MTI RehearScore 4+

My school is using this app for our production of Mamma Mia and it’s fine. I really like that I can isolate my vocal part when I practice at home. However, I don’t like that your phone has to open to hear the songs. Sometimes when I'm practicing, my phone will turn off because I’m not pressing any buttons and the music stops playing. When you have a smaller vocal part and only have the notes playing with out the background stuff playing, it can take a while to notice the app is off which wastes a lot of time. We use this app during rehearsals to and it annoying when we have to stop to turn the app back on. I also wish there was a way to see all the lyrics so you don’t have to have your script on you to practice. It’s also a little annoying because you have to have your ringer on and when you get a text it is distracting. It’s a solid app but really could be better if these things were changed.

This app is not great. I’m very much a musical novice, but it lacks a number of options that I would think should come standard. It would be so great if you could change the software instruments of the singer channels and the accompaniment. It’s just a software instrument. Load up a piano, organ, flute, sax, guitar, synth, harp, whatever…MIDI technology is decades old. Heck, I’d be happy if the singers and accompaniment had different instruments. Also, it would great to have an “auto-advance” feature. I like practicing in the shower, and I can’t because there’s a vamp that I can’t exit without tapping my phone. It would also be great if the lyrics could toggled on and played on the screen like karaoke. I can’t really read a music score to save my life, but I can follow a (metaphorical) bouncing ball. That, and the fact that the app stops when your screen locks is super annoying. I like putting in my headphones and practicing my choreo, but I have to contend with accidentally hitting my screen in the middle of a move.

But we know this is just venting, because MTI has a duopoly over musical theater and they have very little incentive to fix anything, so I hope they can address some of these issues but I doubt it.

It’s apparent that MTI is a monopoly company when you see this app. They have so much money, and yet they put out an app of such low caliber, simply because they have no reason to try any harder. They’re the only company with rights to make this kind of app. The sounds are horrible, like they just took software from over 15 years ago and adapted it to this app without changing any of the MIDI programming or updating any of those instrument sounds. The rhythmic programming is extremely buggy, too; the rhythms play like we hired someone with turrets to play it. It speeds up and slows down mid-beat, unpredictably. This issue makes it very difficult to practice choreography with.

People are impressed with the app in general, because it has some basic features, like showing the measure numbers and having the ability to modulate the basic tempo; but seriously—that’s not hard to do and is entirely expected of an app like this. MTI has made the absolute bare minimum effort in producing this app. It’s a useful tool—an essential tool, but it’s still so janky, glitchy, and low quality for something in 2019! I’m not an app developer, but I know enough about music programming to confidently say I could make a better app myself (and that’s saying something! Haha).

MTI, PLEASE FIX THIS APP!