, after seeing the analysis of tempo in the real-time recording, they were able to see exactly where in the music we were slowing down and they fixed it! It was a music ed tech miracle! I will remember this app in the future and use it much more frequently!