Hal Leonard and MakeMusic Make SmartMusic

MILWAUKEE-- Hal Leonard Corporation, (HLC) headquartered in Milwaukee, the world's largest print music publisher, and MakeMusic! Inc., the leading music education technology company, announced today that will be bundling SmartMusic with HLC’s popular books for beginning music students: Essential Elements 2000 for Band Book 1 and Essential Elements 2000 for Strings Book 1.

SmartMusic is technology-based music practice system with over 20,000 fun accompaniments, and 50,000 skill-building exercises. It feature Intelligent Accompaniment technology that listens to musicians sing or play through a microphone and follows their spontaneous tempo changes.
Students using Essential Elements will have free access to SmartMusic accompaniments for the first half of the book's songs and exercises as well as a special offer to subscribe to SmartMusic accompaniments for the last half of each book.

Hal Leonard will also bundle SmartMusic with the teacher's books and provide them with free access to the SmartMusic accompaniments for the entire book. Both the student and teacher bundles are expected to be available in the second quarter of next year.
"SmartMusic is an exciting and important addition to Essential Elements," stated Larry Morton, President of Hal Leonard Corporation. "Assessment and accountability are important in music education, and teachers can use SmartMusic to document the musical progress of each student. Furthermore, students practice more and learn faster when they can play with fun accompaniments, hear recordings of themselves and get help with notes and rhythms. Essential Elements students are using SmartMusic to email recordings of their first scales to their grandparents!"