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The music theory classroom at Plano East is a computer lab environment with 21 MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) workstations. Each workstation is equipped with a Roland MIDI keyboard and an Apple iMac computer.

We use a variety of software titles for many different applications. Our flagship title, so to speak, is Finale 2005 by MakeMusic. It is a notation program similar in nature to a word processor, only it processes musical characters rather than English characters. It is a truly professional software title in use by several music publishing houses.

For computer-aided instruction, we have recently received Essentials of Music Theory from Alfred Publishing. It covers a broad spectrum of topics and is designed as a tool for instruction rather than practice, drill and reinforcement.

For practicing identification of musical elements, such as intervals, triads, chords, inversions, ear training, etc., we use three main programs. Our primary programs for such practice are Music Lessons I and Music Lessons II, both from MiBAC Software. Our other ear-training program is Auralia from Rising Software.

And finally, we use a couple of programs from Apple's iLife suite for general music applications. iTunes is used as a jukebox program for music playback. Students can use iTunes to play back audio files from the PESH Music Theory Audio Library as well as to play back files for ear-training, dictation, and score study. GarageBand is used as a virtual synthesizer as well as a multi-track recording program.

In addition to these music applications, these computers also feature Apple's Safari web-browser and Microsoft's Office 2004 suite of applications.

If you have any questions about Music Theory courses at Plano East call Brandon Pedigo @ 469-752-9240 or bpedigo@pisd.edu.