ChoirMate

There are so many items in this app that make it worthwhile! First, it is user friendly! Depending upon how your director sets it up, you can learn your part while reading the music, and hearing the choir in one of two ways, either with the predominant voice being the part you sing or with the entire choir. You also have the ability to select portions that you may be having difficulties with to go over just at varying speeds until it’s mastered. In addition, there’s an option to pull up a keyboard and play the notes . There are also messaging, calendar, and probably other features I have yet to discover. This is the best tool I have seen for preparation for choir practice, so when there, you can focus on interpretation, rather than learning the music!

When our choir director introduced the idea of using ChoirMate, I was initially very hostile. I expected this to be yet another app in that rapidly growing category of apps that serve solely to clutter up one’s phone screen and waste one’s time the three times a year when one actually bothers to open it. The kind of app one keeps on one’s phone so one can nod and say ‘Yes I downloaded the app’ to an overly enthusiastic Gen X manager. However, after about three months of using the app, I now think it’s very good. Accessing practice tracks is far easier than it was with our previous system of downloading them from Google Drive, and this ease of use has resulted in me practicing at home more than I did before we had ChoirMate. The chat feature has meant that, even as someone who often forgets to check his email, I am kept abreast of changes in plans as they occur, and the scheduling and check-in features have made communicating absences a little smoother. Overall, I have found ChoirMate to be more useful and easier to use than I expected, and I would encourage other choirs to give it a try.

We’ve been using ChoirMate for several months now, and it is an absolute game-changer for our community choir! The calendar feature is so easy to use, making it simple to organize our rehearsals and performances and track attendance. We can upload sheet music and practice tracks and sort it by vocal section, which has been so helpful for our singers to practice on their own. We are a non-profit community choir, so managing our budget is a must. ChoirMate is affordable and saves us so much time, it is a great investment. The customer service is also great - very responsive and helpful. You can tell this app was created by someone who actually knows about choirs - ChoirMate delivers what choirs need!