Practice Farm: Etudes, Any Key

Nicholas Mahon

About this app

Practice Farm is a library of étude books, orchestral excerpts and Bach, rewritten on the spot for the instrument you play. Choose your instrument once. Every page comes out in your clef, in your range, in any key you want, with the fingerings on the notes and a band to play along with.

YOUR INSTRUMENT, OVER THE MUSIC
Your instrument is drawn above the page and moves with every note as the music plays: a trombone's slide, the valves of brass and horn, the keys of clarinets, oboe, English horn, bassoon, flutes and saxophones, the fingerboards of the four strings, and two or four mallets over glockenspiel, xylophone, marimba and vibraphone. Tap the hand in the panel's corner, tap a note, and choose your own fingering or position. The page prints your choice and the panel plays it, study by study. Mark any passage, keep it as a clip and loop it. Tap a tempo or expression word on the page and its meaning opens, in eleven languages.

WHAT'S ON THE SHELF
• 307 studies from Arban's Complete Method, by chapter
• New: Weissenborn's bassoon studies, Ferling for oboe, Rose for clarinet, Andersen for flute, Concone for bass and for voice
• Bordogni, Kopprasch, Blazhevich, Slama, Bléger, Müller, Cornette, Belcke
• Bach's cello suites, sonatas and partitas, and Telemann's fantasias
• 414 orchestral excerpts for 13 instruments
• 275 traditional tunes
• 365 Bach chorales in four voices
1,810 studies in 43 books, and room for your own.

WRITTEN FOR YOU
No more reading Bordogni in the wrong clef or Kopprasch out of your range. Tell Practice Farm what you play and every study is rewritten for it: a tuba gets bass clef and valve numbers, a trumpet gets its own transposition, a cellist gets string positions. 39 instruments, each with its own clefs, range and fingering system.

ANY KEY
Move a study up a semitone, down an octave, or into any key you name. Or take it around the circle of fourths or fifths and get one page with all twelve keys on it, with rest bars between them.

PLAY ALONG
Drums with a groove. A drone that follows the study when it changes key. And on the 76 studies that were printed with a piano part, the pianist. Set a tempo by tapping, get counted in, take the repeats.

BACH CHORALES
Four parts: soprano, alto, tenor and bass. Choose an instrument for each one, a trumpet on the soprano, a horn on the alto, a trombone and a tuba below, and the chorale is transposed on the spot, each part in the right clef and key for the instrument that plays it. Change an instrument and the part changes with it. Read all four parts on one tablet or split the score across two. A ready-made quartet for a studio class, a section rehearsal, or colleagues each reading their own part.

YOUR OWN MUSIC
Import any MusicXML file and it works like every other study. Export any page as a PDF for a student or a teacher.

THE INSTRUMENTS
Violin, viola, cello, double bass, guitar, bass guitar, ukulele, flute, piccolo, alto flute, descant and treble recorders, oboe, English horn, clarinets in B flat, A and E flat, bass clarinet, bassoon, contrabassoon, soprano to baritone saxophones, trumpet, French horn, alto, tenor and bass trombones, euphonium, tuba, soprano, alto, tenor and bass voice, glockenspiel, xylophone, marimba and vibraphone.

WORKS OFFLINE
The whole library is inside the app. Every study, every key, every instrument and the band all work with no internet connection, on a plane or in a practice room with no signal. No account and no subscription. One purchase, for phone and tablet.

In English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Polish, Japanese, Korean and Simplified Chinese.

What’s new

• Added fermata settings: tap a fermata to choose how long it holds, or have the music wait for you.
• Added a Newest order to the Library, and a New tag on everything added in this version.
• Improved the sound of the piano.
• Added 40 voice studies: Concone's 25 Lessons, Op. 10, and 15 Vocalises, Op. 12.
• Added 142 orchestral excerpts for tuba, viola, violin, flute, oboe, bassoon, cello, clarinet and trumpet.