inForm Music Analysis software program released

American Music Teacher, August-Sept, 2004

Electronic Courseware Systems, Inc., 1713 S. State St., Champaign, IL 61820; (217) 359-7099, fax: (217) 359-6578; sales@ecsmedia.com; www.ecsmedia.com. Single station, $79.95; lab pack (five stations), $200; site/network license (twenty-four stations), $640.

Electronic Courseware Systems, Inc. introduces inForm: A Music Analysis System software program designed to facilitate analysis of musical form while listening to and viewing music.

Authored by Jennifer Sterling, this program allows computer users to understand the impact of seeing a musical score as they listen to music, while analyzing its musical structure under their own control. Users can mark up the score as they listen, stopping and starting the playback as they wish. The program includes high-quality music performances from the Naxos record catalogue as MP3 files and scrolling graphical music scores.

The author has selected and arranged the music compositions in order of complexity and structural content. The software generates umbrella charts of the user's score analysis to compare with the author's umbrella analysis of each piece. A series of questions then guides the user to make decisions about the form of each of the fourteen compositions. These include various compositions by Bach, Mozart, Schumann, Haydn, Beethoven and Purcell.

Designed for personal use on one computer, the program also can be used as a presentation tool in a classroom setting. The interactive buttons allow for score analysis mark-up, listening and umbrella chart generation for demonstration.

System requirements include a Macintosh: OS 9.2.2, 10.1 or higher operating systems or Windows 98, 2000, XP or higher, and a web browser with Java applets enabled. For more information contact Electronic Courseware Systems, Inc.