Practice Buddy

Helping you practice efficiently

This music practice timer is inspired by the work of Molly Gebrian and incorporates some of her suggestions for efficient practice.

"Micro-breaks" are 10–20 second pauses that allow your brain to consolidate what you were just practicing.

The app encourages working in chunks of 5–10 minutes, with 1–3 minute rests between chunks.

Interleaved practice is encouraged — choose a different piece, passage, etude, or technique for each chunk. See Molly's work for the compelling research behind this.

Recording yourself is encouraged! Each practice round is recorded. Review it using the "waveform" button in the micro-break. You can turn recordings off in Settings.

Voice control allows you to run your entire practice session without touching your phone.

If voice control is not what you want, the keyboard shortcuts work with a "page turner" foot pedal (that can emulate a "SPACE" or "ENTER" key.) They eliminate most of your need to touch the screen during a normal practice flow.

If "Automatically advance" is on in Settings, it automatically advances to the micro-break at the end of a practice round. If it is off, you get an audible notification when a practice round ends, but you must skip to the next phase manually.

To add this app to your iPhone or iPad home screen, tap the Share button in Safari, then tap "Add to Home Screen."

If the record/review feature is not working on iPhone or iPad, go to Settings → Safari → Microphone and make sure it is not set to "Deny."

The microphone indicator stays on between practice rounds — this is intentional, to avoid re-requesting microphone permission. Recording only occurs during the Practice phase.

If you have feedback, email microbreaktimer@gmail.com.

Eighth note icon by PianistHere, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Practice Buddy

Helping you practice efficiently

Tap (lower right) for more info on efficient practice.

Tap (lower left) to set timer durations and customize reminders.

We lost our audio while you were away. Click resume to restore it.

Hello!

Ready to practice?

Voice control lets you operate the app hands-free, but it does drain the battery faster.

Voice commands include "start", "play", "pause", "done", and "ready".

Say "reps" to open/close the rep-counter and "good" or "wrong" after a good/bad rep (see settings to customize).

Say "review" to review your recording during micro-breaks... "re-play" to re-play it and "close" to exit the review.

In a car (or wherever connected to Bluetooth audio) with voice control, sound will come through your phone. Without, it will come through the Bluetooth speakers. This is a limitation of web apps.