Preamble: The first thing to know about SMT is that we are a tiny (two people!), independent company of musician-developers. By keeping costs low and avoiding outside investment, we are able to focus all our efforts on making the best tools for serious musicians. However, this means we also don't do a lot of things you might see from other companies. No gamification, no cute animations, no marketing-driven app design! I've been in the software business for over 20 years, so be assured that anything we aren't doing is on purpose and is the result of a deliberate decision to keep 100% focused on building great tools and offering them at fair prices.
Why would I need apps? Why not just play songs by ear and transcribe solos?
Transcribing solos and songs is excellent ear training! However, for advanced students, a normal song or solo is likely 90% easy intervals and keys, and for beginner students, this is often too hard. By itself, transcribing isn't the most efficient way to build your aural mental map. We would never suggest you stop transcribing, but using the targeted constraint training in the SMT apps lets you crank out far, far more repetitions of exactly what you need to be working on, resulting in faster development of an integrated aural and harmonic mental map in all keys.
Why should I pay a subscription instead of buying a cheap app from my app store?
Making a simple ear training app is easy. Making apps that understand music, that feel like practicing, and that let you set up musically meaningful constraints is orders of magnitude harder. I'm a PhD student in computer science with 20 years of programming experience, and I can attest these tools use some seriously advanced programming techniques (if you're interested, see the bottom question!). That's what enables us to make them musically smart and to build new tools with a tiny team. We believe a modest subscription fee - one that is much cheaper than an online course or lesson - is the best way to let us deliver great tools.
Do these work on mobile? Why do I need to use Chrome, Firefox, or Edge?
In order to make tools for the advanced student at a reasonable cost, we are using the most recent technology we can - namely WebAudio, WebMIDI, and WebAssembly. This makes development a lot more practical for our tiny team, but means that right now you can only run SMT on Chrome, Firefox, or Edge on a Windows, Mac, or Linux computer (no iOS or Android). We hope support for modern web standards will continue to improve and we will be able to add other platforms in the future. As these are meant to be used while sitting with your instrument or a MIDI controller and are a lot more productive that way, we think this is the best strategy to enable us to target a specialized and small market.
Is there a free trial period?
No, instead of a free trial we have free demo versions available here. The demos let you try almost all the app functionality but are limited to only a few question choices. The problem with free trials is that if we get some viral marketing success, we could face a temporary spike in load that doesn't translate to real customers. That can get very expensive, with all kinds of scalability headaches that would force us to adopt a more expensive pricing strategy overall. We feel the demos, the demo videos, and the low monthly sign-up cost justify this decision.
Why are there no historical metrics or progress graphs? How do I know I'm improving?
There are two parts to this. First, metrics require apps that are always the same, or the metrics are meaningless. I decided instead to make these apps highly configurable so that each app can be customized to do dozens or even hundreds of different musical exercises. I think this offers much more benefit and that serious students don't need metrics to convince themselves to practice. Secondly, metrics produce a lot of data per user. This would force us into the data storage business, diverting our resources from our core mission - making great tools.
Do you have packages for schools?
Yes, we are happy to create custom packages for music schools. We are even able to offer custom-branded versions and custom development for large enough orders. Get in touch to find out more.
Do you have an affiliate program?
Yes, we will launch an affiliate program that we intend to use to sponsor artists and high-profile educators. If you have a large audience and would like to share SMT with them, please get in touch. I (Iain) am also an award-winning presenter and am available to speak to your audience and for content collaborations.
What else have you made?
I'm the developer of the open-source Scheme for Max project, a Max/MSP external to allow scripting the Max computer music environment in Scheme Lisp. These tools were originally developed for my own personal use using Scheme for Max, and the SMT apps run in an embedded Scheme interpreter using Web Assembly and s7 Scheme. Lisps have a rich history of use in algorithmic composition and music theory programming, and the use of Scheme for music is the topic of my PhD research. If you're into that sort of thing, you can check out Scheme for Max on GitHub and YouTube.