Blog

Introducing Counterpoint Composition and Analysis in Harmonia

Introducing Counterpoint Composition and Analysis in Harmonia

By Rachel Mann - July 15, 2021

 

We are delighted to introduce the latest features available in Harmonia: new analysis and assessment tools for creating counterpoint lessons and exercises. The fall 2021 version of our app will support all manner of first- and second-species counterpoint activities, and the framework is designed to accommodate third and fourth species counterpoint, which will be added in the coming year. Our new in-app analysis engine analyzes and assesses counterpoint composition and analysis according to instructor-specific rules and guidelines.

 

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 Sample counterpoint exercises

 

 

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Sample counterpoint exercises – graded by Harmonia

Note how hovering over the error in m. 6 of the second exercise (at the green diamond) provides specific feedback at the top of the window

 

Harmonia’s new counterpoint control panels enable instructors to select from a variety of allowable options based on curriculum needs and Harmonia will check student work and mark and annotate any errors. Because there are as many counterpoint rules and guidelines as there are teachers, programs, and schools, we built our counterpoint panels to give instructors complete control of both analysis settings and rubric tools. Instructors are given options for counterpoint exercises that affect the number and kinds of melodic and harmonic intervals allowed, and can determine transpositions, clefs, beginning and endings of exercises, and more.

 

In addition to tools and settings, the fall version of Harmonia will also come with new counterpoint generators. Generate 1:1 and 2:1 counterpoints above and below any of the eight cantus firmi by Fux. (Cantus firmi by Albrechtsberger, Jeppesen, and Kirnberger will be added over the coming months.) Because the overwhelming requests we have received have been for tonal counterpoint, most of these melodies have been cast in major and minor modes and Harmonia will analyze them accordingly. However, Harmonia can accommodate modal counterpoint as well because instructors can import any counterpoint—tonal or modal—from MusicXML and toggle the settings as needed.

 

In the coming weeks, we will publish blog posts and videos outlining and describing Harmonia’s 1) new counterpoint control panels and assessment tools, 2) the new in-app counterpoint generators, and 3) guidelines for notating and importing modal and tonal counterpoint examples in MusicXML. 

The  fall release of Harmonia will be made available via the app stores (Mac, Windows, iOS, Android, Chromebook, and most browsers) in early fall, but if you would like to check out the beta version of the app now, please send us a message and we will send you the beta app download link. We are still conducting internal beta testing, so any instructor feedback will help us make our app better for you.

 

What is Harmonia?

by: Rachel Mann

March 14, 2020

 

What is Harmonia?

Harmonia is a music theory app linked to a web-based learning management system (LMS).

Harmonia combines musical score notation with a patented* real-time music analysis engine, meaning that it can analyze, assess, and evaluate user responses such as staff notation, or analytical entries such as pitch names or roman numeral labels.

Harmonia automatically grades student work and provides instant, pedagogical feedback.

The LMS provides a platform for content delivery and course configuration: teachers add lessons and exercises accessible by students through the app, set due dates and delivery options, review computer-graded student work, and more. Students complete assignments in the app and log in to the LMS to check their progress, activate Harmonia’s teacher/comment system, and purchase additional study content if desired.

Harmonia is unique among educational music technology software in that students can analyze and label melodies and harmonies and complete composition-based exercises such as pitch, scale, interval, and chord spelling assignments as well as more complex SATB chorale settings of diatonic and chromatic chord progressions, figured-bass realizations, and more.

Students discover instantly whether they understand a concept as Harmonia grades their work, marking and explaining errors such as incorrect chord qualities or inversion symbols, or even part writing errors such as parallel fifths or unresolved sevenths.

 

*Taube, Heinrich inventor; Illiac Software, Inc., assignee. Automatic tonal analysis of musical scores. U.S. Patent 9,269,339 filed June 2, 2015, and issued February 23, 2016.

 

Support for Harmonia

Harmonia was developed by Illiac Software, Inc. with support from the National Science Foundation and the University of Illinois. Our company is committed to building the best app possible by learning from our own experiences using Harmonia and by encouraging feedback from users like you.

 

Want to get Started?

Visit https://harmonia.illiacsoftware.com/, click the Sign Up button and begin learning music theory today.

Special message

 

Dear Harmonia Friends,

COVID-19 is having a large impact on music instruction across the nation and many schools are now moving to entirely online course delivery with very little notice. To help, Illiac Software is offering free student/teacher access to the Harmonia app and platform for all new courses set up from now through the end of the academic school year. If you know of any teachers who could benefit, please pass this message along.

If you are new to the interactive music fundamentals, part-writing, and analysis app, Harmonia, please visit our website at https://harmonia.illiacsoftware.com/ to see if our software would be a solution for your music theory and aural skills courses.

Here are the steps to create a free course:

Create an account at https://harmonia.illiacsoftware.com/ You’ll receive an automated message confirming your email address. Follow the link to set a password and select “request teacher account.”

Once you have teacher status, create a new course and select a Site license so students can sign up without cost. (Site license fees for new courses will be waived from March 13, 2020 through the end of the academic year.) 

Download the free Harmonia app (Mac, Windows, iPad, or Android) Add ready-made materials to your course from our free Harmonia Content Library or create materials yourself following the guides in our support pages. In addition to part-writing and analysis assessments, your documents can contain video and audio links, images, multiple-choice questions, etc.

We wish you all good health and success with the remainder of your school year.

Best,

Rick Taube, President

Illiac Software, Inc.

https://harmonia.illiacsoftware.com/

Email: taube@illiacsoftware.com

How to Add Audio Streaming to Harmonia3 Documents

How to Add Audio Streaming to Harmonia3 Documents

By: Rachel Mann

July 17, 2019

 

An exciting new feature of Harmonia3 is our audio-streaming service, which enables teachers to embed and control high-quality audio in their Harmonia documents. In Harmonia3 all audio is streamed from our server, using settings added by teachers in their personal media library. The media library is a new, free feature of your Harmonia teacher’s account on our website. Use it to create assignments and exams with external audio clips or stream audio examples, complete with adjustable, teacher-controlled settings for things like dictation practice and exams all from our Harmonia website. Follow the steps below to get started.

 

So how does it work?

 

Step 1: Upload audio files to your Harmonia account. 

First, you will need to log in to our website using your teacher account and select "My Media” at the top of the page. (Note: only users with teacher accounts will be able to view the “My Media” tab on our website.) This area will allow you to upload audio files and organize them into different "Collections". For example, you may want to create a collection for each class you teach, or you may want collections to represent specific types or kinds of music or assignments. 

 

 

Click the gold “Add Collection” button to add a new collection to your personal media library. Give your collection a title if desired. Then click the gold “Upload file” button to add a sound file to your collection. Our online media library accepts all current audio formats, including aiff, flac, m4a, mp3, ogg, and wav, so there will be no need to additionally convert your favorite files. 

 

 

Once an audio file is uploaded, you can label it, listen to it, move it from one collection to another, or delete it. Use the arrows on the left side of the file to drag and place files into a specific order. Collections may also be reordered in the same way. Simply drag the arrows on the left side of the collection to move collections to the desired location.

 

 

Once a file has been added to a collection, click the “Preview” button to listen to the file. Remove files by clicking on the trashcan icon on the right.

 

Step 2: Add streaming audio to your assignments.

 

As soon as you start the Harmonia app and log in with your teacher account, Harmonia3 will automatically download your media collections and make them available for selection. To add an audio file to a Harmonia3 document, sign in to the app using your teacher account and then open a Harmonia document. As seen below, I first added a harmonic dictation example to my media collection on the website and then opened Harmonia 3, logged in, and then added the file to my Harmonia document below.

 

 

 

To add the audio example to the document, click on “Streaming Audio” in the Insert menu and then scroll down to find the desired audio file. Click on the file to add it to the page. Once the resource is added, a blue headphone icon will appear on the left side of the page. 

 

 

Note that a single streaming audio resource can be added multiple times across different documents or even within the same document; each individual instance of the audio can be customized as described below.

 

Step 3: Configure the attached audio for student to use 

 

On the right, select from a menu of playback limitations if desired. These options enable teachers to add or remove playback constraints for a given audio example. Such playback limitations may be desirable for dictation practice and exams. By default there are no restrictions: students may listen to an audio attachment as many times as desired, pause, fast-forward or rewind as needed. However, we have built our system to enable teachers to restrict playback to a certain number of repetitions, and to "disable" the rewind and/or pause button. These restrictions are managed by the audio server so even if a student quits and restarts the app, the limits established by the teacher will remain in effect.

 

 

Note that all limitations are disabled for teachers in their audio transports, but when a student opens his or her audio player, any limitations and number of playbacks are clearly indicated in the transport window. 

 

 

Teachers can toggle between teacher and student modes from inside the app by clicking on the teacher/student buttons beside their name at the upper right to mimic their students’ experience. Note that all playback limits placed on an attachment are displayed on the audio transport so students can always be aware of how many times they can play an example and whether or not they can pause or rewind. The transport also provides a handy “Test Audio” button enabling students to test their equipment before playing a constrained audio example, so as to not waste a hearing checking their Internet connection or audio volume.

 

 

Once the desired number of audio files, text, musical examples, and/or images have been added to a Harmonia document, simply save the file and upload it to your course in the Harmonia dashboard. And that is it! Although easy to use, our new audio streaming service is quite powerful and is certain to improve the learning experience for your students. We know this service has many possible uses beyond what we have thought of and we look forward to learning about how you use it in your teaching. As always, if you have any questions about adding streaming audio to your Harmonia3 documents, please do not hesitate to contact us at contact@illiacsoftware.com.

 

How To Migrate Courses from Harmonia2 to Harmonia3

How To Migrate Courses from Harmonia2 to Harmonia3

By: Rick Taube

July 3th, 2019

 

Harmonia3 is up and running! The beta release (3.0.18 or higher) is now publicly available from our website’s download page.  With the beta release of Harmonia3 there are now several options to consider for your Fall Harmonia courses. Here is a summary of each option:

 

Option 1. Create new courses using Harmonia3

If you are starting a brand new course this Fall you will use Harmonia3.  The quickest way to get a new course up and running is to take advantage of our free content library (fundamentals through chromatic harmony) which we have already converted to H3 format and is ready-to-go.  Once you have added library content to your course you can download individual files in Harmonia3 and edit them as you see fit (see below). You can also create your own course materials from scratch by launching the Harmonia3 app and signing in with your teacher’s account to unlock all the app’s content creation and editing commands.

 

Option 2. Stick with Harmonia2 for Fall semester.

If you don't want to deal with course conversion/creation this Fall you can just stick with what is already working for you.  In this case you will simply clone your current H2 course as your new Fall course instance, and then tell your students to download Harmonia 2.6.0 from our website.  To make it simple for students we've added a new app download button on their personal dashboards that will automatically download the correct app version for your class.  Note that if your student mistakenly installs H3 from our website for an H2 course the app will not connect to the course. The reverse is also true: if you have an H3 course your students cannot open its assignments using the H2 app.

 

Option 3. Migrate an existing H2 course to Harmonia3

Harmonia3 opens Harmonia2 files and converts them to H3 format when you resave them. If you have an existing course you can use this feature to convert your H2 assignment files into H3 format for your new course.  If you class consists mostly of H2 content library files, you should start a new Harmonia3 course from scratch and add the content again because the new content has already been edited and tested. Otherwise you can choose one of the following two methods:

 

Method 1: Create the new H3 course instance, then access your old H2 course on our website and replace each H2 assignment with its H3 version using the following steps (see image):

1. On the website click the download button associated with the assignment file and save the downloaded file on your local computer. Then back on the website delete that assignment instance by clicking the “trash can” button in the upper right corner of its editor.

2. Back on your computer, open the downloaded file in Harmonia3.  Edit the document content as appropriate, then make sure to save the file on your local hard drive -  this will convert the file from H2 to H3 format.

3. On your computer navigate to the saved file, then drag-and-drop it back onto the assignment set editor on the website and configure the assignment as appropriate for your course.

If you have lots of files to process, send a message to help@illilacsoftware.com and ask us to zip all the files in the old course for you. When we give you that zip file, you will restore it on your local computer, then convert the files to H3 format and upload to the website using the steps outlined above.

 

 

Method 2.  Send us an email and ask us "auto-migrate" your H2 course materials to a new H3 course instance.  In this case we will run a script that will automatically convert your existing course files into H3 format and add them to your new course instance.   Note that auto-migrating simply converts the files, it does not update them in any other way so you should still check each auto-migrated file and edit as needed.  And if we auto-migrate material that you added from our H2 content library, you will still want to replace those files with their newer version in the current content library.

 

Streaming Audio in H3 Replaces Embedded Audio Replaced in H2 

Harmonia3 does its best to honor H2 format when it converts H2 files into H3 format. There is only one incompatible change: if an H2 file contains embedded audio, the audio will be “stripped” from the file when it is saved in H3 format. In Harmonia3 all audio is streamed from the server, using the settings you have added to your personal media library. The media library is a new, free feature of your Teacher’s account on our website.  We will explain the details of streaming audio and video in our blog post next week.

 

Testing Your H3 Course Material

Regardless of which migration method you use we highly recommend that you proof-read and test all your assignments before admitting students to your course.  It is very easy to allows you test and edit your assignments in Harmonia3:

1. Launch Harmonia3 and Sign In with your teacher account.

2. Use the Content Browser to download and test each of your assignments. When Harmonia3 downloads an assignment it will automatically place you in “Student Role”. In this role you can complete the material and grade it just as if you were a student.  

3. If you notice something that needs to be fixed, you can switch back to Teacher Role, edit the file and save it to your local drive. Then you will re-upload that document to your course

4. To test the file again in Harmonia, first sign out and sign in again to refresh the course data, then use the Content Browser to download and retake it in Student Role.

  

    

 

Launching an Audio-Streaming Interface to Support Ear-Training Applications

Spotlight on Aural Skills Pedagogy

Harmonia 3: Launching an Audio-Streaming Interface to Support Ear-Training Applications

By: Rachel E. Mann

June 11th, 2019

 

During the last week of May 2019, I attended the music theory Pedagogy into Practice conference in beautiful Santa Barbara, California. While there, I introduced Harmonia 3—in particular, our new audio streaming interface—and illustrated how it could support a variety of ear-training applications. I presented my work in poster form, so find the poster and an expanded abstract below.

 

Abstract:

Harmonia is a music theory app linked to a web-based learning management system (LMS). The app combines musical score notation with a patented real-time music analysis engine, meaning that the software can analyze, assess, and evaluate user responses such as staff notation, or analytical entries such as pitch names or roman numeral labels. Harmonia automatically grades student work and provides instant, pedagogical feedback. The LMS provides a platform for content delivery and course configuration: teachers add lessons and exercises accessible by students through the app, set due dates and delivery options, review computer-graded student work, and more. Students complete assignments in the app and log in to the LMS to check their progress, activate Harmonia’s mentor/comment system, and purchase additional study content if desired.

 

New to Harmonia 3 (late spring/summer 2019) is an audio-streaming interface, accessible through the Harmonia LMS, which allows instructors to easily embed and configure high-quality audio in multiple formats directly into Harmonia lessons and assignments. For example, teachers can add or remove playback restraints such as pause, fast-forward, or rewind, and restrict the number of playback repetitions for an audio example. Additionally, all playback limits are clearly displayed for students on the audio playback transport, which also includes a “Test Audio” button so students can check their equipment in advance before playing an example.

 

This audio-streaming interface was created specifically to support the needs of the ear-training classroom. By being able to easily add streamed audio examples with a variety of playback options and limitations, teachers can create a wide variety of exercises and lessons to teach and assess aural skills. This poster demonstrates three main elements:

1. how to add content: add Bach chorales right inside the app, add your own musical examples by uploading MusicXML files, or use our in-app content generators. From here, convert musical scores into exercises using the app’s Assessment menu.

2. how to use the new audio-streaming interface: add audio files to our website using your teacher account and then add and stream content directly from inside the app.

3. how to quickly and easily create a variety of ear-training lessons and exercises: check out the poster examples for a sample of how to use Harmonia 3’s new audio streaming interface to develop and test student comprehension of aural skills. Create interval, scale, triad, and seventh chord identification exercises, as well as melodic and harmonic dictation exercises for students to practice their skills. Use the app’s audio playback controls to determine how many times students can listen to an example and whether or not they can pause, fast forward, or rewind.

Audio streaming poster

A Redesigned Interface for Harmonia 3

Apr. 9th, 2019

Posted by: David Psenicka

 

A Redesigned Interface for Harmonia 3

 

We've added a great many improvements to Harmonia 3 to make it even easier for teachers and students to work on their course materials and assignments. One of the most exciting changes to the software is that we've redesigned the user interface from the ground up. Teachers can now design lessons more efficiently and students will find the process of completing their assignments much more intuitive.

Here are some of the improvements in our new version of Harmonia:

 

Redesigned Top Bar

The top bar now has a drop-down list of open documents, an Assignments button to open the assignment browser, a Controls button to open editing panels, and a transport for audio playback.  Teachers see buttons to switch easily between student and teacher modes.

 

Students no Longer Save their Assignments to Files

Harmonia documents are now cached on a student's hard drive when they are downloaded and saved automatically as the student works through the assignment. When an assignment has been finished and graded it is automatically uploaded to the Harmonia server and shown as completed in the assignment browser. This makes the entire process of completing an assignment much more streamlined and less error prone.

 

Assignment Browser

Students can access all of their assignments with our new assignment browser. The browser shows all of the assignments available in each course that the student is signed up for. Grades for completed assignments will be displayed along with information showing where the student is in the process of completing the assignment. Check back in the coming weeks, when we will post a more detailed blog describing all the features of our new and improved assignment browser.

 

 

Simplified Interface for Students

Students will no longer use side panels when working on their assignments. The panels have been replaced with an easily accessible button bar that changes depending on what item in the document the student is interacting with. Students can worry less about learning how to use the program and focus more on the program’s content.

 

Redesigned Document Editing Panels

Teacher editing control panels have been completely redesigned. In particular, multiple-choice questions and scores are much easier to create and edit. New editing controls have also been added for streaming audio and video.

 

Introduction to the migration process from Harmonia 2 to Harmonia 3

Apr. 4, 2019

Posted by: Ming-Ching Chiu 

 

Introduction to the migration process from Harmonia 2 to Harmonia 3

 

The new Harmonia 3 app with a completely redesigned user interface focuses on optimizing user experience and performance. Harmonia 3 allows students to access their homework more easily, and teachers have the ability to maintain collections of media files and embed them into Harmonia documents whenever and wherever they want. As an added benefit, Harmonia 3 will be tablet-ready, meaning students can do homework on their iPads or Android tablets.

This short blog post briefly outlines the migration process from Harmonia 2 (H2) to Harmonia 3 (H3).

The most important thing to know is that H3 can open H2 files and will convert them to H3 format automatically when they are opened. The reverse is not true: Harmonia 2 cannot open Harmonia 3 files. For this reason -- until summer of 2020 -- teachers can opt to keep an existing Harmonia course in H2 or move it to H3.  If the course remains in H2 then students need to use the H2 app to access their course. Similarly, If the course moves to H3 then students will use the H3 app.

When a teacher creates a new course they will choose which version of Harmonia they want to run the new course in. Given that choice, all the assignment documents in the course will be of the same version (either H2 or H3 files).  The Harmonia website will prevent teachers from uploading files that are not the correct version.  Note that our free content library will have H3 files ready to be added to H3 courses.

When cloning (duplicating) an existing course, teachers can opt to keep the course content in H2 format or they can migrate their materials to H3. The migration process will be described in more detail in an upcoming blog.  Once the course has been migrated the Harmonia 2 app will not be able to access a H3 course, and the new Harmonia 3 app cannot access H2 courses either. Downgrading a H3 course to H2 is not supported.

The only “incompatible” change between H2 and H3 documents is the fact that Harmonia 3 no longer supports embedding media in files.  This change greatly improves cloud transmission rates and keeps file sizes small. In Harmonia 3, all instructional media is streamed to the app in real time, audio from our website or video from Vimeo/YouTube.  In a Harmonia 3 course, teachers can create and organize their own audio media collections on our website for free. Once media is uploaded to our server Harmonia3 gives teachers access to their audio links directly inside the app when they create new documents.

 

From the pictures below, you can see how the same assignment is presented in H2 and H3.

Harmonia 2 file

 

Harmonia 3 file

 

Before the official release of Harmonia 3 this summer, we will publish detailed step-by-step instructions for migrating your courses from Harmonia 2 to Harmonia 3. And as always, any member of our team is available to answer any questions you may have during the migration process. Stay tuned!

 

Introducing Harmonia 3

Mar. 26, 2019

Posted by: Rick Taube

 

Introducing Harmonia 3

As you have probably already heard, over the past year we've been working very hard developing Harmonia 3. This new app has been redesigned and implemented from the ground up to provide a truly state of the art experience in music theory instruction.

The most important new features in Harmonia 3 are:

  • A completely redesigned user interface. Drop down dialogs and control panels get out of the way when working in the document. Students don't see control panels, everything they need is at their fingertips in the document. All  teacher editing controls have been redesigned and new editing controls have been added for streaming video and audio and also for the new multiple choice items. 

  • A new, interactive assignment browser replaces the Cloud Menu. (see picture) The browser displays courses, assignment sets, assignments, and assignment properties in an intuitive, directory-like structure. Students can see all the relevant information about each assignment: how many times they have taken it, what type of assignment it is (e.g. lesson, practice, incremental practice, multiple submission, timed, etc.), assignment due dates, and grading history. For each grading record, the student can download the completed file and view it directly inside the app.

A teacher in student mode is using the Assignment Browser to down loading an assignement to test out.

              A teacher in student mode is using the Assignment Browser to download an assignment to try out.

 

  • A new document model provides much more flexibility than in Harmonia 2. For teachers, the original page objects (text boxes, multiple choice, notation, images) are still available in Harmonia 3, but the new app can also support in-line text (much like a text editor), and different kinds of documents. When students attempt assignments, their work is automatically saved interactively so they can never lose work. Each document also has an unlimited undo/redo stack so they can easily revert from mistakes.

  • Explicit user roles. Harmonia 3's interface and behavior automatically adjusts to four explicit "user roles" that are built into the app. These roles follow a tiered permission level: 1) Unknown, 2) Visitor, 3) Student and 4) Teacher. Users who haven’t logged in inherit the “Unknown” permission level. Unknown users have access to all the application's commands and editing capabilities but cannot save documents. If a user logs in, then they are either Visitors, Students or Teachers. A “Visitor” has access to our Harmonia demo course materials and can experiment with filling out and grading various course demonstration materials. If registered Students log in, then they inherit the student permissions and have access to all the courses in which they are enrolled. Students do not have access to control panels or content commands that design new course documents. If a registered Teacher logs in, then they can toggle between “Teacher” and “Student” permissions. When in the Teacher role, a teacher can create content and new course materials. When Teachers toggle to the Student role, they can download, view, and test out their assignment materials and exactly mimic their students’ experience.

“A teacher in student mode testing their assignment.”

                                                  A teacher in student mode is testing their assignment.

 

  • A new Harmonia 3 file format. Harmonia 3 can read Harmonia 2 files and will automatically convert them into Harmonia 3 format when they are loaded. Conversion may not be pixel-to-pixel exact so teachers should review materials once they have been loaded from a Harmonia 2 file. Note, however, that all lessons and assignments in the Harmonia Content Library will already be converted for you.

  • Streaming audio with teacher-controlled constraints: teachers can places constraints on the playback transport and and control the number of times an audio clip can be played. Each teacher account now has its own Media Dashboard on our website where audio files may be uploaded for course streaming.

  • Streaming video from YouTube or Vimeo with a user preference settings: users may specify viewing preferences to choose between watching videos inside the app or in an external browser.

  • Tablet support. Harmonia 3 runs on Mac and PC, and now iPad, Android, and Linux.

 

We are very excited about releasing Harmonia3 this summer and will be sending more information about the transition over the next few weeks!  If you would be interested in helping us beta test the app before its release, please send us an email at contact@illiacsoftware.com

How to Build Effective Harmonia Assignments For Your Students, Part 1

Jan. 09, 2019

Posted by: Rachel Mitchell

 

Best Practices for Teachers:

How to Build Effective Harmonia Assessment Pages for Your Students, Part 1

 

Switching to Harmonia-delivered rather than paper-based assignments has many advantages for both teachers and students. One of the most important benefits for students is that homework can be delivered as a series of short targeted assessments, one assessment per document, each of which concentrates on just one concept or skill and contains very few elements to complete. This allows students to concentrate on one concept per document and, more importantly, the grade they receive applies to just that skill. Their homework will also seem to "go faster" because they grade themselves relatively frequently, after completing just a small number of items, rather than waiting to complete several pages of problems. The very rapid grade turnaround also allows students to examine Harmonia's feedback for each exercise quickly without having to first complete numerous items that contain many different sorts of material as paper-based assignments typically feature. Additionally, if you enable multiple submission of assignments, students only have to focus on what they miss, rather than spend time redoing work they did correctly the first time.

 

So, how to get started?

 

Option 1: select any page from the Harmonia Content Library (HCL) and add it to your course. With the exception of chord spelling/identification pages, most HCL files feature only one assessment per page. Group the desired page along with any other pages you’d like students to complete for homework in a single Assignment Set in your course dashboard.

Create an Assignment Set and add content from the Harmonia Content Library

 

Option 2: create your own assessment using the Harmonia Score Generators or your own content uploaded in Music XML. Add one assessment to a page, a title and some directions, and upload the file to your course dashboard. Check out documentation support pages to learn more about building your own assessment pages.

 

In your course dashboard, create a new Assignment Set and configure it to your specifications:

  • Show in cloud menu after due date: click whether you want students to be able to see an Assignment Set after the due date
  • Assign Date: enter the date/ time students may see an Assignment Set in their Harmonia Cloud menu
  • Due Date: enter the date/ time students an Assignment Set is due

 

Add Content and/or Configure an Assignment Set

 

For individual pages within an Assignment Set, you have more options to configure:

  • Practice Mode: students get unlimited submissions, but submissions are NOT saved. NOTE: if Practice Mode is not selected, the page will be treated as an Assignment, where submissions and feedback are saved on both the student’s computer and on the Harmonia server
    • Incremental Grading: students can fill in all or some of an assignment, but Harmonia will only grade what is filled in by students.
  •  Allow Multiple Submission: students may complete the assignment as many times as desired before the due date; all attempts are saved and available for review, but the highest grade is recorded in the Harmonia grade book.
  • Delay Showing Grade to Students: if you do not want students to see their grades immediately, such as for testing periods, select this option and fill in the reveal date/time.
  • Timed Document: select the desired minutes/seconds for any timed exercises
  • Override Set Due Date: everything in Assignment Set has the same due date, but you can use this feature to change the date/time for a single file.

Configure individual files within an Assignment Set

 

So how do you use Harmonia in your classroom?

 

As the Senior Content Developer for Illiac Software, Inc., I’ve been using Harmonia for years in conjunction with my university learning management system (LMS). I use the university LMS to post homework assignment directions and due dates and I enter grades for completed Assignment Sets in the online gradebook.

 

In Harmonia, I generally create Assignment Sets containing lessons (set to Practice Mode since some contain short “Try Me” assessments) and exercise pages from the Harmonia Content Library, which generally consist of one assessment per page. These part-writing or analysis assessments may include accompanying multiple-choice questions, but each page is relatively short since it will be combined with several other exercises in a set. I configure all assignments to allow for multiple submission so that students may engage with an exercise as many times as desired. Once students complete the Assignment Set, I average together the individual scores of the set and record the grade in my university’s LMS. However, because I want students to keep engaging with the material, such as when preparing for exams, I usually set all due dates in my Harmonia dashboard as the final day of the course.

 

How do you use Harmonia in your classroom? Let us know. We’d like to hear from you.

Introducing Harmonia Presto Courses!

Posted by: Rachel Mitchell

  • Are you a music teacher? Need recommendations for tutors, resources, or short courses for curious or struggling students?
  • Are you a music student? Do you need help studying for college entrance exams or simply want to review a few topics in preparation for an upcoming unit or exam?
  • Or maybe you’re a music enthusiast or an armchair conductor? Did you sing or play an instrument in grade school once upon a time? Want to learn more about music and how it works?

 

Check out our all new Presto Courses by Harmonia created specifically for you. Presto Courses provide specific, targeted music theory instruction using interactive lessons and short exercises with automated grading and lightning-fast feedback to help you learn music theory fast.

 

Want to learn how to read music? Start with our Pitch and Clef Presto Course. Learn about pitch notation, clefs, the piano grand staff, and accidentals.

 

Example: Excerpt of a Pitch and Clef Lesson

 

Test your knowledge and skills with a variety of short, instantly gradable exercises.

 

Example: Excerpt of a Pitch Identification Exercise

 

Example: Excerpt of a Pitch-Class Notation Exercise

 

From there, browse our other short courses, which include an assortment of music fundamentals such as:

 

 

Can’t find what you’re looking for? Visit our website and check back frequently as we continue to add more and more diatonic, chromatic, and post-tonal theory topics to meet your needs. Sign up for an account and start learning today.

 

Harmonia Frequently Asked Questions

Posted by: Rachel Mann

 

TEACHER FAQ:

 

What is Harmonia?

Harmonia is an app used in combination with a proprietary learning management system (LMS). Our free Harmonia app is the combines musical score notation with a patented real-time music analysis engine, which means that as users enter notes on a staff or type in analytical symbols such as pitch names or roman numerals, the app recognizes and comments on what they are doing. Our LMS provides a platform for content delivery: teachers use our LMS to add lessons and exercises, set due dates and content delivery options, review computer-graded student work, and more; and students use the LMS to check their progress, activate our mentoring/comment system, and purchase additional study content if desired.

 

Does Harmonia grant credit?

Harmonia does not grant credit. The Harmonia App is simply a music notation editor with a real-time analysis engine and our Harmonia Dashboard is a learning management system similar to Blackboard or Canvas. Our App and Dashboard link together to offer teachers and students a better music theory experience. Content is delivered through the Harmonia Dashboard; practice and feedback is completed and received through the Harmonia App. In-app grading schemes may be edited to fit instructor needs, and student submissions and grades are stored on our secure server. Teachers can view student data in our Harmonia Dashboard and download grades in a csv file, which may be uploaded into any other learning management systems such as Blackboard or Canvas.

 

Will Harmonia work on my computer?

Harmonia will work on all Mac OSX and Windows machines. Contact our developers if you have any questions.

 

What is a Harmonia subscription?

Access to the Harmonia Dashboard is a subscription-based service, so pricing is related to the number of weeks a student pays for access. A typical 16-week semester is $29.95, but quarters and summer courses may be less. See our pricing chart here:

 

What does Harmonia cost?

The Harmonia App is free for all users and available for Mac and PC here. Access to the Harmonia Dashboard, our proprietary learning management system, is free for teachers and subscription-based for students. Pricing is related to the number of weeks a student pays for access. A typical 16-week semester is $29.95, but quarters and summer courses may be less. See our pricing chart above.

 

Do you offer site licenses?

Yes. We offer both site licenses and single-user licenses. Most of our high school customers pay by site licenses. Contact us at contact@illiacsoftware.com to get started.

 

How do I get started?

Step 1: Request a teacher account. To request a teacher account, click the “Sign Up” link. Confirm your email address and set your password. Click the “request teacher account” when setting your account information and password.

 

Step 2: Download and open the Harmonia App. To download the latest version of the app, click on the “Downloads" link at the top of the window and select the correct version of the app for your machine. Follow the directions for your computer to complete the download process. (Be sure to delete any old versions of Harmonia from your Applications folder before downloading the latest version.) Once you have downloaded the app, open it and click on the cloud icon on the upper left corner of the window. Enter your email address and password. Then select “Cloud" from the menu options at the top of your screen to access the course. Find your course and navigate to the bottom of the list to find the “Welcome to Harmonia” file. Open it and check out the quick Harmonia tutorial.

 

Step 3: Log in to the Harmonia website using your teacher account. (If you do not have a teacher account, click here. Only users with teacher accounts are able to create courses.) Once logged in, click on “Dashboard” at the top of the window. This will take you to your course pages. To create a course, click the gold “Create a new Harmonia Couse” button.

 

This will take you to a new screen. Fill out the required information and click the yellow “Create New Course” button at the bottom of the screen.

Note: Course Start and End Dates are the dates that your students will be granted access to materials in a Harmonia course. These dates are usually defined by your school as the first and last days of the semester, including examination days, if required. Keep in mind that instructors may work on a course long in advance and add materials before a course begins (and also revisit a course once it has been completed), but students will be charged according to the number of weeks the course materials are available to them. The Free Access End Date simply gives students a two-week period of free access to a course before they will be denied access for non-payment. This period enables students to log in, download the app, navigate the Harmonia Dashboard, and submit a few exercises. However, if a student decides to drop the course or move to a new course section, they will not be charged.

 

Step 4: Once you click “Create New Course,” our development team will verify your credentials, and our server will generate a course shell will a unique 16-digit course code, which you will receive via email. Students will use the code to join the course to access course materials.

 

Step 5: Once students enter the invitation code, our server will send you an email asking you to invite them to join the course. Follow the link in the email to permanently add the students to your course. (This instructor verification system ensures that your students join the correct course.) The next time students log in to the Harmonia website, they will be prompted to pay their subscription online. Our secure website accepts credit card and PayPal. Feel free to edit the attached instruction sheet for distribution to your students.  

 

For more information see our Quick Start guide https://harmonia.illiacsoftware.com/support?category=84

 

What kind of content can I add to my course? (for Teachers)

You can add any manner of .har files to a Harmonia course. Create lessons, practice exercises, exam questions, multiple choice questions, and more. With a teacher account, you also have access to hundreds of ready-made documents in the Harmonia Content Library. To view materials in the Harmonia Content Library, log in with your teacher account and click on the Content tab at the top of the page. Scroll through the table of contents on the left and click on the triangles to expand each topic. Click on a file to preview it on the left.

 

To add a document to your course page, select your course in the Harmonia Dashboard, select “Assignments” in the left column, and click on the gold “Add Assignment Set” button.

Fill in the information for Title, Assign Date, and Due Date, and click on the gold “Add from content library” to add content from our library to your course. (Note: If you would like to add your own content (in .har format), select the Upload documents button.)

 

A Harmonia Content Library window will open, and from there, you can click on the files of your choice and add them to your course. Clicking on the eye icon will display a preview of the file. Keep in mind that Harmonia files will become interactive once opened in the Harmonia app. For example, in the document above, the rests will become editable note heads for students to drag around on the staff. Selecting a file will highlight it pink, which can be added to your course’s assignment sets once you click the yellow “Add to Assignment Sets” button.

Once added to your course, you may edit the document titles, set document details, or delete unwanted files. If you would like to edit a document (such as text, multiple-choice questions, images, and complete music scores), click the download button, open the file, make changes, and then re-upload the document to the assignment set by selecting the yellow “Upload documents” button near the top of the window. Once material has been added to your course, a student may access it by logging into Harmonia and finding the document in the Harmonia Cloud menu. To create a Harmonia (.har) document from scratch, visit our support pages.

Why are my students locked out of the Harmonia Cloud?

If your students are locked out of the Harmonia Cloud while in the app, it is because the subscription to access the course materials has not been received. Remind them to log in to the website, click on the dashboard and follow the payment instructions. Once received, they can return to the app and log out and log back in to reset their login credentials.

 

How do I find grades and student submissions?

In the Harmonia Dashboard, click on your course and select “Records.” Teachers can customize the view to show all students, a single student, all assignments, a complete assignment set, or a single assignment. Use the pulldown menus to customize the desired view and click the click the gold “Download Records” button to generate a .csv file which may be edited or uploaded into a different LMS. Note that grade distribution statistics are provided in the “All Students” view.

 

To view individual student submissions, select either the student view or the single-assignment class view and click on the yellow “View” link under the File column. Document exercises set to single submission will show a student’s submitted file. Document exercises set for multiple submission may have a pulldown menu with multiple student submissions. View each submission in the Dashboard window or download an interactive .har file, which may be opened in Harmonia.

My students need more help. What are Harmonia Presto Courses?

Presto Courses are individual study courses packaged by topic. For example, we offer miniature courses in fundamentals topics, diatonic, and chromatic harmonies. Each Presto course offers interactive lessons, identification, spelling, and part writing exercises, where appropriate. Read more about our Presto courses in our upcoming blog.

 

For Students:

 

What is Harmonia?

Harmonia is an app used in combination with a proprietary learning management system (LMS). Our free Harmonia app is the combines musical score notation with a patented real-time music analysis engine, which means that as users enter notes on a staff or type in analytical symbols such as pitch names or roman numerals, the app recognizes and comments on what they are doing. Our LMS provides a platform for content delivery: teachers use our LMS to add lessons and exercises, set due dates and content delivery options, review computer-graded student work, and more; and students use the LMS to check their progress, activate our mentoring/comment system, and purchase additional study content if desired.

 

Will Harmonia work on my computer?

Harmonia will work on all Mac OSX and Windows machines. Contact our developers if you have any questions.

 

What does Harmonia cost?

The Harmonia App is free for all users and available for Mac and PC here. Access to the Harmonia Dashboard, our proprietary learning management system, is free for teachers and subscription-based for students. Pricing is related to the number of weeks a student pays for access. A typical 16-week semester is $29.95, but quarters and summer courses may be less. See our pricing chart at   https://harmonia.illiacsoftware.com/pricing

 

Do you offer site licenses?

Yes. We offer both site licenses and single-user licenses. Most of our high school customers pay by site licenses. Contact us by email at contact@illiacsoftware.com to get started.

 

What is a Harmonia subscription?

Access to the Harmonia Dashboard is a subscription-based service, so pricing is related to the number of weeks a student pays for access. A typical 16-week semester is $29.95, but quarters and summer courses may be less. See our pricing chart at   https://harmonia.illiacsoftware.com/pricing for more information.

 

STUDENT FAQ:

 

How do I get started?

 

Follow the instructions below. (click here for a printable one-page instruction sheet.)

Step 1: To join a Harmonia course, you will need to create an Illiac Software account. Visit https://harmonia.illiacsoftware.com and click the "Sign Up" button at the upper right and enter your school email address (or current email address). You will receive an automated email message from our server with directions for creating an account. Create your profile by entering your name, selecting the correct time zone, and choosing a language preference. If you already have an account, simply log in using your Illiac ID.

Step 2: Add your course. Once you create an account, select “Dashboard" from the menu at the top of the window, click the “join the course now” link and enter the 16-digit invitation code assigned by your instructor to access your demo materials. This code will send a message to your instructors, who will enroll you in the course. Please allow up to 24 hours to be added to a course. The next time you sign in to your course on the Harmonia web page, it will prompt you to pay your subscription fee. Click on the link and follow the payment instructions.

Step 3: Download the app. To download the latest version of the app, click on the “Downloads" link at the top of the window and select the correct version of the app for your machine. Follow the directions for your computer to complete the download process. (Be sure to delete any old versions of Harmonia from your Applications folder before downloading the latest version.)

Step 4: Get started! Once you have downloaded the app, open it and click on the cloud icon on the upper left corner of the window. Enter your email address and password. Then select “Cloud" from the menu options at the top of your screen to access the course. Find your course and navigate to the bottom of the list to find the “Welcome to Harmonia” file. Open it and check out the quick Harmonia tutorial.

Why am I locked out of the Harmonia Cloud?

If you find yourself locked out of the Harmonia Cloud while in the app, it is because the subscription to access the course materials has not been received. Log in to the website, click on the dashboard and follow the payment instructions. Go back to the app, log out and log back in to reset your login credentials.

 

How do I find my grades and submitted work?

In the Harmonia Dashboard, click on your course and select “Assignment Status.” Scroll through your submitted assignments to view your grades. To view Harmonia-generated feedback, click “View” to open a single annotated and graded submission. If enabled by your instructor, view previous attempts by clicking on the pull down menu above your annotated page.

 

 

I need more theory help then what I get in my course. What can I do?

 

Presto Courses are new, individual-topic study courses available over the course of Fall 2018.   For example, we offer Presto courses in topics related to fundamentals, diatonic harmony / part writing, and chromatic harmony / part writing. Each Presto course offers focussed interactive lessons and exercises in identification, spelling, and part writing, where appropriate. Like other Harmonia courses, course grading is automatically by Harmonia so the student can immediately see what the know and what still needs to reviewed or practiced.. Read more about our Presto courses in our upcoming blog!

 

Coming Soon! Streaming Audio

By: Rick Taube

We are excited to announce a brand-new audio-streaming service, which we plan to roll out in Fall 2018 as part of our upcoming Harmonia 3.0 release (much more on that later!) Our new streaming audio service will allow teachers to embed high-quality audio in their Harmonia lessons and homework assignments without needing to attach audio files to their documents and control exactly how the media is used by students.

The impetus for our new service arose from the fact that a number of schools have started to use Harmonia to deliver entrance and proficiency exams with audio clips for instructions and examples for assignments. In addition, teachers have asked us for the ability to incorporate aural-skills assessments into Harmonia assignments, and our new streaming playback features will enable teachers to build and deliver aural skills content with ease. Follow the steps below to get started and visit our website this summer to find "how to" videos and sample ear training exercises.

How does it work?

You only need to take three simple steps to get great sounding audio streaming inside your Harmonia documents:

1. Upload audio files to your Harmonia account.

When you log into the Harmonia 3 server (to be released Fall 2018), you will find a new "My Media" area in your teacher account. This area will allow you to upload audio files and organize them into different "Collections". For example, you may want to create a collection for each class you teach, or you may want collections to represent specific types or kinds of music. Once an audio file is uploaded, you can label it, listen to it, move it from one collection to another, or delete it. We can support all the current audio formats so there will be no need to convert your favorite files.

2. Add streaming audio to your assignments.

As soon as you start up Harmonia and log in to your teacher account, Harmonia will automatically download your media collections and make them available for selection inside the app’s Media Attachments menu. To add audio to a page, first click on the object you want to attach audio to and then select the audio resource from the Media Attachment menu. Once the resource is added to the page, it will appear as a headphone icon in the left margin of the document. Note that a single streaming audio resource can be added multiple times across different documents or even within the same document; each individual instance of the audio can be customized as described in step three.

3. Configure the attached audio for student to use.

This step allows you to add or remove playback constraints for a given audio attachment. By default there are no restrictions: students may listen to an audio attachment as many times as desired, pause, fast-forward or rewind as needed. However, we have built our system to enable teachers to restrict playback to a certain number of repetitions, and to "disable" the rewind and/or pause button. These restrictions are managed by the audio server so even if a student quits and restarts the app, the limits established by the teacher will remain in effect. All playback limits placed on an attachment are displayed on the audio transport so students can always be aware of how many times they can play an example and whether or not they can pause or rewind. The transport also provides a handy “Test Audio” button enabling students to test their equipment before playing a constrained audio example.

That’s it! Although easy to use, it is quite powerful and is certain to improve the learning experience for all your music students. We know this service has many possible uses beyond what we have thought of and we look forward to learning about how you use it in your teaching.

A Story Behind Harmonia

by: Ming-Ching Chiu

 

Before joining Illiac Software, I was a graduate student at the University of Illinois. From being a teaching assistant to running my own music theory courses, I taught undergraduate music theory courses there for eight years. I enjoyed teaching, and I always sought for ways to help my students learn. Questions that I asked myself frequently include:

 

“How do I make students understand the materials better?”

“What examples should I use to demonstrate a new concept?”

“What grading scheme should I adopt to motivate students to learn more instead of making them feel defeated?”

“How do I make sure the grading is fair?”

“How should I design the homework so that students get enough practice?”

“How should I design the homework so that my TAs or I don’t have to spend the entire weekend grading?”

 

I was able to answer some of the questions myself, but for some questions, I simply didn’t know the answers. Grading, is one of these hard problems. There were countless times I ended up grading at 2 am in the morning. It was the amount of homework I wanted my students to have, but it was also a lot of grading for me. I couldn’t find a way to balance between how much I wanted my students to practice and how much time I wanted to spend grading.

 

Several weeks before I defended my doctoral thesis, Dr. Taube approached me and asked whether I was interested in joining Illiac Software, the company he just founded at that time. When he showed me the prototype of Harmonia, their only product, I immediately saw its potential. It provided a possible solution to my grading problem, a problem that also troubled many teachers like me. We all wanted our students to practice more, but we cannot spend our whole life grading.

 

People might ask: isn’t grading part of your job? Avoid grading seems to be something lazy teachers would do. This is what I think: to me, grading is not what makes a teacher a teacher. An educator’s main responsibility should be motivating students to learn, improving students’ learning skills, and helping students learn. Grading homework is just one way to provide students feedback. It is not even the best way considering what technology we have nowadays. By using tools to save grading time, teachers can free up more time to focus on more important part of their teaching job, such as designing better course content, spending more time interacting with students, etc.

 

With this belief, I became part of the Illiac Software startup team. Back then, nobody knew how to run a startup business. What we had was tons of teaching experience combined, passion for music theory, music education, and knowledge to write a computer program.

 

Today, almost four years later, Harmonia has transformed from a lab prototype to a real product with thousands of users. However, we are not satisfied. Harmonia is still very young, and there are still many things we want to accomplish. We are thrilled and thankful that teachers who have used harmonia tend to come back every semester, and the number of our users keep doubling every semester.

 

At the moment, Illiac team is working around the clock meeting the deadline to release a new version in summer. The new app is a complete rewrite with new features. I am excited to see how much the new Harmonia app will help shaping the future of music theory education.

 

Spotlight: Harmonia's Discussion & Comment System

by: Rachel Mitchell

Did you know that Harmonia offers students and teachers an online discussion and comment board?

Our discussion board facilitates the learning process between teacher and student by offering students an easy way to post comments and ask questions right from our website.

Students often have questions while reading theory lessons or completing homework exercises. In such cases, students can log in to the Harmonia website, ask a question, and await a response. All comments and responses are logged and attached to specific assignments for easy reference.

So how does it work?

Step 1: In the Harmonia app, complete and submit an assignment. If you have a question or a comment about the assignment, proceed to Step 2.

Step 2: Log in to the to the Harmonia website. Find your course in the Dashboard and locate your submitted assignment under the Assignment Status tab. Click "View" to see your submission.

student_view1.png

Step 3: In the comment box to the right, type and submit your comment. The Harmonia Server will send an email message to the course instructor, which prompts him/her to respond in the same website portal.


comments.png

Step 4a: Following the link provided in the Harmonia Server email alert, an instructor may log in to the Harmonia website, answer the student question in the text box on the right as seen above, prompting another automated email response, this time to the student. Students may likewise find comments from teachers under the "Assignment Status" tab in the course Dashboard.

student_teacher_view.png

student_view2.png

Step 4b: Instructors may also respond to comments by clicking on the "Discussion" tab in the course menu. The assignment set and specific assignment will be highlighted for easy visibility.

teacher_view1.png

teacher_view2.png

Students and teachers may submit multiple comments for a single assignment and all comments attached to an assignment are logged and saved for future reference.

It should be noted that comments do not automatically update on the Harmonia website. Users will need to manually refresh the website to view new comments in real time.

Harmonia's Discussion & Comment feature provides students an easy system for posting questions about their homework or theory lecture. Whether you are teaching or learning music theory in a traditional classroom, in a flipped classroom model, or in an online course environment, Harmonia's comment system may be a helpful tool for you. Try it in your course and let us know what you think. We always like to hear from you since your comments help us make Harmonia a better product for you.

The UIUC Theory Prep Course

An automated course for freshman entering the core music theory program

Background

Prospective students applying to the University of Illinois School of Music are required to take a music theory diagnostic exam (MTDE) to determine if they are academically prepared to take Music 101, the first-semester core music theory course at the University of Illinois. The short (one-page) MTDE provides a quick assessment of a student’s knowledge in five areas of music fundamentals: pitch notation, scales and key signatures, rhythm and meters, and root-position triads. While the School of Music has been giving this test for many years, and has informally noticed generally declining scores over the last decade, only very recently did it start documenting the year-to-year results. Here are the average scores for entering freshman for the past three years:

2015 2016 2017
Average MTDE Score 65% 66% 59%

Music 101 begins at the level of diatonic functional harmony, introductory counterpoint, and part writing. Students who are are not proficient in music fundamentals do not perform well in this course, and history shows that Music 101 grades serve as a fairly good predictor of how well (or poorly) students will perform over the entire four-semester core theory sequence. Until two years ago, the MTDE determined who enrolled in Music 101 (which met three times per week), and who entered Music 101R (which met five days a week and covered both fundamentals and the Music 101 curriculum). When the Illinois state budget crisis began a few years ago the School of Music faced multiple years of budget cuts. Teaching Music 101R required paying an additional instructor, so in 2016, the composition-theory division decided to replace Music 101R with the UIUC Theory Prep Course, a completely automated course that all entering freshman must complete over the summer prior to enrolling in Music 101.

UIUC Theory Prep Course

The UIUC Theory Prep Course delivers completely automated, cloud-based music theory instruction in music fundamentals. The course is self-paced and students may enroll in the course anytime between June 1st and August 10th. On average, a student working a few hours a day can complete the course in two to three weeks.

The UIUC Theory Prep Course covers five areas of music fundamentals:

  • Pitches, accidentals and (treble, bass, alto and tenor) clefs
  • Intervals
  • Major and minor scales
  • Triads and inversions
  • Seventh chords and inversions

All four clefs are used in lessons and assignment materials throughout the course. Topics are represented by specific curricular modules in the course and the modules all follow a similar layout:

Module Pretest

An (optional) timed pretest covers the subject matter presented in the module. If given, a pretest can permit high-scoring students to opt out of taking the module and serves as a baseline measurement to determine how much learning takes place for students who actually complete the module.

Lessons

Lessons consist of non-graded material that present the module’s subject matter. Lessons include text, interactive examples, illustrations (images), short videos and audio clips. The Summer 2017 lessons integrated videos from a variety of University of Illinois School of Music faculty, who briefly introduced the theory topic at hand on their respective instruments. Interviews completed after the course reveal that most students appreciated the videos and would like more short videos to accompany the various lesson subtopics.

Assignments

An assignment is a digital worksheet that contains exercise material to be completed and digitally submitted for evaluation. Harmonia assesses the student's work, adds graphic annotations (explanatory markup) to the assignment display, and a grade based on instructor settings. Assignments generally involve either composing — writing a short musical scores that meet requirements determined by a teacher, or analyzing — studying and listening musical scores and then identifying specific features in the music. Teachers can customize assignments in a number of different ways:

Practice Assignments

A practice assignment is a worksheet that behaves like a regular assignment — the work is graded, errors are identified and explained to the student — but the student's grade is not entered in the course’s official grade book.

Multiple Submission Assignments

A multiple submission assignment allows the student to complete and resubmit the material more than once. Grading can record either the highest achieved grade or the average score of all the student's attempts.

Timed Assignments

In a timed assignment, students must complete the material in an allotted amount of time. Once the time has expired the material is automatically submitted and graded by the system.

Module Exams

At the end of each module, students complete an untimed, comprehensive exam.

The following table shows the number of lessons, assignments and tests that make up the UIUC Theory Prep Course:

Lessons Analysis
Assignments
Composition
Assignments
Tests
Pitches, Accidentals & Clefs 5 14 14 2
Scales 7 12 24 2
Intervals 4 18 12 2
Triads & Inversions 2 8 8 2
Sevenths & Inversions 2 8 8 2
Total 20 60 66 10

Course Correction

The course has run for two years, with both years using the same module content, but some modifications were made to how the materials were used by students in the summer 2017 course. In 2016, students scoring an A on a timed module pretest did not have to complete the remaining materials in the module. For students who were required to take the modules, half the course assignments were configured as optional practice assignments, and the other half were required. (These counted toward their grade). While some students took advantage of the practice assignments, a significant number did not, even though the opportunity would likely have led to better results on their module tests. As a result, in 2017 students were required to take all modules and optional practice assignments were eliminated, in favor of requiring all assignments to be completed at least one time. Students who scored unfavorably could redo the material multiple times to improve their grade and thus their comprehension. As a consequence, in 2017 more coursework was completed by students -- thereby increasing learning cycles over the first year -- and many students opted to retake homework to improve their grade average. Interviews with students this fall indicate that retaking homework helped them learn, and the opportunity to improve their grade provided motivation to do more work.

Module tests averages for 2017 are summarized in the following table:

Pitches Scales Intervals Triads & sevenths
Average module exam 95% 96% 94% 90%

2017 MTDE Results

This fall we retested all entering Music 101 students using an MTDE exam that was slightly shorter but otherwise equivalent to the original MTDE test they took in the spring. This retest was given to compare post-UIUC THeory Pore course results to the initial score on the test last spring. The results are very encouraging: the average grade for the fall MTDE test was 81%, a 22 percentage point improvement over the spring score of 59%. This provides good evidence that the 2017 UIUC Theory Prep Course achieved its goal of improving comprehension of music fundamentals and preparing students for Music 101 in the fall.

The Technology

The UIUC Theory Prep Course delivers automatic instruction by using a music theory software application called Harmonia. Harmonia was developed at the UIUC School of Music and in 2015 it was commercialized through a National Science Foundation STTR Phase 1 Grant. The Harmonia application blends music theory instruction with graphic music notation, multimedia, automatic music analysis, automatic grading, course analytics and social networking. Using Harmonia students are able to practice as well as take homework, timed quizzes and tests. Harmonia uses patented algorithms to analyze the music that students write, then assesses the correctness of their solutions against teacher-specified models of correctness, and provides detailed feedback to students about any errors or mistakes.

Implications

By developing automated theory courses with built-in practice and grading, musically inclined students attending high schools with minimal music theory can still receive meaningful theory instruction to help them prepare for college-level music courses.

The ability of the system to deliver real-time instructional feedback encourages students to practice and retake assignments, both of which provide additional learning cycles.

By combining automatic grading and formative assessment, music instruction can be delivered at a fraction of the cost of a traditional methods, it can reduce or eliminate the need for teachers to grade paper-based homework, and it can allow students to know how they are performing in real time.

Harmonia’s latest server courseware allows instructors to view and comment on student assignments and communicate with them via a bi-directional comment system, a technology that will facilitate remote mentoring.

Harmonia and Music Notation Editing

By: David Psenicka

I'm a composer and one of the developers of Harmonia. For the past fifteen years I've taught classes in music theory and technology and have given private music lessons. One of the most tedious aspects of it is having to notate scores, often on the fly and requiring a lot of detail. Many of the decisions involved in score editing (especially for assignments) are repetitive, and popular score editing programs like Sibelius or Finale require a good deal of time and patience to coerce the score into an acceptable state. I realized this was a common issue for other composers so I wrote an open source application called FOMUS that simplifies the process of notating music by automating many of the mechanical decisions involved. Although the software was written for algorithmic composition, the work I did on it altered my approach to composing and teaching as I was able to reduce a lot of the repetitiveness involved and devote my time and energy to more important tasks. It was also a fascinating project as it involved solving many difficult technical problems that arise from modeling a complex system of symbols and concepts in computer code.

In my experience teaching I've always felt the need to customize my teaching materials for my students and felt that there should be a more efficient way of doing this. This is what motivates much of the work I'm doing on Harmonia. I'm currently developing many of the editing capabilities of Harmonia, which includes the notation engine and text editor. The interface along with the notation generators is designed to be easy and intuitive to use so that an assignment or test can be put together quickly. Less time and effort spent on creating custom materials means content better tailored to students and more time devoted to higher aspects of teaching. From my own experiences as a user of the software I'm helping to develop I'm certain it will change the way teachers approach their craft and will improve the quality of music education for both educators and students.

What’s the value of Harmonia?

by: Rick Taube

“What’s the value of Harmonia?” Or, quite literally: what commitments and investments did we have to secure along the way to move an initial idea about how to improve teach music theory using technology into a functioning company? The first thing I should say is that it was a very long path (almost 20 years!) and much of journey was not easy. The first two years I worked completely on my own developing the analysis algorithms in a language called Lisp that I had learned at Stanford when I worked at CCRMA. It was a complete leap of faith -- i was putting in lots of hours trying to get a program to analyze harmony quickly and accurately, and to "communicate" its results back to a user. The time I spent doing this work meant I was composing less and working less on my public-domain composition software, Common Music. I don't think I even listed this research work on my faculty reports because I had no concrete results to talk about yet. But once I had a functioning analysis program, I quickly learned how hard it is to convince people about a new idea unless it is something they can actually visualize. I showed my program to an academic dean, and while he was nice about it, he didn't really understand the issue or what he could do to help me. He sent me to a music software publisher he knew and the same thing happened, only that he understand my idea even less than the dean. I talked with the Grants and Licensing office at my university and they decided the app wasn't worth anything and gave me complete rights to the software. Realizing some of the hurdles I would have to overcome, I continued to work on the software, adding a PDF back-end so the programs markup became visible and the program's explanatory text was colorized according to they type or severity of the analytical issue. Seeing the results in a semi-intuitive way had a real positive effect on viewers, and I decided to write an article about it for the Computer Music Journal. CMJ is a top-tier publication in my area and when they accepted the article it gave me some credibility. The article gave an clear overview of the software and also included images (see below), which also helped people understand what it was doing.
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The 1999 article predicts the Harmonia cloud, realized 13 years later.


My first nibble for actual support came from McGraw Hill. I showed it to a theory textbook representative and he "got it" instantly! He was also part of the on-line component for the company and understood the possible value it had in that new industry. I signed a contract, but in the mean time McGraw Hill was finalizing its sale to a larger publishing company. This new owner wasn't interested in on-line learning as much and all pending, unfinalized contracts, including mine, were cancelled. At that point I thought I was at the end of it, and I went back to writing music and also a textbook. I hadn't really given up, but I just wasn't sure what I could do to move the ball forward. The next real change happened a few years later when a graduate student, Andrew Burnson, an outstanding programmer with experience with music notation, entered our composition program here at UIUC. (UIUC has a long history in computer music and we've be fortunate to attract a number of composers/programmers like Andrew over the years. Other composers join our program and find out that their ability to think abstractly about music processes and systems and to notate these abstractions in symbols, often makes them "naturally" good programmers. I pitched an idea to completely rewrite the software in C++ app with multi-media features and Andrew was immediately interested in the idea. I was able to secure a $6,700 Creative Research Grant from FAA, and with Andrew on board we came up with the initial design and creation of an app called Chorale Composer. Meanwhile Rachel Mitchell starting teaching music theory at the UIUC and she got excited about the pedagogy that the app could potentially support, and agreed to start developing content for the app and using it in her classroom. Over the next few years we collectively applied and received several more grants -- two from PITA (Provost’s Initiative on Teaching Advancement) and one from the Campus Research Board (which won the Arnold O. Beckman Research Award for projects of special distinction) totalling about $26,000. Along the way we "retired" Chorale Composer, and then Halim Beere joined our team and we started working on Harmonia, which was a generalized version of Choral Composer that could send and received course data from a server. Meanwhile I began talking with the Office Of Technology (OTM) and they sent me over to EnterpriseWorks, a very successful startup incubator at my university. I made a pitch and they took us on at a 90% funding level. This was a pivotal moment for us because it allowed Halim and I join the iCorp (Illinois NSF Innovation Corps) which is basically a boot-camp for startups that provides very intense training and leads project leaders through the process of "customer discovery" and building a business canvas see if the idea is actually marketable. That same year we receive a Proof Of Concept Grant for Harmonia from UIUC's Office of Technology Management for a total of $15,607 to complete the work on the Harmonia prototype. All this momentum, plus the support by EnterpiseWorks, got us into the company formation phase, in which we developed a strategic plan, secured intellectual property protection (trademark and patent) and ultimately led to our application for an $225,000 NSF Phase I grant, which we received in 2015. That grant allowed us to hire David Psenika and Ming-Ching Chiu, and all of us worked together to complete the network prototype in Fall 2015, then test it in a real course (Music Theory I (MUS 101) at UIUC) for a semester. From that experiment we were able to verify the application worked and gave better results than the status quo for teaching music theory. The rest, as they say, is history!

How did the Harmonia music theory app start?

by: Rick Taube

The idea for Harmonia came to me in 1997, just two years after I joined the composition/theory faculty at the University of Illinois. At UIUC all composers teach theory, and as the newest faculty member I was assigned to teach first-semester theory and aural skills. While I had taught similar courses in the past, during the preceding decade I had actually been working outside academia, as a computer researcher, first at the Price-Waterhouse Technology Centre in Menlo Park, CA and then for five years at the Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie in Karlsruhe, Germany. What struck me most about teaching theory again was that — though the content I was teaching had changed very little — the circumstances in which I was teaching was very different than anything I had previously experienced.

I firmly believe that the best way to learn music theory concepts is to study how they are used in real compositions and to compose music that demonstrates those concepts. To do this, it is important that a student receives fast instructional “feedback” from teachers to complete a learning cycle. I was taught harmony and voice leading by Prof. Herbert Nanney, organist at Stanford University, who lectured to his (small) class sitting at the piano, where he would play, improvise and work with us “in real time” to improve our exercises. My Music 101, in comparison, took place in a large classroom and had about 90 students with widely varying degrees of theory knowledge and skills. I had eager TAs, but their theory experiences were also quite varied. In my class, I found it was simply not possible to provide each individual student enough "learning cycles" to really master concepts and remediate problems. Since hiring more teachers or limiting student enrollment was not an option, I realized that the best way to address these issues was to adopt a technology that could provide unlimited access to practicing analysis and composition with instructional feedback, thus breaking the linkage between class sizes and the amount of learning cycles that can take place. Moreover, unlimited guided practice would help every student learn, regardless of class size. Since I have strong programming skills I began working on developing music software that could analyze real music and relate the issues it discovers back to a user in detail. Progress was steady but also slow as research grants for faculty in the fine arts were hard to come by and did not involve large sums of money. The game changer came for us in 2015, when the National Science Foundation awarded Illiac Software a $264,000 STTR "proof of concept" grant. With that grant we were able to complete a prototype, embed it in an actual course and prove that computer analytics can indeed be used to improve students learning outcomes over the status quo. It also facilitated a number of other beneficial features such as integrated multimedia and cloud-based course delivery! Our NSF grant took us through the end of 2016, and we started officially commercializing in January 2017. Our primary goal as a company is to improve theory education for all students at a fraction of the cost of what what would otherwise be possible. While we are really just at the start of this journey, I am excited and heartened by the feedback we have had from professors and students alike, and we have many plans and ideas to improve our application and course management system as we move forward.