Dolphin Don's Music School Review

Type of CAI: Drill and Practice
Operating System(s): Windows 95 and up

Dolphin Don’s Music School is a drill and practice program for music students. It has up to 24 levels for each module. Since music knowledge varies by age I would say this program is good for the beginning musician to the intermediate musician with music theory knowledge. The interface seems geared to children as it has a talking dolphin guide you through the drills. It costs $39.95 plus $5.00 shipping for a CD version of the program. Dolphin Don’s Music School has many options to learn music and music theory. This includes learning note names on several different staffs, learning chords, keys and rhythms. It also uses a very important aspect of music which is hearing notes and chords. Each answer is always reinforced by the proper sound of the note or chord(sorry no sound for you to hear it, but trust me it's there). It also has a section that lets you identify chords by their sound. Another nice feature is that the program lets you sign in as “you” and pick the instrument in which you play. The program and modules are then tailored to learning that is crucial for that instrument. Since it is a drill and practice program it does fall short in music ideology. For example it will teach you what a diminished chord looks and sounds like, but will not teach you why it is diminished. It also is not very graphically complex. I would recommend using this program to reinforce music theory classes and initial learning of different clefs and notes.