The best practice apps and online tools to help community choir singers develop healthy practice habits, train their ears, and vocalize independently!
Practice Journals and Logs for Choir Singers
Musician's Way Practice Files
For a more "hands-on" approach of tracking your practice with pen and paper, Musician's Way has a variety of free practice files available for download. Their files include everything from a practice sheet for planning your goals, a practice schedule for keeping a regular practice time in your calendar, a practice log for keeping track of accomplishments, and even self-practice and performance skill assessments!
Price: FREE
Ear Training and Music Theory Apps for Choir Singers
Ear Trainer
With over 260 exercises, this app focuses on helping you identify chords, chord inversions, intervals, scales, and notes in relation to a chord. Bonus: You are also able to customize your own exercises and share them with your friends!
Price: $6.99
Tenuto
This app uses exercises directly from musictheory.net. The music theory portion includes learning the key signatures and staff, identifying written notes, training on intervals and chords, and keyboard and fretboard identification. The ear training area then focuses on identifying audio notes, intervals, scales, and chords. The app is known for its built-in calculators which calculate intervals, chords, and even the twelve-tone matrix (wow, that brings me back to college music theory!).
Price: $3.99
Functional Ear Trainer
This Android app has a simple user interface that makes ear training seem easy! The app focuses not only identification of pitch but how the pitch functions in the key - hence the name "Functional Ear Trainer." It is promoted as a tool for learning how to transcribe the music you are hearing.
Price: FREE
Better Ears
Better Ears is really the crème de la crème of ear training apps. Their easy-to-use application is suitable for beginners and advanced musicians alike featuring modules that train on intervals, scales, chords, chord progressions, pitches, tempos, key signatures, and more!
Price: Varying - FREE/$9.99/$24.99
Vocal Warm Up Apps for Choir Singers
VoCo Vocal Coach
This app claims to improve your tone, pitch, control, and even your style through it's various vocal warm-ups which focus primarily on scales and arpeggios. In the app, you can listen to demos of expert singers and record yourself for evaluation.
Price: FREE
Vocal Warm Up by Musicopoulos
Warm up, exercise, or cool down your voice with Vocal Warm Up by Musicopoulos. Create your favorite "warm-up playlists," set your tempo, and you're off!
Price: $3.99
Singing Vocal Warm Ups - Singer's Friend
Claimed to be perfect for singers of all ages and experience levels, this app allows you to work in your own vocal range, choose your warm up speed, and features sixteen different scale patterns to develop agility.
Price: $3.99
Vocal Ease
This Android app eases you into singing with light exercises such as humming, oo-ing, and (your favorite!) lip trilling. It is a safe and easy app for warming up the voice and minimizes risk of vocal strain.
Price: $1.99
Tori Cook is the former Director of Sales & Marketing at Chorus Connection, an active board member of the Greater Boston Choral Consortium, and a soprano with the Tanglewood Festival Chorus. In a past life, she was the Music Director of the Harborlight Show Chorus and President of Chorus pro-Musica. When not making music, she daydreams about adopting a golden retriever puppy and scuba diving to exotic locations around the world.