What's new in Musicdott

A guitar teacher spots a wrong chord shape straight away, and then you stop trusting the tool. So the chord finder no longer takes its shapes from a fixed list; it works them out from music theory. Every chord in every key now has several shapes: the familiar open shape, the barre shapes and higher positions on the neck, with fingering. You can also type a chord yourself, such as F#m7, Bbmaj7 or D/F#, and every shape plays with one click, with a sound that resembles a string instead of a beep.

The capo now does what you expect: put it on the fourth fret and you see which shape to play to make a G#m sound. There are also other tunings, such as Drop D, half step down, DADGAD and open G. A few chords in the old list turned out to be wrong. They have been corrected, and a test now makes sure every shape really contains the right notes.

The scales now spell correctly in every key, so no more missing notes in G♯ or D♯. The tuner listens more calmly and also hears the low B of a five-string bass. In the chords-and-lyrics editor you can type any chord, and transposing neatly chooses sharps or flats to suit the new key.

A bass player looks at a chord differently from a guitarist. There’s no chord shape to play. The bass plays the root, the third, the fifth, and has to know where they sit on the neck. So on bass, the chord finder now shows each note’s role, R, 3, 5 or ♭7, and you can read the arpeggio straight off the neck. In a slash chord like D/F♯, the note the bass player plays has a ring around it. You can choose four-string, five-string or drop D, and left-handed too. Scales now have a five-string neck, the tuner has separate presets for bass and five-string bass, and in a song with chords, the chord overview for bass shows the bass note that actually sounds for each chord, even when the sheet was written for a capo.

The tab editor has grown too. You pick a time signature, from 3/4 to 6/8 and 7/8, make triplets with one button, and fix a bar that doesn’t add up in one go. New techniques include tied notes, half bends and bend-and-release, ghost notes, harmonics, let ring, accents, staccato and tapping. You can now write guitar and bass in the same tab, each with its own tuning and sound. When practising, a student can mute one track and play that part themselves. With Speed up, the piece starts at 60% and plays a little faster on every repeat until it’s up to tempo.

You need to be able to trust a metronome, or you end up practising a tempo that doesn’t exist. The one in the top bar didn’t always tick evenly, and it stopped as soon as you closed the window or went to another page. Now it keeps going while you work, and changing the tempo no longer throws you out of the bar. In the full metronome you pick eighths, triplets or sixteenths, add swing if you like, have one or two bars counted in, and let bars drop out so you can feel whether you’re holding the time yourself. 6/8 and 7/8 now count the way they’re meant to, 1 and 4, or 2+2+3. Tap your tempo with the tap button, or start and stop with the space bar. In GrooveScribe the tempo trainer now really stops when you pause, and a groove from the floating window comes with you to the full page.

For pianists, the chord finder wasn’t always right. Every inversion showed the same keys, and some scales lit the wrong keys, like an F♯ major without its E♯. Now you see real voicings, bass in the left hand and the chord rising in the right, with the actual chord degrees, and every scale lights exactly the right keys. Chords are spelled B♭ rather than A♯. Sheet music in MusicXML, including .mxl, can now be saved in a lesson, and the ABC block resumes where it was after a pause.

And for singers there’s the Voice trainer. You hear a note, sing it back, and see straight away whether you’re sharp or flat. Hold it in tune for a moment and it moves on by itself, from a single note to do-re-mi or a triad. You can also measure your range and see which voice type fits. That’s a pointer only, because a teacher always hears more than a microphone.

A song with chords above the lyrics now pastes in one go from Ultimate Guitar or any other chord sheet, including the chord-only intro, sections like verse and chorus, and the capo from the header. Something that didn’t work has also been put right: “Save to lesson” in the chords-and-lyrics editor never actually put the song in the lesson. Now it does.

In the lesson, the student has their own toolbar. Too high to sing? Go down a few semitones and all chords move along, with flats or sharps to suit the new key. No capo at hand? Set it to “none” and you see which shapes to play instead. One click shows the shapes of every chord in the song, for guitar or ukulele, and each shape can be heard. Auto-scroll moves the page gently while you play, and print gives you a tidy paper copy.

In the scales tool you can now practise one position on the neck at a time, such as the five familiar pentatonic boxes. Left-handed players can mirror the neck and the chord diagrams.

As a drummer you sometimes just want to write out a groove quickly, in the middle of a lesson, without digging through menus first. So as a teacher or school owner you can now choose which tools sit at the top of your screen. Click the pin next to the search bar, tick up to five tools, and they are there straight away, just for you, on every device you log in on. You can also do it on the Tools page, where every tool has its own pin.

From such a shortcut, GrooveScribe opens in a floating window above the app. You can drag it, resize it and tuck it away at the bottom, and it simply stays put while you move to a student, the schedule or a lesson. So your groove is not lost when you quickly look something up. Only when you close the window is it gone.

The tuner, the metronome and the other compact tools open in a small panel as you are used to, and the remaining tools take you to their page in one click.

The tab tool used to be one fixed row of sixteen cells with a beep. Now you write a tab the way you would on paper, except it sounds straight away. You add bars, choose a note length per beat, and add techniques such as hammer-on, slide, bend, palm mute, vibrato and dead notes. Guitar, bass (five-string too) and ukulele all work, as do tunings such as Drop D or DADGAD. Below it, the tab appears as clean notation and plays with real instrument sound. Slowing down, looping a section, adding the metronome and a count-in are all one click away.

Already have tabs? Paste a tab as text, for example from Ultimate Guitar, or open a PDF that contains the tab as text, and it lands in the editor. You can open Guitar Pro and MusicXML files too: play them, pick a track, print them, and keep them in a lesson so your student can practise at home. A tab you wrote yourself can be reopened from the lesson to edit later, and every tab can be downloaded as a Guitar Pro file.

Many tools have been added in recent months, and the page had become a long row of icons that looked alike, with explanations that didn’t always say what you actually do with a tool. So they are now grouped by what they are for: rhythm and tempo, chords and scales, tab and notation, tuning and listening, and helpers for your lessons.

Every tool has its own recognisable icon and a short explanation in plain words, such as “place chords exactly above the lyrics and transpose with one click”. At the top you can search, and with one click you filter by your instrument, so a drum teacher only sees what belongs to drums. A few names have also become clearer, such as “Scales” and “Melody to notes”.

Teaching a harmony singing group, a band or a small ensemble? Under Groups you bring those students together, with a name, a colour and the teacher who leads the group.

Assigning material then takes one step: pick the group in the assign menu of a lesson or song, and every student gets it on their own worksheet. You can also add a group to an event in one go, such as a masterclass or the student concert, and the members get a notification. A student’s page shows which groups they are in.

Give a group a fixed lesson — say every Tuesday at 4 pm for 45 minutes — and it appears as one block in your schedule: “Harmony (4)”. Click it to see who is in the group; open a student’s own lesson from there to mark it done or keep the log.

If you can’t make it, one button cancels the whole group lesson and everyone gets a notification. A student who cancels only cancels their own place — the lesson goes ahead for the rest. Someone joining the group takes part from today; someone leaving drops out of the next lessons. And in the hours overview a group lesson counts once, not per student.

Musicdott is growing, and so is the number of teachers, students and questions that reach us. The overview we use to help you has been rebuilt for thousands of users: we search by name, email or school and find your account in seconds, even when your school has hundreds of students.

More importantly, no support request gets lost any more. An open question from a few weeks ago could sometimes drop out of view once many new ones came in; now every open question stays visible until it has been answered. And a message from us to all users, such as an in-app announcement, reaches everyone in one go, even with a very large audience.

You won’t notice much of this yourself, and that’s how it should be: it’s there so we can keep helping you just as personally and quickly as we grow.

If you’ve lost access to your authenticator app, for instance because your phone is gone, Request a manual reset via support on the sign-in screen opens an email to us. Until now the “Account” line in that email was left empty, so we first had to ask who you were. It now already contains the name you tried to sign in with, so we can get you going again without the back-and-forth.

Smaller, but nice if you use the app in English or Spanish: the Open in the chord finder for variations link on a chord diagram is now in your language.

A lesson or song used to have two buttons that both opened the student screen. Now there is just one: Open student screen in the dark bar, next to the iPad button. Calmer, and no more wondering which one to use.

Under Inspiration, owners and teachers write pieces for students: a blog about breathing, a bundle of exercises for the holidays, or news about the recital. You build them with the same blocks as your lessons — text, video, notation, audio.

Students only see it once you publish, and then they get a single notification. Pinning a post keeps it at the top.

Teaching drums, piano and voice? Give each category in the lesson library an instrument once, and the lessons inside follow automatically. General material, such as theory, stays without an instrument: it belongs everywhere.

As soon as your school has two or more instruments, a filter appears. Teachers see My instruments by default, and when assigning to a student you first see what fits their instrument — with one click on Show all if you need something else.

Students with an account get a reminder in the app the day before their lesson, and if they turn notifications on, also as a push notification on their phone. Cancelled lessons and lessons during holidays are skipped.

The student dashboard has a small card to turn notifications on. On an iPhone it first explains how to add Musicdott to the home screen — that’s needed there for push. The email reminder stays available for those who prefer it.

The Practised this week block on the student dashboard sometimes stayed empty. You now see the minutes practised per day, and the difference with last week up to the same day — so Monday doesn’t feel like a bad week straight away. The practice streak counts properly again.

Setting up two-step verification is smoother too: if the QR code doesn’t load once, you get a button to try again, and reloading no longer invalidates a code you already scanned.

For some students the list of songs and exercises gets long. On the worksheet you now drag them by the handle into the order you want — with a mouse, on an iPad or with the keyboard.

With the star you pin up to five songs and five exercises under I’m working on this. They sit at the top, for you and for the student, who can also choose their own focus. Completed work sinks to the bottom by itself.

In the lesson library, owners set the order within a category the same way, so your learning path makes sense.

Your subscription now runs through Mollie. You authorise once with iDEAL, Bancontact or card, and the monthly amount is then collected automatically. Every payment comes with an invoice in your inbox, also available under Billing.

Already paying by invoice? You only need to give the authorisation now; the first automatic collection is on 1 November. If a payment ever fails, you get a few calm reminders before anything changes.

Under Settings › Security you add a passkey: your phone or laptop remembers that it’s you. Signing in is then one glance or one finger — no password, no six-digit code.

A passkey counts as full two-step verification, so teachers and owners can choose it instead of an authenticator app. Your password keeps working if you prefer it.

Every school does it differently. One never offers make-ups because the time is reserved anyway; another does if you cancel on time; yet another always does. Under Settings › Cancelling you fill in a short questionnaire — or pick one of three common setups in one click — and from then on the app follows your rules.

Students and parents see all their upcoming lessons in their schedule, including the weekly ones, with a Cancel button. Before confirming they read in plain words what happens: does the lesson lapse, or is it made up? If it’s no longer allowed in the app, it simply tells them to contact their teacher.

The teacher gets a notification for every cancellation and sees in the schedule who cancelled and why. If you let students choose a make-up slot themselves, they see free slots with their own teacher.

The student screen no longer has to run on your own computer. Click “On iPad / tablet” above the lesson, point the iPad’s camera at the QR code, and you’re set: your student sees the lesson on their own screen. No login needed on the iPad.

Everything you do on your laptop, the iPad follows: the whole lesson or one block, scrolling, videos. If the Wi-Fi drops or the iPad locks, the lesson comes back by itself. The student screen is for watching only: silent (sound comes from your laptop, so no echo), not tappable, and videos stay within half a second — Musicdott corrects drift by itself. With two videos or grooves in one lesson, only the one you start plays.

And closing a window with Esc no longer empties the student screen by accident.

You now open the student screen straight from the lesson: your student sees the whole lesson right away, without opening anything else first. Want to show one part up close? Click that block; “Whole lesson” brings everything back.

Above the lesson you always see what your student is looking at, and “How it works” briefly explains how to drag the screen to the TV and step through the lesson with the arrow keys. Scroll through the whole lesson and the student screen scrolls along. Soundslice scores no longer pull your student away from the screen.

Many teachers note in the log what they expect before the lesson, and add to it afterwards. Now you really can: every entry in the lesson log can be edited and deleted.

Because your student reads along, there is a small tip for feedback that helps — the 4G method: behaviour, feeling, effect and the behaviour you would like to see.

Students with lessons every other week now only show up on your dashboard and in the top bar in the right week — exactly like in the schedule. Moved lessons and holidays count there too.

You can also no longer assign lessons or songs to archived or stopped students, and Settings › Notifications shows who each switch is for. Notifications meant for a student now really reach the student, not the teacher who once created them. And long lessons with many blocks are now always saved in full.

A song without drums from Moises, a slowed-down backing track or a recording of yourself: paste the share link from Dropbox or Google Drive into the new Audio block and it’s in the lesson.

Students play it inside Musicdott, lower the tempo down to 50% (pitch stays the same) and loop a tricky section with the A and B buttons. Your files stay in your own storage.

Progress is now truly your call. For every song, lesson and exercise you pick a score: needs practice, 25, 50 or 75 — at 75 the student can apply it and the item is complete. The score counts as XP straight away.

Students tap “I practised this” and you see exactly when they last worked on it. So you know where you stand at every lesson.

The schedule has been redesigned: a clear Google/Apple-style calendar with actions right on your recurring lessons — cancel, reschedule or plan a make-up lesson without searching.

On desktop you now navigate via a dock at the bottom of the screen; you can turn the sidebar back on if you prefer.

Scheduling a lesson when the teacher or room is already taken? You now get an instant warning. And as an owner you can now also schedule lessons on behalf of a colleague.

In the metronome and under every GrooveScribe groove you can now adjust the tempo in 1 BPM steps (tap or hold). New: gradual speed-up — start slow and let the tempo climb to your target by itself.

Not every school uses everything. Under Settings › Display you switch off tools and sections you don’t need. They disappear from the menu, the tools list and the tool picker in lessons — for teachers and students alike.

Using Soundslice? Paste the link into the new Soundslice block and the interactive sheet music sits in the lesson or song — with synced notation, tempo and loops. Without a Soundslice licensing plan it shows as a tidy link card.

New students receive an activation email so they can choose their own password. A student didn’t get the email? Resend it from the student list, or copy the personal activation link and share it yourself — Musicdott also shows why an account isn’t active yet.

Signing up and setting up your school is smoother: the first steps are cleaned up, confusing redirects are gone, and you’re ready to add your first students sooner.

Work with OuterPractice? Link a practice session directly to a lesson, so the practice result comes back as a lesson item in MusicDott. Practising and teaching flow into one another.

Add the original recording or a practice playlist to a lesson via Tidal or Spotify. The student sees the player right in the lesson and can expand the playlist — handy for getting the feel and tempo of a piece into their fingers.

The student screen has been redesigned: clear task cards show at a glance what needs doing, and distracting pop-ups and tours are gone. Much tidier, especially for younger students.

On the phone MusicDott has a fresher look, with a fixed bottom bar that lets you jump between the main screens with one thumb. Faster and nicer to use on the go.

Alongside the platform there’s now a digital journal with practical articles on music education, student motivation and running a healthy music school. Free to read, regularly updated.

MusicDott can now be installed as an app on your phone or tablet — with its own icon on your home screen. Key data stays available when you’re briefly offline, and you get push notifications for important updates.

Plan a recital or school concert from within MusicDott. Students and parents sign themselves up (yes/no/maybe), you build the programme of who plays what, and everyone gets an automatic reminder the day before.

From invitation to programme in one place.

Build richer lessons with three new content blocks: a practice block for focused exercises, a quiz to check understanding, and a built-in metronome that puts the student on tempo right away.

All in the same lesson, no external tools needed.

A tricky lick? Play the YouTube clip slower or loop a section without leaving the video. Perfect for getting a riff or solo under your fingers step by step.

Put a second screen in front of your student and the chords and lyrics follow along automatically as you move through the piece. You set the line, the student follows — with a clear LIVE indicator so everyone’s on the same spot.

No switching between apps or screens: click a lesson or song and it appears instantly for the student.

Parents get their own secure view of their child’s progress. They see which pieces are being practised, receive messages from the school and can cancel a lesson themselves.

Parents stay involved without any extra work for you — and without the student account being passed around.

Link your own video URL to your profile — FaceTime, Zoom, Google Meet, whatever you use. On an online lesson a Join button appears automatically for you, the student and the parent.

No more sending links back and forth: it’s right there on the lesson.

Practising gets more fun: students earn experience points and medals (bronze, silver, gold) as they progress. Per school you set up your own reward shop where they can spend their XP.

A playful nudge, especially for younger students.

Teacher and school accounts are extra protected with two-factor authentication: alongside your password you confirm with a code from your email or authenticator app. Trusted devices are remembered for 60 days, so you don’t confirm every time.

Your student data safe, without the hassle.